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I've been using balanced equipment exclusively for some time, I went this route almost by accident, having purchased the Pro-Ject Box RS gear, which favors balanced hook up. I recently upgraded most of my equipment, a bit at a time, staying with balanced, so each piece would work with the rest of my gear, at any given point in the upgrade process. I'm now looking at which reasonably priced interconnect leads will get the most out of this new gear. Up until this point, I've been using Klotz MC5000, which I've been fairly happy with.

I'll start by saying I don't believe in spending massively in this area, my speaker cables are Van Damme 6mm sq HiFi for Bass and Atlas Hyper 2 for mids/Twtr, neither of which could be described as exotic.

A lot has been made recently of Oli's (Bigman80) new Spotfire IC cable, when compared to the likes of Klotz MC5000 and Sommer Carbokab. These comparisons have been made with the cables made up as single ended interconnects, with KLE Harmony “bullet” RCA plugs or similar.
These were all originally designed as balanced microphone/interconnect cables. It will be interesting to compare some of them in this guise, within my balanced set up and see if they rate the same as when used single ended.

Connectors used: Neutrik NC3MXX-B/NC3FXX-B XLR. These plugs have gold flashed pins and meet the AES/EBU digital standard for connectors. They are by no means high end, at less than £5 each, but are well made and meet a high specification, my XLR of choice in all applications.

The price indicator below (in brackets), is approximate for a DIY 1.5m pair, using the Neutrik XLR's. The 1.5m Spotfire pair was purchased ready made from Oli, using the same Neutrik XLR plugs.

The cables up for review are:

Klotz MC5000 (£26)

Mogami 2549 (£28)

Sommer Carbokab 225 (£35)

Spotfire IC (£140)



The object of the exercise, is to compare these three major players at the budget end of balanced cabling and also see if spending a bit more on the Spotfire brings improvements. As always, my choice of equipment and its environment will effect the results, so YMMV. Some have expressed the opinion that the differences between balanced leads may not be as large as for single ended, we will have to see.

The cables were all made into 1.5m length interconnect pairs, using the Neutrik XLR's mentioned above. The cables will be inserted between my Pre Amp (PS Audio Stellar GCD) and Active crossover (DIY Rod Elliott), which feeds 4 channels of Nord NC500 Class D Power Amp, via Van Damme Classic XKE Microphone Cable. The semi-active speakers are modified Yamaha NS1000m, that use 12” Scanspeak bass drivers in place of the stock Yamaha drivers. These give deeper bass from a similar volume sealed box, in room, measure flat to 32Hz, f3 at 29Hz. The system is very detailed with a silent as the grave background, so any differences should be apparent.

All equipment has had 300+ Hours use and all cables will have had 100+ hours use before testing takes place.

Note:
I'd intended doing the comparison in a week or so after the last cable acquired (Spotfire) had 100 hours use, the same as the others. But Darren (DarrenHW) and his brother Luke were visiting me today, picking up an Amplifier. Now even though the spotfire has had only 25 hours use at this point, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss, so we had a mini session to compare the cables. Another more extensive testing will be done at a later date, so this is just a first impression, but we all seemed to agree on the merits of each, which were not night and day differences. Feel free to jump in Darren if you disagree with any of my observations.

A). Klotz MC-5000
Warmer mid range and upper bass than the others, but the least transparent, almost muddy in a direct A-B comparison.

B). Mogami 2549
The most transparent, well defined clean deep Bass, top end maybe too evident on some tracks. Can be stunning with the right material.

C). Sommer Carbokab 225
Not as Transparent as the Mogami, sound stage bit shut in, voices further back in the mix compared with others. Good top end, a touch better than Mogami in this respect.

D). Spotfire IC
Highest level of detail, especially mid range, which has a nice warmth, but not as rich or smeared as the Klotz, almost as transparent as the Mogami, solid Bass, no stand out deficiency across the frequency range. An easy listen.

So on that basis we unanimously rated them in this order:

1). Spotfire

2). Mogami (very close second)

3). Sommer

4). Klotz – The other three were a step up.

So while not dramatic, the differences between these cables, in a balanced set up, was noticeable. We ran the Mogami/Spotfire again head to head, with Darren and Luke not knowing which was playing and they both preferred the Spotfire. It will be interesting to see if the Spotfire improves further beyond its 25 hours usage, Oli suggested a min 30 hours use.

I'll run some more comparisons with local participants once the Spotfire clocks up 100 hours and see if the results tally. I picked 100 hours as a decent amount of time, to prevent the nay sayers pronouncing one or other cable hadn't run in enough to perform at its best. Please bear in mind, our findings on the day were for balanced use, with my gear, in my room, so your experience could differ.

Looks like its a thumbs up for the Spotfire Oli.
However, at this point, with only a small performance difference between it and the Mogami, it's debatable whether the significant extra cost can be justified.
I will wait for the 100 hour test before calling that one. (Local volunteers please).