Hey, so usually i buy my cables from a store in the local city, they specialise in audio equipment and they make the cables themselves in their place, but by the time you pay p&p your talking £30 for 2 cables at about 2/3M length,

Is it worth paying all this money for such small cables?

I ask because i have just bought the Sub 8 to go with my Adam A7Xs, and currently I'm running out from my Apogee Duet 2 to my makie big knob, and out to my monitors, but i need to purchase 2 longer cables so my monitors will come out of my sub,

If it isn't worth paying so much, can somebody point me in the right direction for good quality cheap XLR - XLR cables?

Thank you!!

Mike

Yes, especially when using high quality USB cables.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/search.asp?keyword=xlr&x=0 &y=0

Monoprice has the cheapest prices for cables anywhere. Shit gets me crazy when you go to best buy and they're charging 30 bucks for a simple audio cable that you can get at monoprice for 5 bucks.

No, the quality of the cable doesn't matter. Just look up how they work, make them yourself even, and you'll realize there's just 3 wires with some shielding, and that's pretty much it.

By the way making the cables yourself is like a 15 minute learning process, if you know how to solder.

The cheapest way is make your own, but Thomann have some decent prices ...

http://www.thomann.de/gb/cordial_ctl_3_fm.htm

I think there are two main issues here: reliability and sound quality.

Higher-priced cables tend to be made better and to last longer than cheaper. A quality cable has more metal, better shielding, better connections, and so on. Dissect a Mogami and a bargain-bin cable, and you'll see the difference... I've seen plenty of cheap cables that had only a few strands of wire in the audio path and shielding. If you really want the rugged, quality stuff, the price is often worth it -- but avoid the cheaper, at least.

Sound is a more complex matter. Sure, a decent cable will sound better than a cheap, but that's due to proper shielding and connections. But does a high-end cable -- say, a Mogami (my personal favorite) -- sound that much better than a mid-range such as Planet Waves? No, it doesn't... but I'd love to see a proper double-blind experiment showing that it does, just so I can feel extra-virtuous for buying the expensive stuff. Again, reliability is the real difference (and brand name, alas).

And then there's Monster. I have a real love/hate relationship with them. They build a solid cable, certainly -- very, very rugged and reliable -- but they base their reputation on magical claims, not their superb craftsmanship. "Directional electrons" and skin effect at audio ranges, my ass; that's salesmanship, not science! Nor is the insufficiency limited to theory: where's the empirical evidence, the double-blind trials and such to back their claims? How many of their endorsers and reps even know what a double-blind trial is? When I was working at Guitar Center I got into a lot of hot water for raising these concerns...

Anyhoo, don't take my word for it -- dissect some cables, learn some physics, run some experiments.

Yeah like said before me the best would be to experiment.
When talking about sound I think it should be harder to check, and you'd have to A/B testing if you have the time and the will.

When we talk for instance about HDMI cables... as long as the full-hd image looks fine then... would you care for more expensive cables?

Thanks very much for the info, some very interesting points made!

Also, I remember reading somewhere (Sorry I forgot where) that low mid and high end cables sounded really close to each other straight out of the box, but after some wear and tear the cheap cables started to sound like crap, while the better ones held up and did not lose audio quality. I think it was on tweakheads website? idk.

If its a digital cable it won't make any difference to the sound quality what you use. A wet shoe lace would be as good as any for digital. This was tested at an audio show years ago.

Analog cables are better if you spend more I use Merlin cables from my PC to the amp.

My friend baught he cheapest HDMI cable for his computer and the bass from the monitors vibrates it out. The cheap skates never bothered to test how secure it plugs in before they put it on sale.

Bingo bango.
They tell you you are paying for extra performance.
But you are really paying for extra time.

I think a lot of simple hardware is like that to some degree.
Which is why when I am offered a no-questions-asked replacement warranty on a Behrigher Shitbox 2000™ for $8 a year, its sometimes hard to pass up....

The truth is the truth doesn't matter. There are those in the camp that think they are all the same (vast majority of kvr), and on the other extreme there are those who obsess about every little things (though they are probably afraid of saying so because of the flogging they will receive from the kvr elite).

In the middle? Some people are sensible enough to know a few things.......we keep those locked away since it's too reasonable and doesn't have the black/white fighting power that wire hangers provide

@Jafo: It's true about the reliability factor. Something like an instrument cable that gets a ton of wear can be a cause for concern. Those bins (do they still have those?) at GC with the cheap cables are more of a waste of money than the ones that cost about 4 times that (20 vs 5 bucks ) because the 20 dimarzios will last and last and last.

In the end it's your money and if someone wants to tell you you are throwing it away because you didn't buy the cheapest/flimsiest/non-lasting'est/noisiest cables......it's really their problem, isn't it

In this case you're interested in cables that go to a sub and monitors. You'd typically plug them in and forget about them. Not much wear to be expected. So even the cheapest cables will do fine.
It's not hard to test at all. You don't have to rely on subjective blind listening tests. With RMAA you get a scientific lab test at your own home, producing exact numbers to compare in a nice graph.

A short story for illustration: when I had just purchased a new audio interface in 2004, I tested the loopback audio quality with RMAA using a pair of balanced 1/4" TRS industry strength patch cables of only 1 meter long. Stellar quality, as expected. Then I took two extremely cheap and flimsy RCA-RCA cables of 6 meters long, coupled them with a female RCA-RCA adapter to get a total cable length of 12 meters. Then I put on 1/4" TS adapters on all four RCA plugs. Ran the RMAA test again, and got again the same stellar audio quality. No significant change compared to the balanced short cables.
Last edited by BertKoor on Tue May 22, 2012 11:19 pm; edited 1 time in total

See?

I still think that depending on certain things, some cables offer better shielding than others. But then again, how to prove

Here an illustration that better serves what I'm talking about.

If you look around the web you'll find a $1M dollar prize to anyone who can distinguish between the most expensive audio cable you can find and a coat hanger in a double blind audio experiment. The prize has not been won yet.
On the other hand, rigidity is very important for the connectors. If the cables will not move much then the cheapest you can buy will be the same audio quality (to our ears) as the most expensive.
Last edited by yairhol on Wed May 23, 2012 12:59 am; edited 1 time in total

double post