Balanced cables

Yes and no..Yes only if the signal path circuit is intentionally designed  by the engineer in an amp or preamp to be wired better to the XLR than the RCA connector. I read an article about ten years ago of an interview with James H. Cannon, the inventor of the XLR connector. Shortly after he added a lock on the three pin connector he passed away in 1950. I believe the interview was in 1949. He was asked in the interview if his XLR connector results in better sound than the RCA connector which was invented by RCA around 1942. He said "No..thats not the reason why I invented the connector". He explained it was only designed for better grounding with the ground pin to eliminate feedback when your running very long lengths beyond 20 feet to a hundred feet or more. He continued saying that if you have short lengths below 20 feet there is no feedback using an RCA to interfere with the signal and no difference in sound quality. Beware of snake oil.

elizabeth-that is partly true but only to the extent on how the high end component for in home use is designed. As I already stated a designer of amps and pre-amps can intentionally wire the signal path to an XLR to make it sound better than the RCA outputs, done for the purpose if one plans to do long cable runs in home beyond 25 feet. David Belles, who designs some of the finest solid state and tube pre-amplifiers in the world, does not use any XLR inputs or outputs on the back of his solid state or tube preamps, and they are quiet as a tomb. You will find single ended XLR inputs on the back of his top amps next to an RCA input only for the purpose of using the amp for very long cables in large environments. An XLR connector is just a connector, thats all. Its not a buffer or a processor and has nothing to whatsoever effecting the music signal. Its only function is to ground noise
feedback in a cable. It reminds me of the snake oil of many speaker companies selling models with three sets of binding post on their full range models. Even Spendor, my favorite British speaker company laughs at that nonsense as well, all their models, including their top flagship model, the D-9 uses only single pairs of binding posts.

BTW-There is no such thing as a "balanced cable". That term implies that an XLR/Cannon connector was only designed to be used with fully balanced left/right channel audio components which is very misleading and completely false. There are solid state components that are fully balanced with both RCA and XLR connector's. The inventor of the XLR never used the term "balanced" for his connector. When the very first stereo receiver was invented by Sydney Harman in the 1950's, the Festival 1000, it was a fully balanced design in twin cabinets with the left channel in one cabinet and the right in the other. with a control panel on the front of each unit. A classic dual mono design. The unit had RCA connector's only. The term "balanced" was a label put on XLR cables by Audiophiles in the 80's. You can label an RCA cable as well as a "balanced cable" if its used between fully balanced components. 

jerroldls-Well said...

dlcockrum-no offense. I'm sure your familiar with, as most Audiophile's, of gain levels in components. I simply was applying common sense. Wire is wire, and all it does is transfer music signal. Its how the component is configured to the outputs by the designer where the circuit design and gain levels can sound better at one output over another regardless of the cable.

dlcockrum-Went to the Ayre website to check the gain specs on the Ayre preamps. Its very common that companies making preamps with both single ended and XLR outputs will adjust the gain higher to the XLR and lower to the single ended outputs. The Ayre KX-5 has a maximum of only 4 db's to the single ended and 10 db's to the XLR's which is a big difference with short runs. This is why the XLR "sounds better" since the gain is much stronger than the single ended. If the single ended gain was at 10 db's and the XLR at 4 db's then the RCA output would sound much better. This has nothing to due with the type of cables, just higher gain that makes a difference. Doesn't take rocket science to figure that out.

The biggest load of hyperbole I ever came across years ago which I still laugh over today is how Harmonic Technologies would tout over their "cryogenic" process to their copper wire to preserve and prevent the crystal cell pattern from breaking up, preventing sonic degradation of the music signal passing through the wire. What a bundle of Barnum and Bailey snake oil. All the sheep bought into that like a moth hitting a light bulb.

"For those that believe wire is wire, fine"...now let me see, if I take an interconnect cable and slice the side open, guess what, theres copper wire inside. Amazing!!! it must be wire!. You can pretend its the golden hairs from the scalp of Goldilocks all you want, but its just wire. You need to take off your rose colored glasses. And to ignore the post above by an expert recording engineer is disingenuous and disrespectful, acting like the professional recording industry is inferior and has no clue what there talking about because your an "Audiophile" and your "opinion" is much more important then recording engineers or the broadcasting industry because you read "high end magazines" and bow down to the demi-god reviewers who are taking you for a ride. Back in 1998 I purchased a pair of Paradigm Active 20 speakers and a BAT Vk3 preamp. I decided to buy an pair an eight foot of MIT interconnects with the box on the cables. They retailed for $1000.00 and Audio Advisor was selling them at 40% off. Hooked them up and a week later I was disappointed with the sound quality and on a whim, decided to use the very cheap 20 ft. stock pair of IC's that came with the speakers. I removed them from the box, hooked them up, put on a disc and was blown out the window. Completely shocked. The differences were not subtle, a big major difference. Sounded like a completely different speaker raising the performance to a whole new level I wasn't prepared for. I said to myself, "Whats wrong with this picture?" and called Paradigm and spoke to one of their engineers. I asked how much are your stock IC's that came with the speakers? He said $20.00 a pair. He asked me the model of the MIT's and said that IC will not work because its a high capacitance low resistance cable. Our 20's are designed to use with low capacitance high resistance IC's and  mentioned that components from different companies worked best with IC's that match the mathematical values of their designs, and has nothing to do with the price of the cable. The Cable Company in Ohio has complete charts of those mathematical values from each high end company for their amps and preamps. If you go into a broadcasting-recording supply house and buy inexpensive cable that matches the value numbers of those components you will be blown away at the performance of your gear. Quit being a sheep. Quit being a lemming.

As W.C. Fields said.. "Theirs a sucker born every minute"

shadorne..exactly!

Golly geoffait-I had no idea that a recording engineer was such a low level profession. I wonder, is that a better professional career than a dishwasher at a PHO restaurant? What an insult.

Recording studio's and recording engineer's could care less about 
hypo/cryo nonsense. I find it amazing that we all buy our vinyl and CD's 
from companies whose master tape CD's and master tape vinyl sound fabulous and guess what, just about all of these studio's are using budget wire from Belden, Canare and Mogami for recording and mixing. Audiophiles love to speculate that they are more "technically" proficient and superior to well educated recording engineers and the recording industry, since they got their education from high end magazines, but the reality is Audiophiles live in denial and most do not have the technical education on the level of the best recording engineers and studios. Give me a break. 

atmasphere-. Having been a Gon member for 15 years under two different handles, this is the first thread I jumped into on the subject of cables. Maybe where the confusion lies is that just about all high end mono amps have both RCA and XLR inputs as well as dual mono stereo designs in a single chassis. So if a balanced dual mono/stereo preamplifier has both XLR and RCA outputs, and both outputs from XLR or RCA or moving signal from a separate mono channel for left and right, then in essence their both balanced cables doing the same thing. Interconnects are nothing more than ground connectors. As I already pointed out, no one called XLR cables balanced cables for almost forty years until the 80's when dual mono/stereo components were on the rise having the option of XLR or RCA outputs. If XLR cables were invented in the 80's for the sole purpose only to use with high end dual-mono components, then technically it would be a balalanced cable only, not a cable that was given the nickname "balanced" due to its great ground properties which works best with noisy components especially noisy tube amplifiers. Speaking of tubes, don't mean to get off subject stringreen, but this will benefit you as well, and that is a tube device I bought last spring at the time I purchased my Rega, Sony SACD, Ascend Acoustics system.
A tube buffer made in London that blew me out the window, its that good.
Its from the I-Fi company. Its called the Ifi-iTube2, and its pure magic and only cost $375.00. I purchased mine from Amazon. It uses a single GE-NOS 5670 tube that has an average life of 100,000 hours. It has three settings for three different sonic signatures. Classic tube, single ended triode, and push pull. It also has a bass boost setting, increase bass below 40hz by 6 db's, and 12 db's below 80hz. If your speakers have a problem with a narrow sound field, it has a 3D setting that will widen your sound field by thirty degrees. If your currently a solid state person and were into tube gear in the past and got fed up with inefficient tube amplifiers that waste energy drawing a constant 100 watts from you ac outlet at idle and all the maintenance hassles, then the iTube2 is the answer to your prayers. I had mine patched between my Sony SACD player and my Rega integrated set on classic tube. All the tube magic is there. Heres the link to the iTube2.

                                        
                                   www.ifi-audio.com

The only reason James Cannon designed the XLR is for very long cable runs beyond 25 feet. A very well designed solid state preamp is quiet as a tomb and its redundant to use a 1 meter pair of XLR's since there is no noise to deal with. To create this myth that XLR cables have an effect on the quality and quantity of the music signal is outright fraud. The quality is in the recording itself whether its vinyl or CD and has nothing to do with the wire or the connector. If its a very bad recording its going to sound like crap regardless what cable your using, XLR or RCA. Now if you have a poorly designed preamp with a high level of cross talk and noise than the XLR will help to flush out the noise at the output. Its just wire with a good ground, its not a "mini preamp, a "processor", or a buffer like many
in the high end retail continue to perpetuate to make more money. David Belles who makes the finest solid state and tube preamps in the country in their price range, whose always off the radar, could care less about XLR's with his top preamps, soild state or tube. His pieces are dead quiet, all single ended, and when you listen to his model's, "balanced" cables will be the last thing on your mind.   

Just wanted to reiterate that if designer lays out his signal path to be more direct to the XLR and the gain is set higher to that output it will always sound better which is the intention, if the opposite is done to the RCA out, it will always sound better as well.