Congratulations on the D130 purchase. Should serve you well.

You can save a lot of $$ by buying good quality Belden or Cardas balanced
line/mic cables from a pro audio supply house. Balanced cables are a lot
less idiosyncratic than single end, and these should work very well. I have
used them with my pro gear in years past.

"David Finton" wrote in message
news:heq%b.418273$na.808553@attbi_s04...
Are there any good balanced (XLR) interconnects for under $100??

I found a used Audio Research D130 power amp for my Audio Research LS3b
line-stage, and I'm looking forward to some serious tunage. One of the
features of these two components is that they're designed for a balanced
(XLR) connection between the preamp and the power amp. It makes sense
to me that this might be the best way of connecting these particular
components, since they were designed to be put together this way.

So I'm looking for recommendations. I don't have a lot of money to throw
around on wire, and I'm pretty skeptical about cable claims. And a lot
of the balanced interconnects are already half what I paid for the preamp.
A friend recommended Nordost, and I'm considering their Black Knight
interconnect. I'm wondering what to make of their claims. They give the
capacitance (8.6pF/ft), inductance (0.13uH/ft), and propagation speed
(91% speed of light). How significant are these figures, and how good
are these values?

They also claim that lack of shielding is a feature (less capacitance),
and not a problem:

----
The use of flat cable geometry coupled with very precise conductor
spacing alleviates the need for conventional shielding. In addition, the
use of extruded Teflon provides better shielding than conventional
insulation techniques. Nordost cables are not shielded because shielding
increases the capitance of the cable by a factor of 55% or more when
applied in the conventional manner. If the capacitance of the cable is
increased high frequency information is rolled of and you don't hear all
of the musical information.
----

This surprises me. I would think that shielding would be important in
back of my audio cabinet, where these guys would be hanging out with
all the other interconnects, speaker cables, TV coax, and power cords.

Thanks,

David Finton