XLR waste of time ?

I second Nrenter and the others here.

Let me rephrase the question: What XLR connectors do you (or anyone) view as equal to or better than an Eichmann silver RCA?

Ignoring for a moment the preference for exotic materials such as silver and gold (and equipment failure, contact or design issues), one can say,in general, that ANY XLR connection will normally perform at least equal to and often better than RCA.

Any good quality XLR from a guitar store (such as Mogami) should at least equal the best RCA.

I share Ralph's philosophy on this one. If you buy the right equipment and match it correctly then who cares about cables.

Some equipment designs do not need $100's or $1000's of dollars of cabling to perform perfectly - nor is this type equipment necessarily less resolving.

The important thing is to get equipment that is designed to preserve every detail on the recording while adding as little distortion or noise as possible and whilst minimizing the effect of all extraneous variables (cabling, operating temperature, AC power, humidity, RF/EMI interference etc. etc.) Equipment that is so sensitive that it is influenced by nearly anything and everything is a liability IMHO - it is simply not well designed for accurate audio reproduction of the source.

Frankly, it is a bit of a travesty that the serious design challenges faced by world class audio designers to build outstanding components is even compared or discussed in the same conversation as an piece of wire with two connectors on the end.

There are several orders of magnitude difference in the design & technology required by the component designer versus those simply making cables....but you would not know this from reading the marketing claims of those who just make cables. Some cables seem to run on some kind of 22nd century dilithium crystal technology...

Sounds like more philosophy to me, unconfirmed and untested by experience.

Yes you are right. It is mostly the tin-eared folks in pro audio that exclusively use balanced XLR for everything. The philosophy of head bangers with PA speakers is meaty connectors that are unbreakable when used by gorillas. They would be unable to test anything in an A/B comparison anyway, as all of them are deaf from listening too loud for too long.

I second Al, thanks Ralph! Your contributions a lot of weight. Although I have not built an amplifier for 25 years - I am glad to see that the tried and true electrical engineering principles remain on solid ground. There are plenty of textbooks that would support your statements - so no need to apologise for "tooting your horn" about your own rigorous design choices.

What I will say is this....there are several reasons for the consumer audio industry to promote RCA single ended over fully balanced:

It is hard to convince most consumers of the benefits of fully balanced and it is much cheaper to go the RCA approach. So RCA means a lower price point and/or more profit. The lower cost approach is so important that as you correctly point out...most equipment with XLR connections is not actually fully balanced (at the circuit level)