balance and single ended what I heard

More detail required. What equipment were you connecting? Were the balanced and single-ended interconnects essentially made from the same materials?

Regards,

In another thread you said Naim cdp's are electronic sounding? Huh?

Now your saying your inexpensive se cables sound better than xlr? Huh?

Going from se to xlr catapalted my system to a whole 'nother level. So much so that I had to sell my se preamp to go to a preamp with xlr connection. If your not getting the same results, something is obviously awry. Perhaps your gear is just providing an xlr connection out of convenience and is not truely balanced.

Why not post your system so we can see what's what?

1. The advantages of a balanced interface are significant for long runs in an electromagneticly noisy environment. You probably don't have this situation.

2. Are you sure that your balanced wires are actually functioning in balanced configuration? If one of the signal pins is grounded, what you have is an unbalanced interface via wires that are not optimized for this mode.

Metralla's first sentence says it all. What cables were you using? Were they the same model? What gear was being used?

Even though a product has XLR connections, it may not at all use a balanced circuit topology. For cases where a single-ended signal goes through several additional stages on the input to output just for the sake of driving XLR cables is just plain senseless. Unless there are circuits for each phase, I'd stay with single-end connections.

Thoughts...maybe you are using equipment with lousy balanced cicuits?...I don't see cables causing the woes to ones system are you describing. They are just wire you know:)...

steve