The great myth of the XlR

The great myth thing was to grab atension.

Sorry i meant xlr not xir im danish and my english skills refects on it.

Well with my former system my lyngdorf cd 1 player into a lyngdorf tda2200 with roomperfect the difference between rca and balanced was huge.

The balanced was a Vertex aq moncayou the rca was a tara labs .

with the xlr the sound was just to bright with tha tara rca the sound was much more smooth the difference was very aparent and a blind test was not needed.

It could be the tara labs cables that just fitted that system better buy in my experince cables dont make such a large difference so it must be the rca thing i think.

I absolutly agree that the mind can play tricks on you.

I had a hydra 8 4 shunyata anaconda cables in my system and
i was absolutly sure the made the sound much better that was until i removed them all and the hydra and plucked every thing into the wall outlets.
i more then gladly sold all the shunyata stuff .

I cant remember where i read it but the conclusion i have made refelcts at least on reviewers oppinion.

thanks

Whatever works for you if that is your conclusion you will sleep well at night. I personally found that the tonal qualities change very little between the two connections. The benefit of a balanced connection is less noise with a small increase in volume. Plus comparing different brand of cables is definately a contributing factor.

Having been and still am, a big Omega Mikro fan.They will not built their cables with XLRs.They say they have not found an XLR up to their sonic requirements.But,wouldn't you know that my new phono section operates better with XLRs and so I have had the arm terminated with them.I preferred not to use an adapter due to sonic degradation.

There are reasons you might prefer your RCA cables over XLR. One is that some XLR hookups on consumer equipment are not true balanced circuits. In other words, they equipment manufacturer has "faked it" in order to cash in on a trend in this area. A poorly faked circuit could sound worse.

Even with a true balanced circuit, a XLR connection typically has higher output (6 dB) than a single ended RCA connection. At worst this could overload the input circuit of the preamp or amp which would give a noticeable edge to the sound. At the other end, it may still be clean, but it might have you listening louder than you normally might due to where you are visually inclined to set your volume control. These factors would need to be closely examined before declaring a true sonic difference in the cables or cable format themselves.

I'm in the camp that when we hear a true difference (not a psychological one) there are always technical factors that can explain. They may not be the obvious or trendy explanations, but there will be an answer somewhere.

You would really have to compare the same cable in XLR and RCA configurations to know anything about the difference. Comparing different brands and different cables within brands is pretty worthless IMO.
It costs money to really experiment and find truths, something I did for years and finally got tired of it.
They're all sorts of reasons why things do what they do.
The bottom line is do what satisfies you. Look at all the cables for sell on this site! Cables get blamed for a lot of ills that are not their fault. I think a lot of people try and "Tune" with cables which is a mistake IMO. You end up getting a system to sound closer to what you want some of the time.
No cable is absolutely neutral and can only screw up the sonic picture. Cables cannot "Improve" sound over the original signal. They can "Adjust" it more to your liking but you have just given up any neutrality your system may have had.
Some music just sounds bad and it should be reproduced just as badly as it was recorded. If your system sounds good all the time, either you're playing the same disc over and over or something is amiss!