$20 XLR cables that sound good

As Atmasphere has cited, the balanced configuration is insensitive to the kinds of wire characteristics which lead some audiophiles to pay mega-bucks for interconnects.

I have great respect for Ralph and his products. And his amps easily have the ability to show up differences between cables.....and quite dramatic differences. But the quote above is simply not valid. I live in the twin cities and I would love to visit with Ralph to bring over the XLR pair of Jade Audio Hybrid ICs.

Compare the middle and top tier cables from Kubala Sosna, Purist, Stealth and Jade Audio to name a few and then it will be very clear of the dramatic differences of ICs.

get rid of the non-performing gear at one or both ends of the wire.......

Shadorne, every time there is a cable thread, you go off that perfectly designed gear should not respond to cable changes. And yet time after time, even the very impressively designed products that I own, Aria, CAT, Aesthetix, all show significant changes with ICs. For systems that are incapable of conveying the portrayal of space, harmonic overtones, decays, etc., it's just a game of bandaiding a system's tonal flaws with cables. But for truly high performance systems, I am well aware on how many cables can destroy what that system is capable of. It only takes one poor-quality IC from line stage to amp to piss away the dimensionality of such a system. But when relying on a Best Buy CD player as a primary source, such an experience will never be observed anyway.

The CAT amps have a power supply design that few if any other tube amps out there can begin to compete with. And these amps will show in a split second the dramatic difference in 3D and dynamic contrasts with cable and tube changes.

Shadorne, please educate yourself on some of the products I mentioned above and make note of their power supply designs. Maybe then you will understand how and why such products do indeed show differences between cables. Don't make blanket statements to people here that are seeking advice to improve their systems. If I listened to your comments here 5 or so years ago, I would have ignored those from others here that educated me on the capability of such cables. We can all learn a lot from A'gon members like Albert Porter and Jadem6.

I have played with Mogami and Canare XLR cables and they are a good starting point. But there is so much more to benefit with a system that has the capability. It makes no sense to pay for high-performance cables when the rest of the system can not benefit from their contributions. It's all about keeping the system balanced in performance among all components.

As for Sidssp's comment about achieving great sound, over the years we have all felt we had great sound. But then we hear refinements with upgrades and there is no going back to the "great sound" we had 10-15-20 years ago. Such is progress. And it only takes one link in the chainto destroy that progress.

Sorry Nathanso, I did not mean to steer your thread off course.

How do you know for sure that $100 or $1000 or $10,000 is enough to spend on IC's.

Is this not true for every link in the system? The progress that many people here continue to make is to add another level of refinement to their system with each change. Do we only upgrade sources, electronics and the speakers? ... and stick with budget cables forever?

And what does repeatability and robustness have to do with this? Once you get off the upgrade train, you have repeatability. But for the rest of us, who says we need to stop with budget cables?

If you are off the upgrade train because you are content with the sound of your system, that is fine. But every time you imply that cable sonic-differences are the result of poorly designed products, you do a disservice to the designers of those products and to the readers here who seek advice to improve their system.

As for the basic circuit designs of line and phono stages and amps, no new rocket science has really come along here for quite some time. But the implementations of these designs and the associated parts, active, passive, transformers, etc., allow many of us to hear detail in our recordings that we did not hear even 5 years ago. And this allows the music to get us a little closer to the real thing.

Shadorne, you put too much emphasis on what is on paper and not the end result, that which many of us can readily hear, of such high performance systems.