I got a 6 ft silver pair (XLR > XLR) from requisite audio $270 (still in the return window):
Then there’s a $35 gotham wbc one that was recommended to me from people on a headphones.com forum (~$40):
Which one is prettier?
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I’ve only seen the raal one in person. It’s not strikingly nice (compared to what the amazon one seems to looks like) lol
I wasn’t sure if line cables were like amp to headphone cables in that the consensus seems to be that you’re not paying for performance but aesthetics (?)
Signal cables make a hell of a lot less difference than speaker cables. You may be able to tell differences really high up the scale equipment wise but different doesn’t necessarily mean better. So if you buy for the bling that’s probably a better reason than buying because you expect better sound.
I found a pair of Kimber Kable 1 meter long on eBay for $125 but I was perfectly happy with my home build Canare cable and Neutrik connector home made cables ($20 dollars in parts) I’d been using that are about the same quality as those Gotham World’s Best you got there.
As much as I do believe cables matter to some degree, XLR cables not so much. Professionals buy expensive ones because the lifetime warranties mean “you’re paying for this cable so it won’t break suddenly and ruin everything you’re doing”. Past that, whatever.
I’d probably go with Hosa, tbh. But WBC with Mogami or whatever good cable is good.
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The requisite audio cable I was considering keeping only has a 5 year warranty. The WBC seems to have 10.
What price range do you have to go in to get lifetime warranty (not that I necessarily want that. Just another factor to consider)?
Unless you’re plugging/unplugging these cables very often, like everyday, and rely of them to make money the warranty doesn’t really matter. Again, professionals like bands or producers. Like Mogami cables have a lifetime warranty–meaning the purchaser’s life, if anything would happen, they’d replace it period.
If this is home use and you don’t touch them much, whatever. I’ve NEVER had a cable fail on me outside a professional environment like a club–they used Hosa.
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It kinda depends on what manufacturer, cable quality and properties and length of course.
You can have something like 3M XLR, 3m/10ft cable with Lifetime Warranty 24$.
Or something like AudioKraft, 10$.
Think Cordial also has the same warranty. They in the 20$ range and so on.
Going in with more cable quality and like Mogami cables. You close at 50$.
Things start going really over top the with Monster, StudioPro cables 65$.
Selecting any cable from any manufacturer. Please read the “Lifetime Warranty” part very carefully. So there wont be any issues if there are issues. They might be different and might only be for Model xx in series xxx cable.
I had an old no-name xlr separate on me. Threw those away. Went with mogami gold XLR cables for 90% of my stuff and happy. As @db_Cooper says, speaker cable and maybe power is where you may hear a difference if your stuff is good enough. RCA and XLR should be well built shielded where necessary but beyond that i have yet to hear a difference even in my Pride and joy high end $30K+ system…
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I’ve had a couple of no-name cables with no real issues aside from noise pickup, never any connectivity issues or cable breakage. However since I’ve swapped to XLR mic interfaces since about a year back, I’ve taken more care into getting properly shielded cables.
I used to run a pair of Mogami cables between my old Harmony Design amp and dac, but then those cables went to the stereo. After upgrading the old Harmony Design stack and replacing my SMSL one, I decided to get another pair of Mogami cables because I had noticed interference with the interface (Yamaha AG03) or on the SMSL SP200. After replacing the second set with Mogami’s, all my issues are gone.
Sound quality was the same on both of them, so it’s purely been out of a noise isolation perspective for me since I have a lot of cables running around the desk. They do their job and they do it well without having to cost an arm and a leg like some “hifi” brands.