Cables & streamers

@roadcykler "Cables make no objective difference."

I absolutely agree with you if you have a crappy system 💩 

Misery begats misery 

We all miss the olden days when we had bell wire screwed into the rear of our components. What innocent times they were 

+1 for lordmelton.  lesser systems are less revealing so cables do not mean as much.  When I bought my 1st system [Kenwood receiver, Pioneer TT] I had to play it right away but didn't have speaker wire.  But I had extra lamp cord and guess what?  It worked!  Not well, but I used it until I could get back to the dealer.

"the only issue is the gain in xlrs"

XLR's don't have gain. They're just connectors. In order for your "XLR's" to do anything productive, both components you are connecting have to be balanced in some way. If all the requirements for a balanced connection are not met, your "XLR's" turn into RCA's by default because only 2 of the 3 conductors in the cable are being used. A big portion, maybe even half, of the people using XLR cables have no idea that they're doing nothing more than a regular pair of cables. Just having an XLR jack on the back of a component doesn't guarantee anything. You still have to verify that the connection is balanced. For example, you may have an XLR jack on the back of a component labeled balanced. If you check the owners manual it may say something like, "Supports balanced cables". All that means is you have a single ended connection that uses XLR connectors. If you look inside the component, you'll see only 2 of the 3 pins are connected. If you ask the manufacturer, they'll say this option was included so if you only have balanced cables, you can use them and not have to buy new ones. This is true, but the real reason they do it is they hope you don't know the difference, and think its really balanced.  

@xmbw4 + 1

@xmbw4 you are correct but if you want to get down into the weeds, technically a little bit off. 

 your "XLR’s" turn into RCA’s by default because only 2 of the 3 conductors in the cable are being used. 

I know what you mean, but actually the XLRs are being used as single ended connectors, like most RCAs are. However, if the shell of the RCA is floating, RCAs can be used for balanced connections without a ground just like XLRs can be used that way. Maybe not common, but one example is a phono preamp with RCA inputs that are balanced. 

XLR’s don’t have gain

That is correct, but if your amp amp offers both XLR and RCA inputs, and the XLR are truly balanced,  the amp will have higher output using the XLR input. If you have higher output using the XLR connections, your system effectively has higher gain.

That said, the title of this thread is a bit misleading. the OP has a new integrated that has XLR connections and seems to be attributing all the changes to the cables.