First Foray into XLR

Bryston  sells very good cables and won't break the bank.

Aside from Studio or large facility applications, balanced XLR interconnects are of little use. They are designed for rejection of electromagnetic interference over long runs in a studio environment with equipment specificly designed for low impedance operation.
In my opinion, balanced XLR connections are useless for Home Audio.
[I deleted the unecessary snark. :-) ]

Anyone who says LRs are of little use is ignorant, or just plain stupid. Sorry

I upgraded my system over a decade ago from rca to fully balanced, but that IS the key. Many manufacturers pay lip service to balanced by providing XLR I/Os BUT their component/s are not actually differentially balanced. In those cases XLRs will not matter. I have my doubts that the OPs kit are

I have a fully balanced Vitus amp and yet still found the rca version of my Townsend F1 Fractal cable sounded better than the XLR equivalent, and better than other XLRs I tried including Transparent cables.

Reasons why XLR interconnections can make a difference in a home audio system, compared to RCA interconnections (although depending on the specific designs that difference may or may not be for the better):

1)The configuration of the output circuit providing the signal is different, or at least should be different.

2)The configuration of the input circuit receiving the signal is different, or at least should be different (apparently it is not in the case of the OP's amp).

3)The impedance relationship between those circuits may be different.

4)Depending on the specific designs of the interface circuits in the two components susceptibility to ground loop-related high frequency noise and low frequency hum may be less in the case of XLR.

5)Depending on the specific designs of the interface circuits in the two components sensitivity to cable differences may be less in the case of XLR. See the post by Atmasphere dated 3-22-2013 near the beginning of this thread, and his answer to my follow-up question later in the thread.

6)And of course the cable and connectors are different.

7)Note that none of the previous factors relate to whether or not the components are "fully balanced," i.e., to whether or not they have balanced internal signal paths. As alluded to in one of the previous posts, XLR interconnections are especially likely to be beneficial if the components are fully balanced.

Regards,
-- Al