Long XLR cables - DIY construction suggestions?

Search this site and you'll find Doug Schroeder's suggested cable type.  I experimented with them and found them to sound better than my expensive silver high priced spread.  Read all the posts and then decide for yourself, however, I am very pleased with the outcome.   I got them from AudioSensibility in Canada.  They aren't expensive, but they sound great in my system.  I have an all Ayre system run completely balanced.

There are no nice sounding DIY designs.

If there were then I know exactly the guy who would have them. He’s spent the better part of 40 years building all kinds of interconnects, speaker cables, and power cords. He’s built every design out there. He’s torn apart and copied enough big money name brand wire to do ten systems five times over.

He has yet to build anything even close to the first cheap (under $200) interconnects and power cords I was buying 20 years ago.

Its a complicated subject made even more difficult by there being so many poorly made yet professionally designed and very expensive products out there. But the reality is that whatever time and money you have to put into it will be much better spent auditioning (not asking, not reading, but listening) and then spending whatever you planned on spending anyway on whatever you find sounds best.

That's based not only on the scores of tries he made, but everyone else I know, including a few times I let myself get deluded enough to think I’d found the answer.

The one exception is if instead of being focused on obtaining the best sound for the money what you really want is to be able to say you made it yourself. In that case, as Rosanne Rosanna-Danna used to say, "Oh. Well, that’s different then. Never mind!"

Its helpful if your equipment supports the Balanced Line Standard (AES48). In this regard probably the most salient point is that whatever is driving the interconnect cable does not put any signal current through the shield (pin 1) of the interconnect cable. IOW it is for shielding only.

We use Mogami Neglex studio cable, with Neutrix connectors. It works great! But our gear supports the standard.

Whatever you do don't connect the ground tab of the XLR connector to pin 1 (which is the shield connection)!

@gera If you like the 18' BBQ Audio Duelund ICs, why not have Bill build you 40' cables? They're going to cost a few bucks but a whole lot less than anything else, and will sound just as good. 

Those cables, by the way, for me rebut what millercarbon wrote. I have put them head to head with AQ Fire interconnects and K2 speaker wires. Like Bill says, the AQ cables sound different but not better. 

@ atmasphere, so is this the proper way of wiring the XLR cable?
https://www.belcom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/StarQuad-Wiring-2.png

Also, is the shield needed at all for home use?

Parts Connexion has a lot of choices for cable in bulk lengths.

I would recommend the solid silver but they are brittle, probably too risky to use in that length.

https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/balancedaudio/index.htm

Not worth the effort - buy professionally terminated,  inexpensive high quality cable at Blue Jeans Cable.


Good Listening

Peter 

+1 for Blue Jeans balanced cables. Have them connecting PS Audio Gain Cell DAC to M700 monoblocks. Perfect.

Anyone have exprerience with DNM cables in xlr configuration? Interesting that they use no shield. 

DNM do XLR? I've heard their speaker cable and RCA interconnects. They used solid core conductors separated across plastic ribbon, so won't be very flexible. They didn't sound at all good to my ears, just muddy and veiled, though they're meant to be popular with people that own DNM gear for a claimed PRaT....