Is there a difference in balanced cables??

I'm fairly new at this, so forgive me if my question sounds silly. For the past three months, I've been swapping my balanced ICs back and forth, switching from a Kimber Kable KCAG which tended to be bright and sometimes edgy in my system, to a Monster Cable (which, though warm, lacks in detail and dynamics). Meanwhile, I've been wondering whether to buy another IC altogether.

A dealer who sells Audience cables warned me that many interconnects with XLR terminations aren't truly balanced, but that the Audience Au24s are. I wrote Audience who said that their Au24s and budget-priced Conductors are indeed "balanced" as well, but they cannot do so with their mid-priced Maestro wire, as that is of a different configuration which doesn't allow for balanced connections.

So, I've been looking at various ICs and putting the question to dealers and manufacturers regarding their being "balanced."

My system: Sonus Faber Grand Piano Home speakers, Electrocompaniet ECI 3, Cal Audio Labs CL-15 player, Audience Au24 speaker cables, Kimber Kable KCAG or Monster Cable interconnect, BPT L-10 powercord (amp), Audience PowerChord (CDP), Monument Reference speaker posts, Vibrapods.

Have I been given wrong information? What other balanced ICs should I consider besides Audience Au24, which, for me, is on the expensive side? Balanced Power Technologies IC-SL? Tara Labs RSC Vector? Analysis Plus Solo Crystal Oval?

Bblilikoi: What I suspect the dealer meant was that many electronic components with XLR connections are not truly balanced. However, it is very easy to determine if ICs with XLR connectors are balanced: verify with a multi-meter that all three pins are one to one from one end to the other and none are shorted to each other.

THANK YOU.

A friend also wrote that I may have misunderstood what the dealer was saying, though I do know that components with XLR connections may not be fully blananced.

Can you tell me what a multi-meter is and where to get one? This would be a useful check to run.

Jafox wrote:

blilikoi: What I suspect the dealer meant was that many electronic components with XLR connections are not truly balanced. However, it is very easy to determine if ICs with XLR connectors are balanced: verify with a multi-meter that all three pins are one to one from one end to the other and none are shorted to each other.

What the dealer most likely meant is that not all XLR cables have a three-wire configuration. There are some cables on the market (such as the Audience Maestro) that are designed to be used in single-ended configurations. They are made of a single pair of wire - one for hot, one for ground.

In order to be used with XLR connectors, they use one wire for hot, one for negative, and use the wire shield to connect the ground pins.

These cables would, of course, pass a continuity test with a meter; however, using the shield to connect the ground pins is sub-optimal.

quite a bit..