XLR interconnects?

I've run a lot of cables as a manufacturer. Not only that but we made the first balanced line product for high end audio- the MP-1 preamplifier. Over the years one of the more obvious deals for an interconnect between the preamp and the amp has been the Mogami mentioned several times already on this thread.

If you know only one thing about the balanced line system, the thing to know is that its purpose in life is to eliminate interconnect artifact!

In order to do that the equipment that the cables are used with has to support the standard: pin 1 is ground, pin 2 is non-inverting, pin 3 inverting, but most of all whatever is driving the cable should be able to drive a 600 ohm load without ill effects, which is how all the cable artifacts are swamped out. Most high end audio manufacturers don't get that last part.

IOW if the standard is met, the cable and its length will hardly affect the sound at all- and will be far more accurate than single-ended. So if you are hearing big differences between cables, that is an indicator that you are not getting everything out of them they have to offer.

Lacee, I agree. I suspect that your CD player does not support the balanced line standard, and so the cables are making a difference where they should not have.

RCA cables have a connection standard, but no termination standard. Balanced line has a connection standard, but also has a termination standard, which is 600 ohms. It is that low impedance which makes the difference. If your source has a high output impedance, it can't swamp the effects of the cable and so the cable artifact can be heard. That's not taking advantage of everything that balanced line has to offer.

In the past, you used our preamp, which supports that standard, and so a fairly inexpensive cable worked fine. So IMO your experience is spot-on.

I don't know if I could have sat through that much Pat Barber, regardless of the cables :)

Hi Lacee, do I understand right that in your post above, the cable shootout was going on between the source and the preamp?

The preamp is designed to support the balanced standard, but its inputs are high impedance to make it easier to drive. The result is that sources that don't support the standard can still work with the preamp, but you will hear cable artifacts- this sounds to me like what you experienced.

In any event, if the cable is not terminated you can get into differences. I'm pointing this out because like I mentioned earlier, the balanced system exists for the sole reason of eliminating cable artifact. So if you are hearing artifact, the system is not being employed to its fullest extent.

Lacee, this is a good portion of the reason that we saw several of those letters to Stereophile in the mid-90s from 'audio engineers', wherein the engineer was convinced that the high end audio market was composed of charlatans. In the letters, the engineers were complaining that in high end audio there was this huge market of cables- IOW that somehow the cables were responsible for big differences in sound.

The engineers knew this was not true, and so were trying to expose the charlatans. But as you and I know, cables **do** make a difference, so what gives? Why would the engineers go off like that?? The reason is that they use balanced line equipment in the studio, and all of it supports the balanced line standard, whereas in high end audio, very little balanced equipment actually supports the standard. So in their world the cables **don't** make a difference, and not because the gear they use is any less transparent.

So the reality behind these letters was real, but so is that behind high end cables. That reality is simply that when you ditch the termination standard, the cables will have an artifact. As a manufacturer, we recognized this back in the 1980s, and so when we introduced the MP-1, which was the first high end audio balanced line product (1989), we made sure we supported the standard. A lot of other manufacturers have gotten on the bandwagon since then, Audio Research, Aesthetix, BAT, Roland, Wadia, etc., but very few of them acknowledge the standard and so you get cable differences, counter to the raison d'etre of balanced-line operation.

In fact, a number of manufacturers simply have the connection because it is stylish or convenient. So in your supposition, is Atma-Sphere the *only* one that actually supports the standard? -no, we are one of the very few.

Dave_b, I agree with you 100%. My point is simply that if you want to take advantage of what balanced line operation has to offer, you have to adhere to the balanced line standard to get it.

Not doing so is very similar to running a high performance car on the wrong octane. At that point everyone will agree that the car is not performing at its best.

Imagine IOW that there is a technology that can eliminate cable differences, such that all cables sound excellent, like the best you ever heard. That is what balanced-line operation is for. It works too, but you have to adhere to the standard.

Hi Dave_b, of course geometry, the purity of materials and the like all effect the cable- until you have a termination resistance value that is low enough to swamp that stuff out.

As audiophiles, we have been working with single-ended cables that use exotic geometries and materials for so long that it is hard to imagine that those techniques won't also serve balanced lines the same way. If you don't have a termination, that is true. But if you don't have a termination, you will be limited in how long the cable can be, and you will be subject to the various artifacts that those materials and geometries impose.

Mercury records use to record the Minneapolis Symphony at Northrup Auditorium on the UofM campus here in Minneapolis. They used their recording truck to do the recordings- it had the recorders built-in to the truck. They placed the mics at the optimum location in the hall, and ran the mic signal a good 200(!) feet to the truck, which was parked in back. You have to ask yourself: how did they get away with that in 1958 when no exotic cable industry existed, yet did it in such a way that no matter how you improve your own stereo, those LPs continue to sound better?

The answer: the balanced line standard really works; really eliminates cable artifact! But-0 you have to play with equipment that supports the standard to really get the significance of that fact.