> When possible go for XLR on the last mile to the speakers (good neutral studio speakers) to cancel out distortion from external electromagnetic pulses.
A couple minor corrections: XLR is just a connector, the equipment has to be balanced and there's plenty of equipment on the market with XLR jacks but unbalanced signals. Second, electromagnetic interference does not cause distortion, but it does cause noise.
Balanced signals are far from a magic bullet. It is basically a tool for solving a couple specific problems: interference and ground loops (NOT distortion). In a typical home setup, interference and ground loops will not be a problem, because we're just talking about plugging a CD into a stereo that's a few inches away, and they're both plugged into the same power strip. Balanced cables are more helpful if you have audio equipment plugged into different mains circuits, or drawing lots of current, or transmitting signals over long distances (more than 10 meters). For your home stereo, regular RCA cables are sufficient.
> this doesn't make a difference for compressed pop music but for uncompressed recordings of live performances with analog instruments or natural soundscapes it does.
I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous. The noise floor of 16-bit PCM is -96 dB. Your living room, if it is very quiet, has an ambient noise level of 30 dB SPL. Or you could suppose that you spent money soundproofing your rooms, and you live out in the country, and it's as quiet as a professional recording studio, at 20 dB SPL. Now, turn up the CD player until the noise floor is audible. What happens when you play music? It will be at 110 dB SPL, which is the same sound level as sitting next to a chainsaw.
Now, the benefit of 24-bit audio is that you can play music louder than a chainsaw (> 110 dB SPL) and still have parts of the music that are quieter than a whisper (< 20 dB SPL). Even without compression, it is rare for actual live performances to have that kind of dynamic range. Pianos, for example, are simply not physically capable of it, with typical microphone technique.
In a professional audio context XLR (as in RS-297-A) is pretty much equivalent with balanced audio, of cause this requires a balanced output and signal chain. Just as well as a stereo phono connector can be used for a balanced mono signal.
You surely heard a GSM pulse on your speakers before; that's not just noise. Especially when living in an apartment where you can't control what kind of cold fusion reactor your neighbor from hell is running, this a significant improvement over RCA and extensive shielding also in a home setting.
I'm not talking about using the full dynamic range in a linear fashion, more about doing the compression at home and not in the studio. Like being able to listen to a whisper, a piano and a chainsaw from the same recording, recorded at it's original amplitude, at playback mapped to a pleasant listening range at full fidelity, yes that's not the normal casual use case but that's what a higher bit depth enables.
In a professional context, XLR is not the same as balanced. I have several pieces of equipment with balanced connections, but only a minority of the balanced connections are XLR. Most are TRS.
I think you are using a different definition of "noise". "Noise" is unwanted sound.
The GSM noise you hear is caused by demodulation of GSM radio, in the 800-900 MHz range. At these frequencies, even a very small wire works well as an antenna. For example, an 8 cm wire makes a quarter-wave antenna. In my experience, there is often a trace of at least 8 cm within an amplifier or monitor which picks up the signal. In these cases, balanced connections do not help. The nonliniarities in semiconductor components then demodulates the GSM signal into the audio band. The worst offenders at picking up GSM interference are cheap amplifiers and radios. Good equipment is well shielded and doesn't suffer from radio interference, and in my experience, using unbalanced connections over short distances (1-2 meters) won't change that.
Balanced connections fix ground loops and let you run cables over long distances. That is all. They don't save you from GSM demodulation.
Exactly my point in the first post in this thread, the reason why getting the DAC close to the output is a good idea in my opinion to minimize those types of opportunities for interference on otherwise reasonably priced equipment (DAC/headphone amp plus decent headphones for under USD400, or DAC with balanced outputs and active monitors for under USD1000). Balanced cabling and signalling is only a bonus but recommended for active studio monitors.
A couple minor corrections: XLR is just a connector, the equipment has to be balanced and there's plenty of equipment on the market with XLR jacks but unbalanced signals. Second, electromagnetic interference does not cause distortion, but it does cause noise.
Balanced signals are far from a magic bullet. It is basically a tool for solving a couple specific problems: interference and ground loops (NOT distortion). In a typical home setup, interference and ground loops will not be a problem, because we're just talking about plugging a CD into a stereo that's a few inches away, and they're both plugged into the same power strip. Balanced cables are more helpful if you have audio equipment plugged into different mains circuits, or drawing lots of current, or transmitting signals over long distances (more than 10 meters). For your home stereo, regular RCA cables are sufficient.
> this doesn't make a difference for compressed pop music but for uncompressed recordings of live performances with analog instruments or natural soundscapes it does.
I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous. The noise floor of 16-bit PCM is -96 dB. Your living room, if it is very quiet, has an ambient noise level of 30 dB SPL. Or you could suppose that you spent money soundproofing your rooms, and you live out in the country, and it's as quiet as a professional recording studio, at 20 dB SPL. Now, turn up the CD player until the noise floor is audible. What happens when you play music? It will be at 110 dB SPL, which is the same sound level as sitting next to a chainsaw.
Now, the benefit of 24-bit audio is that you can play music louder than a chainsaw (> 110 dB SPL) and still have parts of the music that are quieter than a whisper (< 20 dB SPL). Even without compression, it is rare for actual live performances to have that kind of dynamic range. Pianos, for example, are simply not physically capable of it, with typical microphone technique.