All XLRs are created equal?

[jasedee]

Definately NOT

I had ordered some Neutrik XLR's and TRS jacks a while ago, and whilst waiting for the order I went to a local "Budget" electronics store to buy some XLRs to knock up a couple cables I needed straight away, at least until the Neutriks came.....

Anyways, I ended up grabbing a couple of Amphenol male XLRs, obscenely cheap, but Amphenol do have a good reputation for tough connectors, so I thought they would be fine.

I was doing some mastering of some tracks the last few days, and noticed that my balancing was alot louder in the left speaker than in the right. The waveforms looked pretty even, but I figured something must be wrong, so I took one side of the wave and reduced the gain so everything was balanced. After playing back some other material, I noticed the same in-balance happening, so decided to investigate, and after running some pink noise into each speaker, I noticed one was putting out about -6dB SPL less than the other.

"SHIT!!! My monitors are fucked" I thought......wait, maybe one of my cables is bad. So I do some tests, and deduce that indeed one cable is screwy. After replacing the dud, and playing some music through the speakers, I notice the problem is still there.

So back I go, pink noise through the speakers, SPL meter in my hand, and one of the monitors is playing back at -4dB less than the other!!!!

"SHIT!!! My monitors must be fucked" I thought......but after doing more tests, I again traced the fault to the cable with Amphenol XLR on one end. After then inspecting the Amphenol XLR's pins, I notice they are made of some really shitty, not-quite-metal Metal?????? It almost felt plastic!!!!

I immediately chopped off the XLRs and binned them, replaced the dud with another cable, and BINGO.....my mixes are perfectly balanced

Anyways....a long story I know, but something we should all keep in mind.

Dont buy shithouse connectors and cable!!!! (I learnt my lesson)