Hello from Down Under, fellow audiophiles and freaks

[E-Stat]

Yes I believe I'll need to return back to the shop to reaudition the Parasound series, and compare Balanced, with Unbalanced.

When I worked at a hi-fi shop (long ago), we would encourage serious customers to borrow a component over the weekend to try out in their system. Naturally, we would get an imprint of their credit card to minimize their ability to take an additional discount.

Such is the only way I believe you can get the full measure of a component. One by one.

Last time I was there it was a P3 Pre with a A23 Power, with a 16K set of DynAudio Confience floors. They connections were all unbalanced. I was not convinced even the unbalanced cables they were using were that good. It looked like a $10 job.

I think you are simply hearing differences in the cables, not necessarily the type of connection. Seek those with the lowest dielectric coefficient (L x C /1034). A perfect cable would be 1 - as a point of reference, my JPS Labs are 1.12.

rw