[aggielaw]

Looking to move from RCA to XLR cables between my Cary 303/300 and McCormack DNA-125 Platinum.  I looked for information on the sonic qualities of the popular connectors (Furutech Gold and Rhodium; WBT; Vampire and Xhadow) but really haven't found anything describing the sonic qualities of each.

Any info would be much appreciated.

[JoshK]

I am not a big believer in connectors making a huge difference.  I think they make a minute difference, not a huge one, and therefore don't fret too much about these things since there are a lot of things that make bigger differences.  That said....

I have a number of different types of XLR connectors in my parts cabinet.  I've used a few different types but haven't done listening shoot outs between them, so my only observations are about how they work and what the differences are.  I think the audio jewelry XLRs are pretty much a waste of money.  Its an economy of scale thing.  Neutriks can be had with gold pins and those are likely to be every bit as good as any of the rest of them.  I think they are more common and cheaper because they are an economy of scale, thus they don't have the mystique and elitism to go along with the highest end audiophile kind.

I do have vampire wire's gold XLRs and they are nicely made and I trust that they are made to exactly standards, but I don't think I'd pay a lot more for them over the Neutrik Gold XLRs.  I don't remember the price differences between them off hand.

I think the thing with XLRs is that they are superior to RCAs in a number of ways, not only related to sonics.  They lock in and have a push button to disconnect making them a lot easier to positively connect and disconnect when needed.  They are lower mass where it counts, the signal and return is in the pins, not the high mass housing (depending on how you do it I guess).  I think this is part of why they can sound better too. 

For practical reasons, I think it is convenient to use RCAs between sources and preamp, but then I like to use XLR between the preamp and the amps even if the signal is single ended.  It just isn't very convenient to change all sources to XLR connectors.  But you could use RCA to XLR cables, but that is a bit inconvenient too.

I hope that helps a tiny bit, even if it wasn't what you were looking for.  I don't know of anyone reporting having done listening tests controlling for just the XLR connector type.  That is what would be needed in order to tell any differences IMO.  I expect the differences to be minute like I said and maybe a bit system dependent, since any decent base metal should add very little character to the sound or such a small piece of metal. 

[NewBuyer]

In my opinion differences between balanced cable XLR connector types are rarely audible. This is different from the situation with different RCA types.

The cheaper XLR connectors may have a very poor mechanical fit however - some won't even do that nice "click" when fully inserted, etc. - so you should be careful in that area.

My personal favorite XLR's are the Neutrik parts - but this is only for the extremely consistent and reliable fit, not due to any enhanced sonics etc.

[Russtafarian]

Agreed.  The Neutrik's work well.  Another advantage of XLRs, they're non shorting.  I've tried a few of the chinese XLR clones, and the inconsistent quality is just not worth saving $2 over a genuine Neutric.

Heck, I'd like to see high-end audio ditch binding posts and IEC jacks and standardize on Neutric speaker and power connectors.  Ain't gonna happen anytime soon given the obsession with garden hose cables, but I can dream...

Russ

[jbernhard]

Just joined AudioCircle, so my reply is late...apologies.

My impressions counter the conventional wisdom here, that XLR connectors either do not sound different or that the differences are so small as to be musically insignificant. I was also somewhat leery of various claims, but for a couple of reasons decided to investigate this for my own benefit. Those reasons include the differences that are (to me, at least) clearly audible among different RCA connectors -- the Eichmanns, the WBTs, the Xhadow and Vampires to name some of the best I've heard -- surely such differences might also be possible among XLRs; and that I use both RCA and XLR and would hope that XLR connector technology hasn't been dormant while advances have been made with RCAs.

One can discount opinions of comparisons in part as being placebo effect, but you have to be pretty cynical to assume that's all there is to such opinions. In any case, I decide to try a few of these alternative connectors (both RCA and XLR) myself, using the same wire for all cables, and even trying a few DCT'd (deep cyrogenic treated) variants of one connector to see if that made any difference. The same solder was used in all soldered cases (though solderless connections were also tried where possible). Differences were audible, but in a sense they are insignificant or, better put, small in magnitude -- they can be swamped by other things, this is best tried on a well-tuned setup. I've been working at well-tuning mine for a long time    On my system these differences are audible, but subtle. The sort of differences I hear is increased low level detail of the sort that one hears in live performance -- subtle onset transient of bowing strings or the column of air being excited in a wind instrument, or more of the inflection and vocal detail on recordings of voice. With the right source material, the music is more 'alive' with the 'right' connectors. Of the XLRs I tried, the Neutriks (which I've also used for many years) were dead last. Better were the Rhodium plated Furutech and the DCT'd Gold plated Vampire (which I preferred over the Furutech for what it's worth), and best were DCT'd Xhadow XLRs (solderless; the Take Five Audio DCT is better than an alternative source's IMO -- more nuanced with low level signal). While the differences might be judged by someone else to be so small as to be unimportant, I personally find this improved low level resolution to capture more of the beauty of timbre and to be more 'involving'. And, btw, the solderless connection does sound better, improving this revelation of low level information.

These are my conclusions so far in the proverbial nutshell. There was a bit of expense doing this but like I said, it was for selfish reasons, sometimes you have to try something to really know what's going on. After trying a few different cables and having the mindset that it's the cable and not the connector that matters, I've concluded that mindset was off the mark. Of course, YMMV.

Best regards to all...

Jeff