I believe that the xlr to 1/4" cables you buy at the store are wired that way. Too little space for a transformer....
My Monster cable doesn't "seem" to produce the same "fullness" that my APC cable does, but, it sure sounds a lot better, and, the contains a smoother overall frequency response.
The difference you may be hearing could be from time alignment issues. Better cable will allow all frequencies to arrive to the other end of it at the same time., thus, time aligned. Cheaper cable will delay certain frequencies a bit causing a sort of phase distortion. When you read about the Monster Studio Pro 1000, they have a patent of how they make their cable time aligned.
At the last rehersal I had with a band I was filling in with I brought along my Monster cable. We plugged in the regular cable the singer was using. It sounded boomy and harsh like always. We plugged in the Monster cable and noticed an increased high frequency definition and that the boomyness was gone. The vocals had a much smoother sound right away. The feedback problems the singer was having with the PA (something I never played with because he wouldn't pay me to fix it...
) went away immediately!
Many people get so used to a certain sound and when they hear something else, that may or may not sound better, they just assume that it sucks.
Try the brighter cable for awhile and see if your tracks seem to stay in the mix better. Then try the other "darker" sounding cable. In fact, just try recording a vocal or something and just burn a disk of both recordings and see which translates well on a consumer system.
But, another thing to consider is that high quality wiring my show off the bad fidelity of other components in your system. Still, with some creative micing techniques you may still get a better sound.
When I try out new gear, I first try it in a way that I am used to using similar devices. Then, I try it differently. I have found that a lot of gear needs to be used a bit differently to get the best results. But, I notice that better gear produces a better sound used the same way, and only gets better when I start playing with it.
Ed