What's better: RCA or XLR?

Balanced is better because you lower the noise floor and get 6db's of gain and usually cancels out any hum that your system may have. Most high quality cable already has the negative conductor inside and you can just add the XLR's yourself.

Ask someone who knows Classe well. I agree with the prior threads; that XLR is usually better. Some brand, as Krell (which I use), it makes a huge difference...XLR far surpassing the RCA.

Richard

Sonically, I've compared mid-priced Syn. Res. RCA and XLR ICs and with 40" lengths I preferred the sound of the RCA. It's definitely one of those personal preference things though. With long IC runs (20-30 ft. or more) apparently XLR has some worthwhile advantages. Cheers. Craig

XLR better in EVERY case if gear runs true balanced. Single-ended is a compromise of signal integrity to save money. No other reason for implementation of single-ended design and cable. Cheaper, that's it. Balanced maintains true signal, higher gain, lower noise, better dynamics. If electronics are not true differentially balanced, you're not gaining any signal integrity, only noise cancellation over long runs.

It depends on the equipment. Some manufacturers use XLR connectors w/o really using balanced circuitry so in such cases, there is no improvement in using balanced cables. I use balanced between my Krell amps and a Wadia cd player and have noticed that background noise is much lower. Plus, I live in San Fran where RF is big problem like most large cities.