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In Reply to: RE: XLR vs RCA terminated interconnects posted by JDC on September 22, 2009 at 08:49:54
Cables with RCA connectors are called single-ended. They have a 'hot' conductor and a return conductor, or multiple wires for each conductor function. The audio signal is a voltage between the hot and return conductors, where the return conductor voltage is close to audio ground. Many single-ended cables are coaxial, where the hot conductor is in the center and the return conductor is the shield around it. There are also shielded and unshielded single-ended cables with the two conductors as twisted pair wires.
Cables with the typical XLR connectors should have three conductors, although it is possible to make them with two. Most of these cables are called balanced, because the audio signal consists of a normal hot, an inverted hot (signal voltage goes negative when the normal hot goes positive, and vice versa), and an audio ground. "Balanced" means the equipment has the same impedance from normal hot to ground and inverted hot to ground, at both the source and load ends. Thus, these cables will typically have the normal and inverted conductors as equivalent members of some sort of braid, where the capacitance of each is the same to preserve the balanced impedances.
Not all audio equipment with XLR jacks has this balanced impedance arrangement. Since the balanced impedance setup is what gives superior noise immunity, the equipment that does not have it will not give you improved performance with balanced cables compared to single-ended cables of the same quality. It is important to find out how your equipment is configured before investing in balanced cables.
All this means the answer to your question is generally no, but there can be cases where a balanced cable has been used to make up a single-ended version.
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