balance and single ended what I heard

1. The advantages of a balanced interface are significant for long runs in an electromagneticly noisy environment. You probably don't have this situation.

2. Are you sure that your balanced wires are actually functioning in balanced configuration? If one of the signal pins is grounded, what you have is an unbalanced interface via wires that are not optimized for this mode.

Balanced interfaces is a different subject than complementary circuit topography. There is nothing wrong with generating a balanced line output interface out of non-complementary circuitry so as to exploit the merits of that kind of interface. The suggestion that such a design is almost deceitful is absurd.

The best known example of complementary circuitry is the push-pull power amp output stage, and there is a small army of people saying that single ended is better. But that is the subject of a different thread.

About the grounded pin in the "balanced" interconnect...I am no genius to think of this. I just had it happen to me, fortunately in only one of two channels, so the gain difference was obvious.