Balanced or singled ended IC's? For HT setup.

Nice gear!

Tough question to answer though. As for different brands it depends on what you're using now and how you'd like it to sound different and how much you're willing to spend. If you don't have any cables yet, what kind of sonic signature are you aiming for?

Balanced ICs may have an advantage over single ended if the runs get long. With shorter runs RCAs should be fine.

What kind of speakers are you using?

Gunbei,
Monitor Audio (Gold series)

Do you have cabling now and been able to hear the whole set up?

If so, what direction do you want the sound to go in?

I'll go out on a limb and recommend some of my favorite brands which are Audience and Acoustic Zen.

I've had great luck with all AZ cables I've tried. They offer a nice full musical sound without ever being bright. I use the MC2 digital, Silver Ref II and Matrix Ref II, and was until recently using biwired Hologram II. The Matrix Ref II interconnects run about $500/meter and the Silver Ref II are almost double that.

If you don't want to spend that much on cables look into the Acoustic Zen WOW ICs which go for around $250/meter.

When I decided to sell my Hologram II speaker cables, they were replaced [in a long tough comparison] by Audience AU24s. These have a more forward midrange and a bit lighter bass, and suited my taste more.

Overall Audience cables are a bit cheaper than Acoustic Zen and their less expensive versions are the Maestro and Conductor Series.

There lot's of really good cables out there, so you should do a lot of research. Maybe the best thing to do is to get a budget set to tie you over for six months while you read the forums. Then see if you can audition some other brands that interest you. I would recommend not spending a lot right now until you get a good feel for the character of your gear, and get an idea of how you want to improve it. And when you decide to pull the trigger, buy used!

Good luck!

For 1 meter length on HT use, you probably wouldn't notice any difference between balanced and single-ended cables. Balanced is primarily designed to be better on long runs of cable, and 1 meter is not a long run. If your electronics use a truly balanced topology, there may be some benefit for balanced cable, but minor. If you have a massively RFI/EMI infected environment, you might achieve a small benefit there too.