First Foray into XLR

@stereo5 +1

@english210 Since the amp is not balanced, you are probably wasting your time and money. I previously owned an AV preamp and amp which were not truly balanced and there was no significant difference. If you do compare XLR and RCA cables, make sure you adjust the volume to the same level since the balance output is greater which appears to sound better.

Not to open another can of worms, I highly recommend trying Total Contact on your connections. This is by far the best improvement to my system over any cable change. Please no rebuttals. :-)

tweak 1
"ignorant, or just plain stupid." - Really?

I had a thirty year professional carear in the television broadcasting and audio recording industries!
What, might I ask, are your technical credentials?

I am also very interested in these questions. I have recently moved to all-PS Audio electronics (Directstream DAC to BHK Signature preamp to Stellar M700 monoblock amps). PS Audio says that all these pieces are fully balanced and that balanced interconnects will be better. I do need to run about three meters from the preamp to the amps. I don’t think that’s really long enough to run into noise issues with an RCA-terminated cable, but it is long enough to greatly increase the price of any of the audiophile-type cables.

Under these conditions, is there likely to be an advantage to using balanced cables? If so, can one make a significant improvement to the sound by spending more for medium-priced cables (under $500) instead of using something like the Mogami Gold?

I happen to have, already, a couple of 1-meter, XLR-terminated cables I got years ago from ProAudioLA, made from Mogami 2549. (https://www.proaudiola.com/product-p/1-m2549-xlrf-xlrm-1.htm) This is not a quad cable. At least some of the folks on gearslutz prefer this (the 2549) to the 2534 quad cable used in the Mogami Gold IC’s saying that it sounds more ’open’. (See, for example, this thread: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/898731-mic-cable-mogami-2549-standard-vs...) These still cost only about $36 for a pair, but they sound thin and bright to me (if I can trust my aging ears). So far, it seems to me that my medium-quality single ended cables (Morrow MA4) sound better than these cheap balanced cables betweeen DAC and preamp. So I am really wondering if it is worth exploring higher-priced alternatives.
Also, is it safe to assume that an XLR-terminated version of a given cable will sound like it’s RCA-terminated brother? Most cable reviews don’t seem to pay much attention to which version of the cable they are working with. If the design goals for the two sorts of cable are quite different, this seems a bit strange.

In my opinion, balanced XLR connections are useless for Home Audio.

The reason for going balanced is to eliminate cable artifacts.

There is a standard to which one must adhere to gain that benefit. It is often called 'AES File 48'. The point of it is not just long cables! That is a side benefit of the cables not imposing an artifact. Anyone that has auditioned single-ended cables to get the 'right sound' knows what I'm talking about.

The thing is, the equipment used has to support the standard. It sounds like the amp used in the opening post does not- it has a single-ended input and so there may be no benefit at all to using a balanced cable, since the cable will actually be operating single-ended.