Balanced versus single ended

I remember reading a post a couple years ago, about a guy that had atmasphere equipment and he said he could hear a difference in cables.

People also hear voices that are not there.
But can they tell whether a cable is there without looking?

To be honest, I could hear no significant difference in sound reproduction. My only recourse is to try a higher level of AQ cable, but that costs way more and I don't want to spend that much on an experiment (-though it would be good to know and finally dispel the notion that XLR cables DO sound different in equipment supporting the AES48 standard).

IMO It certainly seems like a better approach to put the funds into Ralph’s components (and the others that follow the spec.).

… But then I am not much into cable lore. Usually using the same Mogami stuff in RCA.

XLR cables cost more… often a lot more. If I was relatively young I would go with balanced… component design is headed that way. But if I was on a budget you can save money on single ended. But as has been pointed out to be sure with your components, you have to try to be sure.

I tend towards being a cable denier, but I have never seen XLR cables that attract the multi hundred t multi thousand dollar figures like RCAs can.

It gets difficult when one has say, an XLR phono stage and RCA based amp and preamp.

Starting new I would agree that using XLRs would be a good choice.

Anyways, my question is: has anyone ever thought that single ended sounded better?given the 2 options. Im only referring to a truly balanced connection

My 30+ year old XLR based phono stage did not sound as good as my 10 year old RCA phono stage… but that did not have a lot to do with the RCAs or the XLRs.

I suspect that the Benchmark, Atmasphere (etc.  etc. etc.) amps that are balanced would sound better than my amps. And they also measure better.

But I would not hesitate to run an RCA based preamp into them even if I had to use an XLR to RCA adapter.

One would probably need the same gear as balanced or RCA to make a determination, and I have seen at least preamp show more distortion products with balanced than with RCAs, so it is likely equipment specific??

I didn’t read all the responses but I don’t know if anybody talked about, in true balanced, how one of the signal paths is inverted. So over the course of the cable if any RF or electromatic electromagnetic interference is introduced when the inverted signal is flipped back over at the destination those additions to the signal cancel out. This is why XLR is especially good for long runs. The additional line for the single path is also responsible for the 6 dB gain

Is that a description of CMRR?
(Common Mode Rejection Ratio?)

To be clear

@atmasphere ^That^ is almost a pun… ;)

@holmz To be clear, black is the only color you get...

I meant, “to be clear”… as a lack of noise.

(they make the mogami in brown, but black may be used to describe quietness.)

They both do! 😁

There is not a lot of reason to trade up in cable with the electronics that conform.

It is possible to make a cable that does not conform, or that flips the phase, but realistically the cables should all conform.

So it looks like a sales pitch for cables… for electronics which are masquerading as conforming, but do not conform.

Starting with better electronics seems like a better value than “spicing to flavour” with cables.

I thought this newsletter below was perfect for this post but no mention of the AES48 standard.

Mike

…

@ditusa
does cable create the conformance to the AES48 standard?
or…
the electronics that it plugs into?