balanced vs. unbalanced sound quality

My comment about Keith Johnson’s statement wasn’t intended to endorse it, but rather to clarify it (correctly, I hope). I imagine there are as many ways to build a balanced circuit as there are design engineers. EAR-Yoshino’s Tim de Paravicini chooses to provide balanced outputs via transformers, his single-ended and balanced outputs sharing the exact same circuit. While Ralph Karsten has the engineering chops to create very simple, fully-differential balanced circuits in his Atma-Sphere products, other engineers (the ones to whom Johnson may have been referring) have resorted to a doubling of path length and parts count.

I'm guessing Johnson was referring to the signal path length within a balanced circuit, not within a balanced cable.