Balanced cables

Thanks Atmasphere    ...that's exactly the information I was looking for.  I'm hearing a metallic sound that's driving me nuts (mids/highs)...and am looking for the culprit.  I tried everything including removing the drivers from my Vandersteen's ...Richard said they were fine.  My Ayre dealer thought it was the silver in the cables, but you nullified that idea. ...thinking it just may be my ears.....  

The ferrofluid probably dried out in your midrange and tweeter. This happens after as little as 2 years depending on use. That would explain the metallic sound. Are you the sole owner? It doesn’t take much to damage those drivers - a bit of clipping even at modest power will heat the voice coil up immensely...

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

So Ralph, based on your engineering knowledge, why would ARC make those design choices? Can you hazard a guess as to what the most likely reasons would be? My experience tells me that there must be trade-off considerations-at this level of audio, there always are. 

Audiozen 2-27-2018
... 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.

They are both doing the same thing in that they are conveying, or at least attempting to convey, the same information from one component to the other. But they are doing it in very different ways, with results that are unlikely to be identical.

A balanced interface by definition has two signal lines which have the same impedance between each of the signal lines and ground, at least to a **very** close approximation. That equality of the impedances between the two signal lines and ground is a necessary condition for a balanced interface to provide the noise rejection it is known for. It is also frequently the case that those signal lines carry a pair of signals that are of equal amplitude but opposite polarity, which can provide additional advantages such as improved signal-to-noise ratio, reduction of certain forms of distortion, and minimization or elimination of cable effects (if the criteria Ralph has described are met).

Components whose internal signal paths are balanced but which provide RCA connectors in addition to XLR connectors typically convert the unbalanced signal provided to the RCA connector or received from the RCA connector to or from a balanced pair of signals that is processed internally, with the conversion often being accomplished via either an active stage or a transformer. Or in some cases the RCA connector is simply connected to one of the two signals in the balanced signal pair, with the ground shell of the RCA connector being connected to circuit ground.

An interface which conveys a single signal and a ground connection is not balanced, both by definition and as a practical matter.

Regards,
-- Al