Balanced vs. Single Ended Interconnects

@holmz - I'm the head of the AV team and might have even donated most of the cables.  I could borrow them at any time, but don't want to mess with 6 long cables!

To clarify, my ultimate goal is to utilize the fully balanced design of the DAC and Pathos (fully balanced preamplifier section).  I don't have any XLR cables at the moment and will have to wait a while before purchasing anything else that smells of audiophile.

I'm sure that I could borrow cables from a friend.  I am a fan of Blue Jeans Cables, but it would cost $60 plus shipping which is starting to be a significant amount of the $200ish that I'll eventually spend on Audioquest Red River cables.  I think the Monoprice cables would run under $20 and I have been using them at my church for quite a few years without issue.

I'm not sure what approach I'll take with purchasing XLR cables when the time comes.  On the surface it would seem that balanced cables should make far less of a difference than a single ended cable simply because noise should become an insignificant factor.  With that being the case, does it matter if the cables have fancy geometry that's normally used for noise rejection in single ended cables?  Things to ponder in time.

Well, the new DAC arrived last night and I anticipate being satisfied with it for a long time to come.  It was a clear step up across the board, so if balanced cables can make a further improvement, that time will come.

I was able to borrow a pair of monoprice premium XLR cables from a friend and hooked them up yesterday.  My initial response was positive, but after a little longer listening I felt like some of the smoothness was missing.  I currently have the Audioquest Sydney RCA cables back in the system for another round of comparision.

@chrken - While it is possible that at the lengths of cables that are generally used in home audio the difference between balanced and unbalanced could be negligible, a quality balanced cable connecting two balanced components should always be superior (all other things being equal).

@ohlala - If you're connecting to an unbalanced component then balanced cable provides no benefit.  If it's a cable designed for an unbalanced connection that just has an XLR connector then I'd anticipate that it would perform nearly identically to a standard unbalanced cable.  If it's a cable designed for a balanced connection with an RCA connector, then I'd anticipate that it might perform poorly since it's being used in the wrong application.