Any suggestions please for an XLR-XLR cable? Dealer is keen on the TQ Ultra Black or plain Black but, tbh, I’m wondering if there is anything at the poorer-mans end of the market I don’t mind a couple of hundred quid but the TQ offerings are c. £400-£600. I don’t want to spoil the spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar but if there was something as good but half the price…
Thanks
What pre-amp, what power-amp? Particularly balanced or unbalanced, single channel or stereo cables?
I use Mogami 2549 XLR’s from HHB for balanced connection , they’re excellent value . Otherwise I’d look at Canare which is pretty much the same level . Mark Grant does a XLR-XLR using Canare cable and Gold Neutrik connectors , it looks like a bargain and his cables are very well made in my experience.
Mogami are hard to beat at the price-to-quality ratio.
Just contact a local Mogami dealer - they may even make them up to a required length.
Mogami are essentially focued on a pro-audio market, where durablity and quality are paramount. If you go for their Reference range, you’d be getting a wonderful interconnect for a 1/10th of a price of TQ.
Balanced, single channel.
I’d read about Mogami cables and also Gotham. Gotham have to come from Switzaland though which puts the price up… shipping and then the post office handling the VAT when it gets to the UK (twelve quid ISTR).
I was already on the way to trying out Mogami 2534 but I hadn’t heard about Canare. HHB don’t seem to have the 2549 cable on their site but Mike Hill Services have them. Is 2549 better than 2534? tbh the few comparisons I’ve read seem to suggest there’s not much between the two but the 2534 is a quad design and the 2549 is 2 core with conductor. My gut feeling is the quad design is better but I’m open to being educated.
So the recommendations/choices are:
Mogami 2534 @ £65 a pair from HHB
Mogami 2549 @ £39 a pair from Mike Hills
Canare L4E6S @ £104 a pair from Mark Grant
Am I wrong to jump to the conclusion that the Canare are the best because they cost the most? I’m also tempted to go for the Canare purely because Mark Grant simply sounds like a nice company and I’m all for helping the little guy out and it sounds like he cares more about his products.
You will need Mogami 2534 quad-core to run a balanced signal, with additional shielding.
Price is not an indication of quality in this case 
I could never find 2549 on their site either but they have it . Best to call them , they’re a really helpful professional company . I live very nearby to HHB so picked up my cables for £68 with Gold Neutrik connectors .
I use a Benchmark DAC and they make their own XLR cables to exactly the same spec as Mark Grant’s .
In terms of Mogami Adam , the 2534 has better shielding but I was always advised on the 2549 for balanced Audio into Active ATC’s .
I’ve not tried the Canare, but the cost of the cable itself is almost identical to the Mogami W2534 and they have similar reputations.
I have compared Mogami W2549 and W2534, and there was little difference between them; however I was also comparing different cable build techniques, so for your use, the precise detailed results of my comparison aren’t so useful. In essence though both cables are same quality, just optimised for different use / environments.
You don’t need the quad star arrangement for single channel balanced connections unless you are running in a extremely electrically noisy environment or you are planning to use cables of more than 10M or so in length. For HiFi and normal studio interconnect leads 2534 offers no significant advantage over 2549, and is physically less robust at the connectors (it’s also a bit of a pain to work with hence there’s higher assembly costs!).
If you can run single channel unbalanced connections (why do you need balanced in a domestic setting?), then Mogami W2497 is significantly better than any of the cables you mention.
Thanks for all the suggestions. A pair of Mogami interconnects now on order with HHB. At the moment I have some loan TQ Blacks there… it’ll be interesting to see if I can hear the difference,
Well the Mogami cables arrived yesterday so I fitting last night and gave them a quick spin… first impressions are just as good as the TQ Blacks (which are over 5 times the price) but I need to do some less hurried, proper, back-to-back testing. They seem to be sounding great but more testing… I know the AD is getting some of the new TQ Black Ultras in (new design due in about 2 weeks time) and he wants me to try them but we’re nudging £600 then!
Looking forward to see how you like them after a run-in period.
Grimm audio tpr xlr seems to be also verry Good and not expensive.
what pre - power are you hooking up ?
The Mogami are sounding really good. If I was tbh I can’t really hear any difference between them and the TQ Black. I have the Ultra Blacks in their box, never tried, reason is I’m doing a shake up which means I’ll be using RCA not XLR! I know… what a waste of time!
Going bi-amp but using XLR for input drops the signal by 6dB (75% drop). Don’t know why but bi-amping means you have to use RCA.
ATC…
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