XLR-Balanced Hybrid Hi-End Cable

I feel my balanced Clear Day and WyWires cables are superior to my Canare with Neutrix XLRs. I use Canare on stage because it's flexible, durable and when I have 100ft of it or so on my kit alone it's affordable as a mic cable. I've used my Canare's on my home system and they sound just fine but they're not as open as my main cables, but soft and too polite; I actually prefer my Clear Day single ended cables over the balanced Canare's at home. Blows my mind when people say all balanced cables sound the same. I've made plenty of my own balanced cables with no shield such as the three braid Kimber's with various conductors and there is a difference in my opinion on how they sound. Maybe the gear I use is poorly designed so cables do make a difference...  I do agree the gap between balanced cables seems less than single ended cables and the geometry of a cable has a lot more to do with its signature than the material of the conductor alone. 

How’s the bass on the balanced Canare’s, adg? For subwoofer use, for instance.

The Canare is a good cable. It's a little soft to my ears so if one has a bright system it would be ideal. I think the bass is fine and use it on my kick drum and all the mic's on my kit. Really the big thing that jumps out to me when I threw them on my system is it's a polite cable, but musical. I think it would be fine on a sub and the stuff is vey affordable, comes in a wide range of colors and is extremely flexible. It's definitely not a bright fatigueing cable. The Canare digital cable is decent too.

adg....I second ClearDay  (They're silver, but don't let that scare you)  Clear Day will send you a pair for evaluation no charge. Canare is not in the same league.

Ah ha, adg---a drummer. So you carry your own mics and mixer with you to gigs? That's a great way to get the balance you want. Most sound guys put the snare drum way too loud in the mix for my tastes. But then I usually play a brass-shell (Ludwig Black Beauty) live, a pretty loud drum. It doesn't need any boost, it's got lots of presence.