XLR cables for a reasonable price?

Yes, we can agree that it seems that's your only point. I'm not sure that I agree with the premise that the cables in my mostly-ARC system represent a "veil" on the sound

+1

Some have called me a 'cable denier' on this account. The easy way to tell if the cable is coloring things is to compare to another cable. If you hear a difference=yes, if no difference=no. Sometimes you hear tradeoffs- that's a difference.

@ditusa +1

@twoleftears +1

@ghdprentice +1

You understand that AES48 is just one "standard," correct? There are other ways to design balanced components and choosing an alternative doesn't mean the standard you so cherish is "ignored."

@cleeds You are correct to a point. There are other ways go design balanced components. My only point here is that if they don't support the standard, the cable will be a veil. Put another way, expect to have to audition cables just like you do with single-ended stuff to get the best 'sound'.

There are two aspects of the balanced standard. One is AES48. The other is the low impedance aspect (which means the input impedance of the amp might be as low as 600 Ohms- you can see right there why a lot of tube preamp manufacturers don't do that...).

As if there were no other good amps or engineering approaches. There are, and many. I believe that manufacturers and dealers should be honorably dismissed. It doesn’t matter how much knowledge and skill they might have, this is not a proper place for them to be.

@inna If you want a good S/PDIF cable, it will have to be a certain characteristic impedance and is based on AES3. A good USB cable will meet the standards required by the USB standard. The standards are required by the principles of operation. Manufacturers usually know that if they are to make a cable for those applications they will have to adhere to the standards. The same is true of manufacturers of the hardware itself.

The puzzling thing is why the balanced standard is so commonly ignored in high end audio. In any other field of electronic endeavor, it would be considered bad practice and the manufacturer of such equipment would likely be out of business fairly quickly.

I’m not saying (as I pointed out earlier) that high end audio equipment that does not support the standard does not sound good. I am saying that when it does not, the cable is a veil in the system. That’s all.

Manufacturers choose whether or not they want to deal with that problem. Its not a value judgement on my part but I sense that you think it is. Personally I don’t get why anyone would want to have a cable be a veil in their system, but maybe the realization that the cable will be exactly that simply hasn’t dawned. Plus people get into this sport for very different reasons. I like to listen to music, but some like horse trading equipment, looking at how manufacturers solved certain problems (pick up a copy of The Art of the Motorcycle, which illustrates how this works in the motorbike world), being able to say how much they did or didn’t spend and so on.

And then there's the fourth way, which I think may be the most common: use an operational amplifier. ("Op-amp.") They can be fully discrete, and seem to be the approach used by many, such as ARC, for example.

@cleeds  Opamps can generate a balanced output easily enough, but not one that is floating. The output of any opamp is single-ended, so to hear it, the other connection is ground. So to do a balanced output, you'd need at least 2 opamps, each generating a single-ended output, one out of phase with the other. Each referencing ground, so no, this won't support the standard. But it is balanced. An output transformer or our direct-coupled output section both produce an output that is floating.

To use a chip based solution, you need something like this, a balanced line driver IC, which is also floating.

I agree with you that internal components are critical but I posit that the external components, such as cables are also important.  

I recall a discussion in the 90s about speaker cables.  The question was most speakers used cheap, thin wire internally to the drivers as well as fairly inexpensive components in the crossovers.  So what was the point of buying expensive speaker cables?

To be clear, I've never stated that speaker cables are not important. They are, IMO, IME. Because they can be critical (especially if you are running lower impedance loads, like 4 Ohms) its best to keep them as short as possible. To this end I keep my amps right by the speakers and run long interconnects. That way I can have the equipment stand for the front end of the system where I want it rather than forced to sit between the speakers. Since RCA cables can and do impose a sound of their own (which is bad) to minimize colorations due to cables, having long balanced interconnects and short speaker cables makes a lot of sense, especially if the associated equipment supports the balanced standard.

What you seem to be implying is that the internal wiring in a balanced amplifier, or preamp is not important either.

@tonywinga If this comment is directed at me, no, I did not imply that at all! The quality needed internally is very dependent on how the internal circuitry works.

All XLR cables sound the same? A fantasy that we all wish were true. I thought that based on a lot of talk on these forums until I started trying out some different XLR’s in my system. Then I bought some of the top of the line Purist Audio Design cables to go between my preamp and amps. None of that cheap $100/ft stuff. These cables cost much more than that- $500/ft and you won’t pry these cables out of my hands. The difference in sound is startling. The soundstage is totally black. I thought it was quiet before but not like this. The bass came alive. Night and day difference in the bass. And the highs are so creamy good. When I hear cymbals I just want to hug myself. I could go on; but I won’t. High priced, yes but high satisfaction. Everything matters.

My generalizations come from listening to a number of high quality components and comparing the sound quality output. The results I have experience are exactly like speaker cables, other interconnects, power cords and Ethernet and USB cables… they sound different when comparing on medium or high quality electronics. Typically better quality ones sound better… but subject the variability of the particular system.

Standards are useful… but typically are suboptimal for high performance anything… high end design engineers are aware of them, and if they do not follow them, it is usually because they get in the way of performance or funtionality.

@ghdprentice @tonywinga I can’t stress enough how important it is to support the balanced standards! If the designer does not do this, regardless of whatever benefit they might think is there, the simple fact is that you lose the benefit of cable neutrality. IOW, you’ll hear differences between cables, and that isn’t a good thing!

The reason its not a good thing is very simple: next year, whoever made your cable will have a better one, and if he doesn’t, someone else will. Everyone here knows that. Its good that the system is revealing so that it can delineate cable problems, bad that the cables have problems that can be heard as ’bad, good, better’ and so on. If you hear differences between two cables, neither one is right.

Put another way, if you are hearing differences between balanced cables, this makes it highly likely that the equipment you are using for that audition doesn’t support the standards, even though fully differential and/or balanced. I’m not saying that equipment doesn’t sound good- I’m sure it does. But because it doesn’t support the standard, there is a veil between you and the music which is the cable itself.

I can’t think of a good reason to not support the standard- only bad ones: there are only three ways to do it and they all cost money. One way is to use an output transformer, another way is the way we do it, which we patented. Most high end companies don’t like paying patent fees solely on ego (’not invented here’). There’s an integrated circuit that does the job as well, but many tube preamp producers are loathe to put something like that at the output of their preamp. So we have a large number of manufacturers that for whatever reason aren’t supporting the standard; I very much doubt its for sound quality reasons!

This is absolutely false. Single ended or balanced the first most important thing is the quality of the wire. How much this affects the sound quality depends on your components. In general consumer products, not at all, budget components most likely not, good components, yes to varying degrees.. audiophile, absolutely… very substantially. That is a generalization… and fairly reliable. But I know a couple instances where budget components were tremendously improved with good cables.

 

In general, when buying from well established companies the higher the cost the better quality and greater impact. One way not to not get off on the right foot would be to compare really cheap cables. Typical recommendations are to spend about 10% of the component cost.

There is one more dimension to cables… the sound character. Different companies have different basic sound characteristics… Cardas are a bit warm (can help systems sound more musical)… which can mask deficiencies in your components… they get less warm as you go up in levels and more clear. Transparent are… exactly that transparent and they get quieter and more so as you go up in price.

One thing to note is that XLR are a bit louder… it is easy to mistake this for clarity, so you must equalize the sound level to correctly compare sound characteristics.

@ghdprentice I feel compelled to correct some misinformation in your post. As you might have gathered from other's posts here so far, your first paragraph is not correct. The construction of the cable matters in a balanced cable, but that construction is simple (twisted pair inside a shield) and need not be expensive. It doesn't even seem to matter if the materials are high quality- if your equipment supports the balanced standards.  I've used ancient balanced cables in my system and other's, compared right beside cables that cost $1000/foot and heard no difference between them. If your equipment is balanced but does not support the standard then that benefit of cable neutrality seems to be eroded!

Think about balanced lines as a system that allows you to vastly reduce or eliminate cable problems, rather than just throwing money at it as happens with single-ended cables.

Your second sentence is a good example of the Veblen Effect; the idea that just because its more expensive it will also be better. With balanced lines, if you support the standard, this isn't true. I refer you to other's posts in this thread.

In your third paragraph, if I can point something out: Being able to hear differences in cables isn't a good thing. Its good that you have a system of revealing character that can delineate such things as cables, but consider that exactly such a system might also be able to show you that cables can sound exactly the same (if the equipment supports the balanced standard).

The reason hearing cable differences isn't good is simple. I'm pretty sure no-one has every compared side by side all the interconnect cables available; there seem to be hundreds if not thousands of cable manufacturers- usually comparing cables you might have 3 or 4 at best. So which one is right?? The actual answer is 'none of them are'. This is for a very simple reason! Let's say you chose the best of all the cables in your audition. The problem is, next year that cable manufacturer will have a better cable (maybe more money too) and if he doesn't, someone else will. We all know this to be a fact. What the balanced line system does for you is it allows you to get off that white elephant (because what sort of money are you going to get out of a set of used cables) merry go round. You can buy a set of inexpensive cables and they'll sound just as good as an expensive set. I see cable interaction as a hidden cost of single-ended products on this account; if you're running a single ended system you'll have no choice but to audition cables.

Now to your last paragraph. If the balanced line equipment is supporting the standard, the signal level will be exactly the same between balanced and single-ended. Think of an output transformer driving the balanced line- with one end of the winding on pin2 of the XLR and other end of the winding on pin3. Now if you tied pin3 to pin1 (ground) you'd have a single-ended output, but the actual voltage produced would be exactly the same.

Most balanced equipment that does not support the standard has two single-ended outputs, each referencing ground, out of phase with the other. In this case, if you go from single-ended to balanced, you'll get a 6dB increase. But in this setup, ground is referenced so its not supporting the standard (AES48). Do you see the distinction?