Guidance on Speaker Wire

Woots, the brand of balanced signal cable is up to you.  As long as you choose a balanced cable and not an RCA cable.  However, I say that only if your preamp has balanced outputs (many do, in addition to RCA outputs) and your amp has balanced inputs.  If your amp does not provide balanced inputs than this is a moot point.  If that be the case than you are back to maintaining the amp close to your preamp and having to run long speaker cables.  Not the best solution, but for whatever the reason is that you can not locate your electronics in the same room/area as your speakers, you are pigeon holed into a long run of speaker cable.

sgreg1 is exactly correct.  If you can run two 60' lengths of speaker cable than you can obviously run a pair of 60' length signal connecting cables.  That is still a long run so it would have an impact on the cost-per-foot of signal cable, unless you have an unlimited budget.  But still, you can get a reasonably good quality pair of 60' signal connecting cables for a few hundred dollars.  Is there any reason that you can't locate your amp where the speakers reside and leave the rest of your system in the mechanical room?  It would be so much better to connect a fairly short pair of high quality speaker cables.  Given your circumstance, you would then have the best solution for sound quality.