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VintageFlanker

VintageFlanker

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Some who custom make cables can provide several colored cables.
Bague-de-marquage-pour-NEUTRIK-XXR-pour-prise-XLR-NC3FXX-NC3MXX-multicolore-10-couleurs-1-pi.jpg
 

Angsty

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I looked at their cables look like solid no bs designs, I'm in new zealand so everything imported is hella expensive sadly. I've used wbc on Amazon in the past and can wholeheartedly recommend them, I'm buying cables from a professional sound system installer now. It's easier and cheaper in my use case but ymmv.
WBC assembles cables in Australia and Sri Lanka, so should definitely be easier to source in New Zealand than BJC.

 

bbizzle

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This might be a very ignorant question, but your dynamic range/THD/Noise measurements are at -170 dbfs - but you are recording 24-bit which has a dynamic range of 144 dbfs. Are the values off on the y-axis?
 

Blumlein 88

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This might be a very ignorant question, but your dynamic range/THD/Noise measurements are at -170 dbfs - but you are recording 24-bit which has a dynamic range of 144 dbfs. Are the values off on the y-axis?
It is usually called FFT gain or FFT depth.

If you had a single meter with white noise levels just to pick a number of -60 dbFS that is for the whole 20 khz band. If I divide that into 0-10 khz and 10khz to 20 khz and took a reading for each half of the band I would get a reading of -63 dbFS for each half. If I divide it again into 4 segments of 0-5 khz, 5 khz-10khz, 10 khz-15 khz and 15khz to 20 khz then my meter would read -66 db for each quarter of the band. So as I increase the number of FFT segments the noise in each reduced bandwidth segment is lower and lower. Each doubling lowers the amount by - 3db.

So with the original post I think those were 65,536 FFT's which would let you look down another 45 db lower into the noise floor in each FFT segment. Which can get you well below 144 dbFS if the gear is pretty quiet which in this case it was. So the noise for that whole 20 khz bandwidth was maybe around -125 dbFS or so, but split up into these many FFT segments each segment can reach into the -170 db or so range.

Does this make sense to you?
 

bbizzle

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It is usually called FFT gain or FFT depth.

If you had a single meter with white noise levels just to pick a number of -60 dbFS that is for the whole 20 khz band. If I divide that into 0-10 khz and 10khz to 20 khz and took a reading for each half of the band I would get a reading of -63 dbFS for each half. If I divide it again into 4 segments of 0-5 khz, 5 khz-10khz, 10 khz-15 khz and 15khz to 20 khz then my meter would read -66 db for each quarter of the band. So as I increase the number of FFT segments the noise in each reduced bandwidth segment is lower and lower. Each doubling lowers the amount by - 3db.

So with the original post I think those were 65,536 FFT's which would let you look down another 45 db lower into the noise floor in each FFT segment. Which can get you well below 144 dbFS if the gear is pretty quiet which in this case it was. So the noise for that whole 20 khz bandwidth was maybe around -125 dbFS or so, but split up into these many FFT segments each segment can reach into the -170 db or so range.

Does this make sense to you?
Ah! Yes, I completely understand. Thanks for the great explanation. Cheers!
 
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freemansteve

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I only use these for mono, with differential signals (antiphase), into my mixer.
I never realized people used them for stereo signals!

The main thing for me is how physically microphonic the cables are...
 

bkdc

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My gold standard for XLR cables is Mogami W2534 neglex microphone cable (which is a starquad configuration), 26 gauge per conductor. At bulk, it costs about 1.10 per foot which is a little over twice the price of Canare Starquad L-4E6S cable, 24 gauge per conductor. The only benefit of the Mogami is decreased capacitance which is unlikely to be an issue. If you are making lots of short run cables, the cost difference is negligible. If you are making long run cables, the cost adds up more but so does the capacitance which will still cause near inaudible effects. I think I made a 90 foot XLR run to a subwoofer many years ago (no longer needed cable), and I still use that particular cable to cut down for making shorter cables. Neutrik XX series terminations are easily available and have never failed me.

The thought of paying for pre-made cables which are inferior to what I could put together while watching a TV show keeps me soldering. Well.. even inferior cables sound the same. The following is what I make except it costs me 1/4 of the price of this Amazon seller's listed price and just a little time.


One of the most useful skills I learned in college was soldering of basic circuit boards in Physics 1b. I probably inhaled a lot of lead flux leaning over the solder fumes working in poor light.
 
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I'd wager there's lots of people that have no knowledge on soldering or don't own soldering stations. I'd rather buy cables out right than spend the money on a station just to make a couple interconnects.
 

Matias

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I'd wager there's lots of people that have no knowledge on soldering or don't own soldering stations. I'd rather buy cables out right than spend the money on a station just to make a couple interconnects.
Story of my life there.
 

bkdc

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I'd wager there's lots of people that have no knowledge on soldering or don't own soldering stations. I'd rather buy cables out right than spend the money on a station just to make a couple interconnects.

no station needed. A 10 dollar iron, a wet scotchbrite scrub sponge to wipe the tip, some WBT solder and some outdoor space is all that’s needed. in college we had cheapo irons and would sit a wet sponge in a Petri dish to clean the tip. This is a world premier science and engineering institution. I bet nothing has changed. Freshmen probably solder cheap circuits for Physics 1b
 

Labjr

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I've built entire kits with a sub $10 soldering iron. My father built ham radio transceivers with less. I didn't get a soldering station until the 90's. Sort of like getting by with crank windows in your car until you become spoiled with a luxury model.
 
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Anecdotal example: I needed a couple coaxial leads. I could've bought a station and parts for around $60nzd, watched a few tutorials and done it myself.

Instead i contacted an installer, they made me two for $30 using canare cable and crimped rcas. Probably far better quality connection than the one's i would've ended up with if I'd done it myself.

If i was doing this every week it'd be worthwhile. Considering i have 5 cables that required soldering it's not worth it in my use case and i doubt I'm alone in this.
 

bkdc

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Yep, not worth your time. But I've repaired car problems, household appliance issues and made exact length cables for various things around the house through the years. The number of interconnects on a multi-channel home theater system and a house with multiple Roon endpoints with several DACs and a few other things aren't insigificant. The most useful thing I learned in high school was typing (keyboarding class before typing became a universal skill), and I think the most useful thing I learned in college was how to solder. LOL. I'm not an engineer but it was a mandatory core curriculum requirement for all students. It's a useful household skill which takes little investment.
 
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pseudoid

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I noticed that the monoprice and the fake cable both show arrows for direction of signal (source-to-load): Would that mean that these 2 cables only connect ground at one end of the cable run (I'd think on Source side) only?
I think I recall that one of the audio hardware [?] ASR tested had the XLR ground connection mangled up internal to the unit.

Some months ago, during a heat wave, I spent few cool hours in the garage with a DMM pinning-out all my XLR cables because of your February 2022 findings. << OCD, I know!:facepalm:

BTW: Sharpies fade over time when used for cable marking... Color coding the cables is okay but I've learned to use a labeler with to/from info at each cable end... for best longevity!
 
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Speedskater

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I noticed that the monoprice and the fake cable both show arrows for direction of signal (source-to-load):
Well all XLR interconnects are directional.
While connecting the shield at only the send end can reduce some problems (often caused by poor design of the receive end unit) the high frequency interference rejection is diminished. (so they add a radio frequency capacitor at the receive end). But in pro audio these cables can't be used as microphone cables (or for any battery powered units) so they need two sets of cables. Things are quickly getting complicated.
 

teashea

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Battle Of Budget XLR Cables

View attachment 189466

Hey folks,

I planned to post this for a while, but been a bit busy elsewhere these last few weeks... Here is a quick comparison between entry-level XLR cables, along with basic measurements to find out if some of them may bring any influence in the audible (or at least measurable) domain. Yeah, I know: that is common knowledge that each of the XLR cables should perform the same, right?... Yes, they should.;) Let's start with the four contenders:​

Canare L-4E6S/Neutrik
View attachment 189471
This is the classic Canare L-4E6S (Star-quad) assembled with Neutrik NC3-XX plugs by World Best Cables. It is an extremely widespread combination around the audio world, and sounds almost like the textbook XLR cable to me, for either performance or reliability. The pair costs 38$ at Amazon.com for ≈1M/3ft. Unfortunately, I had to import these for much more, since it is not available at Amazon EU anymore.​

Cordial CCM 1 FM
View attachment 189472
Second is the Cordial CCM 1FM (for 1 meter). It uses standard dual conductor configuration (2 X 0.22mm2) and Rean connectors. It is very well-built, solid and flexible, while having an unexciting and very professional look. It retails for 16.80€/pair.

Monoprice Premier Series
View attachment 189473
Next is another very popular budget XLR cable, the Monoprice Premier Series. It is recently available in EU (since Monoprice now has it own store here) for 23.98€/pair (1.8M). You see Monoprice put a lot of effort with their plugs design, making this cable looking much pricer than it really is. This one is also built with two conductors configuration, wrapped in a (very) thick sleeve. Too thick, actually. I found it overall lacks the flexibility you get from the Canare or Cordial, and the quite long connectors don't arrange things on this matter.​

AliExpress "Canare L-4E6S/Neutrik"
View attachment 189474
Last cable is somehow quite popular offering from AliExpress. This costed me only 11.24€ for the pair (0.5M). It is claimed to be "Canare L-4E6S" with "Neutrik plugs", which obviously isn't... The first time I touched it, I was stuck by how cheap the plugs felt. Well, there's actually no way Neutrik is making this thing. Surprisingly, the holding was OK. Since I was 100% sure the Neutrik plugs were fake, I could not resist to check if there was a "real" Canare cable under this sleeve and these (useless) ferrite cores...
View attachment 189475
View attachment 189476
"Canare L-4E6S"... Yeah. Sure. From now, I gonna call this one for what it is: "Fake Canare". I expected this considering the very low price and provenance. What I did not was to discover improper wiring with both cables. Pin 1 and 3 are inverted, with shield on Pin 3. We will see how this impacts measured performance...​


Measurements

Measurements you are about to see are performed with each pair of cables measured (8 runs each) from my Matrix Mini-i Pro 3 DAC to my E1DA Cosmos ADC. Software used are RMAA PRO and Multitone Analyzer from @pkane. All tests are running in 24bits / 44.1kHz.

RMAA Summary
Test
Canare L-4E6S Neutrik XLR
Fake Canare XLR
Cordial CCM XLR
Monoprice Premier Series XLR
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB
+0.01, -0.03​
+0.01, -0.02​
+0.01, -0.03​
+0.01, -0.03​
Noise level, dB (A)
-123.2​
-121.7​
-123.1​
-122.9​
Dynamic range, dB (A)
123.0​
121.4​
122.8​
122.7​
THD, %
0.00028​
0.00028​
0.00029​
0.00029​
IMD + Noise, %
0.00046​
0.00060
0.00046​
0.00046​
Stereo crosstalk, dB
-123.2​
-114.3
-123.2​
-122.7​

As you can see, there is little to no difference between all cables, apart from the Fake Canare. Let's see in details what is going on:

Frequency Response
View attachment 189459
No difference whatsoever...

Noise level
View attachment 189460
The Fake Canare showed constant and repeatable 50Hz hum and overall more noise at almost all frequencies. No doubt this is related to improper wiring, since just every other cables measure the same each others. I removed the ferrite cores in case they could have any influence here. They did not. Needless to say, this noise behaviour does also appear in graphs below:

THD + Noise (-3dBFS)
View attachment 189461

Dynamic Range
View attachment 189464

Intermodulation distortion (swept tones)
View attachment 189492

Intermodulation distortion + Noise
View attachment 189493
Swept frequency test showed no difference, while IMD+N revealed some unexpected peak at 15kHz.
Crosstalk
View attachment 189494
Unsurprisingly, every cable performed the same but the Fake Canare, again...​


Multitone Analyzer (100 tones, 5 averages)
Canare L-4E6S
View attachment 189563

Cordial CCM
View attachment 189565

Monoprice Premier Series
View attachment 189566

Fake CanareView attachment 189592


Not much else to say. You get basically the same performance from either cable. Despite its issues with noise, the Fake Canare did not fail to produce some decent multitone score, when this is related to distortion.​


Noise immunity


View attachment 189591

Last bunch of tests I ran was done in intend to demonstrate the efficiency of XLR shielding and noise rejection abilities. To do so, I imagined some extreme case scenario where each pair of cables was stuck together to a (running) wireless charger. Let see what happens when measuring noise under these circumstances :​

Noise level
View attachment 189587
Same story. I see no real advantage for the Canare using Star Quad, by the way (edit). Every cable do have a properly working shield... except for the one being wrongly wired. Note that noise is significantly worse by several dB than in the regular test above. Please also consider that was the best case scenario measured for the Fake Canare. Could it be worse than this? Yes it can:​

View attachment 189588
I hesitated to post this, since I cannot figure out what the heck is going on here. I have no clue if my measurements rig captured either a ground loop or what seems to be some 1kHz tone (?)... Yet, this phenomenon appeared in three test results over a run of 8 tests... and only with the Fake Canare.

Conclusions
In a nutshell: As expected, in theory and in practice, yes, all XLR cables measure (then sound;)) the same. But that only stands when considering they should all be properly wired and assembled. In (hopefully) very rare cases, some are not. Whatever the Canare, the Cordial or the Monoprice showed essentially (+-0.5dB) the same measured performance in all tests. They also proved to have a very efficient shield and noise rejection, with some of the worst situation I could imagine under domestic usage.

I give my easy recommendation for each, and will keep the Canare L-4E6S as a reference for measurements, as I already use a 8ft pair for my main active system. About the Fake Canare, that is an easy case : you should not buy something that is not what it is advertised to begin with. In addition, while I cannot guaranty its noise issues to be any kind of "audible", it dramatically failed the noise immunity test anyway. Spend a few more €/$ and simply get the much better Cordial CCM.​
Nicely done. Thanks
 
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