Some testing with only a resistor (most critical component) here: 3-wire Amazon addressable LED cable testing
Basically, if you pick the wire carefully and choose the right resistor value, you can do 10s of meters with good signal quality. But its tricky, you either need to use something like ethernet where you know the impedance exactly or else swap out resistors until you get it to work. The nice thing about a level shifter is that it gives you more headroom for bad wiring or a slightly off resistor.