As I stated earlier, I bought a 886 and I am retiring my 990. I have run into an issue with the balanced connections to my 7500 amp. In my current configuration I am right at the very limits of the cable lengths that I have. So I have two options, either I buy the .5m cable extensions that outlaw has or I buy new cables at the correct length and sell the old ones. Any opinions? Anybody think there will be any SQ loss using the extension?

If I go with new cables, has anyone here used the Blue Jeans Cable balanced cables? They are quite affordable. In fact I can get a set of 5 8'XLR cables for about 1/2 the Outlaw price for the 2.5M cables. Of course the extensions would be the cheapest route, but I am concerned about adding another connection in the signal path.

Thank You in advance for your input.

Adding an extra interconnect on the cabling will always result in more insertion loss than just straight cables and adds the potential for other problems related to having a bad connection.

However 8' is not a long run for XLR so I doubt you'd really notice any degradation if you go with the extension.

can anyone tell me the difference between the outlaw xlr interconnect cables and the xlr cables i can get on monoprice.com (for much less). i cant find a difference except that the outlaw is "commercial grade" and the monoprice are "heavy duty" but monoprices come in a larger selection of lengths and colors. is there a difference in quality that comes with gauge? will i need a larger gauge depending on the wattage? monoprices are 16awg.

Yeah, about $110 per pair. Check out Blue Jeans cable too. I have the Monoprice cables and they are pretty good. They are cheap but very functional.

I once read an article in one of my nerd magazines about a study where they took a standard reel of wire, made a bunch of HDMI cables, all of the same length, and measured them. The measurements showed that the cables varied by as much as 6 dB! Note that theses cables where made at a production house, NOT hand assembled, so what they were seeing was normal production variation.

You can control this variation by adding cost to the process or cost to the material. For example, you might make a bunch of cables, measure them and throw out the one that don't meet your specifications. This is costly in both time (to measure) and material (scrap), but it can be done.

So my expectation would be that if you spend big bucks for cables you are getting high quality components with very tight performance variation. Then you can start arguing about whether or not you can actually hear the difference that these cables make. Or whether your money is better spent on bigger issues somewhere else in your system. Where's the best bang for the buck?

I agree with your expectation that higher price means higher quality but too often in this business it just means better snake oil. Fans of audio all over the world want the best they can afford and the companies take advantage of that need. I would buy the cheaper cables and LISTEN to the system to hear if I could detect any difference between the XLR cables and the RCA cables and if I didn't I would say the XLR cables are just fine and I saved a bunch of green. I can't tell you if it made a differnce in my system because I changed everything at the same time I went to the XLR cables. I certainly did not hear a difference in sound which was detrimental. Spending $60 on a set of cables is pretty cheap compared to the alternatives.

2wice now I have returned spendy cables because I could hear no audible improvement. Make sure you know a return policy before you buy and then do some comparisons.

I have also ditched 2 pair of DIY cables because they sounded terrible. It goes both ways IME.