What is attractive to engineers is finding technology being used to "solve" the cable dilemma. I used single ended, but could not find used XLR, cables 3 years ago and they added some serious soundstage and clarity to the sound. Vastly different system then but I still have the imprint of how nice even the single ended sounded in my system while trying to kill my background noise since I did not have balanced preamp then.
I felt like the Indras were pure as the driven snow and added nothing and took away nothing. But stupid expensive.