I have the Outlaw PCA cables installed from my 990 to 7125. No doubt the connection is secure however the outer barrel Gonk refers to does make it very tight between connection points. I wish there was little more room here. Minor complaint.

Cables:

I suggest going to www.partsexpress.com and looking up Dayton Audio cables. I ordered an entire replacement set of interconnects (S-Video, 7.1 including sub connections, DVDA connections, etc.) for $150 shipped. The build quality is quite excellent, and they have been received positively by numerous users (just look at www.avsforum.com).

Also, www.partsexpress.com has a 45 day return policy... and offers both balanced and unbalanced, etc.

I went the Dayton Audio route and haven't looked back. Nice build quality, come in 3ft lengths, etc.

Just my 2 cents.

--TDA

With todays design technologies applied to interconnects. I feel the choice to use balanced and unbalanced would be a personal and an application choice. In pro gear I could easily see the need. Long runs and the power used. That having a connetion come loose would be a liability issue. But for home use. If one starts with a quality designed cable the concern is mute. Also as more processing that is offered in todays Rec/Pre-pros. I could only imagine how large the chasis would be and the cost passed onto the consumer. I've looked at alot of displayers at the CES show. And very few use Balanced connection. Just my opinion.

I have used MIT cables for over 10 years.
They are top quality and go from moderate prices to thousands of $$$.
I have used their T2 (now know as AVT) line, and also the
MI-330 (now known as Shotgun.
If you need XLR, look at the AVT Proline.
http://www.mitcables.com

Another good place to check is http://www.BlueJeansCables.com

I really like the Canare RCA connectors that they use for their RCA audio and video cables. Industrial strength stuff that makes a very solid connection to the terminal but isn't ridiculous to pull off like some of the MIT or Monster stuff can be.

I've had good results with their S-Video, speaker and digital coax cables.

Their prices are very reasonable, they offer 30 day trial and all cables are handcut and terminated to your specific length requirements.

They also offer balanced interconnects if you want to go that route. If you are at all worried about ground-loop hum or other noise introduced from crosstalk between interconnects, powercables and other sources, and you have balanced connectors on your amps and preamp, then go ahead and use balanced interconnects...otherwise use unbalanced.

For further reference, I currently use an unbalanced interconnect bundle from Monstercable to go from the preamp to the amp and have ZERO problems with noise.

MIT cables. 8-)

Perhaps I could interest any purchasers of Oracle cables in a set of Clever Little Clocks. An extra $300 is statistical noise compared to the cost of these cables. I'll never quite understand MIT's stance of intentionally injecting distortion into the signal of their cables in the hope of using it as a crude tone control.

I'm glad they're working for you, but I find them to be very expensive and of questionable value since they are designed to "change the signal" they are carrying...ostensibly for the better.

Interconnect and speaker cabling, in spite of what the high end cable hucksters will tell you, is not rocket science. You can even make cabling yourself that rivals some of the best stuff out there for a fraction of the cost. But some of the value producers like Outlaw, Blue Jean Cable, Dayton, etc are perfectly adequate. If you saw the differences between a $5 Walmart cable, a mid-range cable from Outlaw/BlueJean/Dayton/etc, and something from one of the Bentley-esque brands on a scope, I suspect a lot more people would be shopping at Walmart. 8-)

Cheers,

"You can even make cabling yourself that rivals some of the best stuff out there for a fraction of the cost": As I stated somewhere else in this Saloon, I've made stereo interconnects with less than $20 worth of materials that were nearly indistinguishable from Cardas $700 stuff, at least in the testing conditions I listened under. All you need is an appropriate length of 4-conductor phone cord, a knife to cut off the outer insulation, a stripper of the simplest type (or just the knife again) to cut off the insulation on each individual conductor, 4 of the cheapest RS phono plugs, the cheapest pencil tip soldering iron, solder, and about a half hour's time. The only reason I don't use the home-made stuff for all the audio interconnects in my system except the XLRs from the 990 to the amplifiers is that I had a bunch of other interconnects already.
BTW, could one make a good video component cable from 6-conductor phone wire and 3 pairs of phone plugs in the same way? Vistas of economy are opening up here . . .

Having not yet decided to trigger on more expensive cables, and, having been blown away with sound improvement using at first 755 and then when I chagned deployment around the 7700, I have not done a "shootout".

That said I can only tell you that the cables I bought from www.totalsignal.com are excellent. That's not to say that outlaw or other high-end cables aren't better, but at least for now I'd rather save on cables and put the $$.cc into gear.

My .02

I wouldn't recommend using phone wire for video cable. Instead buy Cat 5 cable from Frys or wherever.

Phone cable is typically Cat 3, which is not twisted pair strands and Cat 5 is twisted pair. Should make a difference for video that is much higher bandwidth than audio, but will probably also make a difference with audio as well as the twisted pairs help to eliminate crosstalk and other types of interference.

I wouldn't recommend making your own video cables, however, unless you have access to Canare connectors and your own termination kit. Stuff from BlueJeansCable.com is really solid, works great and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

As you can tell, I'm pretty much totally sold on their stuff and their way of doing business. All cables are hand cut to specification and hand terminated with industrial quality connectors. Only cable types they don't offer are fiber optic.

Some of the other cable manufacturers offer decent cables as well, but the Canare RCA connectors are seriously like butta, seriously.

My $.02

Yep, I've been sold on canare cables/connectors since my studio days. I only bought the Outlaw cables on a lark to see what they looked like and then decided to use them rather than roll some more cables for myself and waste resources.

Cheers,