XLR cables for a reasonable price?

“…balanced components are "insensitive" to cables…”

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.

The important thing is the wire and synergy with your components… which is nearly impossible to predict. Best to try them. The Cable company has a way to let you try a number of different ones. Used cables go for half price… great way to go. Also, XLR tend to cost a lot more.

XLR are best used (although they do not always sound better) on components that have an internally balanced design. Otherwise there is a conversion being done to the XLR sockets and then back again in the next component.

So to be helpful, we really need to know your system. There is a place to put some photos and ID components under your ID… virtual systems. You can see mine under my virtual systems.

+1 DHLabs for excellent quality budget cables.

@atmasphere 

I appreciate your long and sometimes technical discussion of why diffferent XLR interconnects don’t and shouldn’t matter. Sounds like you have an electrical engineering background.

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. 
 

I really wish I could use cheap XLR interconnects and not take a hit to sonic performance. Each new generation of connection… USB and Ethernet for instance has been the hope that this time it will not matter. Darn if it always does.

A friend of mine was considering buying Mogami interconnects and to help out I did a lot of research. My conclusion, only from research, was that the Mogami interconnects are worth their price… meaning that if they cost $100 their sound quality is in line with $100 interconnects… versus say $1,000 or higher, major high end brand interconnects.. like Cardas, Transparent, etc. I have not tried them myself, but I found the conclusion very compelling, and consistent with their construction.

I have been involved with standards and know many people who have been on standards committees for most of my career… most are information technology in the high technology industry… including working with lots of electrical engineers developing high end DACs and other components of the subcomponents in the stuff we audiophiles use. They, by their very nature have compromises. There are always factions trying to optimize for their application. The niche groups generally do not drive the standard. There is always a better way to do something in a specific situation. A proprietary one… there are big costs to do this. The best thing to do is operate within the parts of the standard that nets you the greatest performance, don’t where it doesn’t matter. 
 

Standards serve an important function, to allow a multitude of vendors to build or write code to a common interface. Hence allowing guaranteed interconnectivity. And not to in have everyone redevelop a standard communication spec and connection each time. This is a huge amount of work. 

However, given different applications a developer can choose to follow every aspect or not. If they don’t and it is a high end designer (a competent one) they will do it for a reason. Afterall, they are going for the best possible sound and that will only happen by connecting to other components.