when you order these From ZMF, they come terminated any of five ways and you choose at check-out. If you’re buying them secondhand you’ll have to ask. When you buy them from ZMF,You can also order a second cable terminated differently. Or, you can always buy a cable from a third-party
Thanks for the response. So just to clarify, the factor that determines whether the stock Auteur cable is balanced or single ended is solely how it is terminated? I wasn't sure if there was some other characteristic of the cable further up that determined that. This question is probably as dumb as it sounds, but I don't know the answer yet.
One more followup question: Say I get the stock Auteur cable terminated in XLR. If I also bought one of the ZMF cable adapters that went from 1/4" (amp side) to XLR (stock cable side), would this have the same sound quality as if I terminated the stock cable in 1/4"? Basically, I'm wondering if the adapter would degrade the audio quality in any way vs a native 1/4" stock cable.
My goal is to use the stock cable and purchase 1 adapter, then use some combination of those in my Magni, but also have the option of getting a balanced output in the future from something else. If the adapter will introduce some quality degradation, I'll probably upgrade to a balanced amp first.