Balanced vs Unbalanced Digital Cables

In most cases there is little, if any difference, between the cost of a single ended or balanced digital cable.

My personal preference are balanced digital cables or bnc terminated single ended.

Try some digital cables from the cable company.

Balanced digital?

I think you’re being snarky here.

Obviously meaning XLR or AES/EBU 110ohm digital cable.

Many people call XLR cables balanced, may not be accurate but there yah go.

The topic is is balanced digital cables, I think many are getting confused with balanced analogue XLR type cables, eg talk about 3dB increase in signal level. We are really talking about 3 conductor, 110 ohm XLR cables, normally used for what are AES-EBU digital connections between devices, eg streamer to DAC. They are not from DAC to (pre)amp. 

@m_j_s

Correct. The question is SP/DIF (unbalanced) vs AES (balanced) digital cables and not the analog equivalent that provides a volume boost.

On my Aurrender W20SE to Audio Research Reference CD9 SE DAC the AES sounds a slightly better. That is probably what Lumin will say. I would follow their guidance. But typically the quality of the interconnect will improve the sound quality vastly more than the connection type for high quality components. For low quality components it is harder to generalize.