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Designacable for XLR interconnects?

Hi 337alant,
Interesting how double length is less than 1/2 cost...
Lengths on Amazon and Klotz website not very practical for me.
But guess I could just buy cable and terminate myself...
 
Just ordered 10.5m pair and 1m pair of Gotham GAC-4/1 with gold Neutriks from pro audio la. I couldn't find a cheaper way for a custom job in the UK (direct from Gotham was also more expensive).
 
All Studio/Pro XLR cables are 'cheap', if you compare them to the £ 2K per M. phono cables I have seen..

If they do the job for musicians then they are fine for me.

Though what do musicians know about domestic audio, they are only used to " long cable runs, in noisy environments".
 
mikebirtill said:
id never pay 200 for an xlr cable!

my studio and live rigs are full of van damme sliver star quad with amphenol ax series xlr connectors which I find more reliable than neutrik.
Click to expand...

think i paid 66 quid for 2 15metre van damme xlr cables from designer cable . not bad at all . this is for pro audio use
 
I do the opposite.

In fact I have no option because my equipment was engineered to run fully balanced, with THD of 0.0002 % I would not wish the possibility of any noise entering via an aerial (phono cable).
 
Balanced connections reject common mode noise to a high degree. But it's not an absolute solution of course.

Even balanced cables come with various shields and topologies, each with their pros and cons - but this is usually only a factor in pro circles, where there might be lots of noisy EMI and RFI from stage equipment and long runs.
 
darrenyeats said:
- but this is usually only a factor in pro circles, where there might be lots of noisy EMI and RFI from stage equipment and long runs.
Click to expand...

Does domestic equipment and the surrounding mobile phone, Wi-Fi router, wireless streamer et al not produce EMI and RFI ?

How long is the often cited long run ?

Balanced XLR cables with a shield are generally much cheaper than the 1940's designed RCA cable.

If the RCA plug were a newly released design today it would be laughed at with it's positive pin exposed.
 
Hi Darrenyeats,

Any particular reason you went to Trumpland to get those cables rather than the Vandammes other than cost?
It his in your opinion a sonically better solution?
 
Quick update:
The Atlas cable I tried got a bit better in use - at Arcam they suggested flicking the RCA-XLR selector switch, so that's the likely cause since the cable was a well-used demo one.

Still, not overly impressed for the > £100 it would cost me (down from original £220 RRP!), so that's gone back to the shop.

That just leaves the question of Vandamme or Gotham...

And there is also still a small niggle about possible difference pin 2 versus, since the very helpful Arcam customer support guy thought this might differ from the output of my DAC - but he still hasn't confirmed that with his tech people. The Arcam manual thingy gives very little detail...

Does anyone know - or is anyone indeed successfully using an rHead with the XLS input?
 
clogman said:
Hi Darrenyeats,

Any particular reason you went to Trumpland to get those cables rather than the Vandammes other than cost?
It his in your opinion a sonically better solution?
Click to expand...
Clogman, I already have magic audiophile cables (QED Reference Audio Evolution XLRs).

This is an experiment to see if pro cables will be better. Since this is a test, I might as well "go pro" all the way! The Gotham GAC-4/1 XLR has a good combination of qualities:
- star quad
- relatively low capacitance for star quad
- double (reussen) shielded
- braided shields
- not expensive
- pro reputation

Of course, it might not sound very good, or the same as the magical audiophile cable, I don't know yet. When it arrives, I'll report back.
 
Interesting reading.
Makes a lot of sense reading it that way.
Makes you wonder whether the significantly more expensive to make XLR input into my rHead is just not of sufficient quality to give the same (or better) SQ as the RCA...
Especially considering the price point of the rHead of 200 squids (down from an original RRP of double that).
Such a pain that I have to use it for my digital sources as the Primare i32 has no headphones out and digital input does not feed through to tape out :-(

I now need to use my old DAC (instead of the excellent MM30 board in the Primare) so I can use headphone with both digital (XLR in) and analog (RCA in from Rec Out) sources.
Arrrgh!

Alternative would be to flog my old DAC and replace with DAC/headphone amp in one unit. But that would have to be fully budget neutral...

Tempted given all this to just get either that VanDamme of Gotham (suggested by Darrenyeats) cable as an affordable solution at least for now...
 
Capacitance looks nigh on identical to Van Damme starquad.

Capacitance Core to core pF/m 50 nominal
Core to screen pF/m 95 nominal
Click to expand...

As opposed to Gotham.

Side circuit capacitance: single conductor 55 pF/m
Side circuit capacitance: Quad system 135 pF/m
Click to expand...
 
I think Gotham GAC-4/1 cond/shield (for a fair comparison) is actually 103 pF/m. Low capacitance for star quad, not necessarily lowest! The Canare star quads, very popular I believe, are cond/shield 185 and 200.
 
Look forward to hear how well this works out in a musical sense!
Numbers only get you thus far IMHO.
That is, for audio enjoyment. Ask me about my work and I'll tell you it's all about hard, measurable and reproducible figures...
 
Arguably the Grimm TPM and TPR cables are the technically most advanced, using basic engineering principles rather than foo.

The TPM isn't cheap though.

Not readily available. When I last looked the only source I could find was proaudiola, which making it expensive for shipping
 
I have made an XLR cable between my TT and phono stage using VD*quad. The original cable supplied by Pro-ject was shielded but with phono plugs so the sheild was sheilding nothing :confused:
 
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