Balanced cables

In many and I suspect the majority of cases, yes. In some cases no. It depends on the designs of the components that are being connected.

For the design characteristics of the interconnected components that are necessary to minimize and quite possibly eliminate the sensitivity of a balanced interconnection to cable differences, and for what I consider to be compelling proof of that contention, see the post by Ralph (Atmasphere) near the beginning of this thread. Also see the follow-up questions I presented to him later in the thread, and his response.

Regards,
-- Al

While I have nothing to disagree with in the thread @almarg refers too the entire discussion is at a fairly basic/EE theory level in the cable controversy canon. To whit if you believe cables are sensitive to external vibration, interference from the surfaces they are resting on etc etc then balanced cables are just as subject to this as unbalanced. Certainly I’ve found that to be the case running 30’ lengths of WEL signature balanced to my power amps.  If you don’t believe any of this then be you can be happy with your long runs of studio grade balanced wire.

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.