Newsgroups: rec.audio.tech
Subject: Re: RCA vs. XLR
References: 
"Jade"  writes:

> Hi there. I was just wondering what made XLR terminated cables cost so much
> more than RCA terminated ones. Is there a difference in terms of connection
> or sound quality?


Mechanically, the XLR connectors are much more complicated. 
XLR connectors are designed to be mechanically reliable 
and last for long time. 

The RCA connector was originally designed to be a very 
inexpensive connector, consisting just one center pin, 
one small piece of sheet metal and a piece of plastic. 
This is a very simple and inexpensive to manufacturer connector. 
The good features of it end there...

Genenrally the XLR connector is very much more expensive 
than RCA connectors. XLR costs 2-3 euros/dollars 
in electronics shop while you can get several 
cheapest RCA connectors for one dollar/europ in 
local electronics shop (prices ar chaper when 
manufacturers buy thousands of connectors).

The material and construction of XLR cable are more 
expensive. Usually the XLR cables are made for professional 
market, where reliabity and other fetures count more 
than the cheapest possible price (if the cable gets 
broken or is otherwise bad, the cost caused by this are  
easily huge). The XLR cables are made in smaller 
production volumes than cheapr consumer RCA cables, 
which also brings up the price..

RCA cables are mostly sold for consumer markets, which 
are constantly looking for cheaper and cheaper products. 
Typical basic RCA cables are made of cheapest possible
parts that just do the job in place where the cables 
are cheapest to make...and those are made in huge volumes.. 
thus the low price.

And then wome words about the sound quality. As such using 
RCA cable or XLR cable for audio transmission should not 
have any difference in sound quality, at least when 
transmission distances are small and there are too much 
noise around. The XLR cables combined with equipment 
with XLR connectors (balanced audio interfaces) 
together make an audio transmission system that is 
very considerable more resistant to outside interference 
(huming noise, RFI etc..) and is capable to transporting 
audio signals without considerable degration for long 
distances (tens of meters to hundreds of meters no 
problems, thing that does not work well with normal 
consumer equipment with RCA interfaces well). 

-- 
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at 
http://www.epanorama.net/