Anti-cable purchase

Don't waste money on fancy balanced audio cables. Just go with something like Monoprice as they are a quality product and will perform equally with any botique cable. Do some research about the actual science behind balanced audio.

For what it's worth, the science behind unbalanced audio leaves a lot more wiggle room so while I highly doubt there is any real difference between a normally priced quality cable and an extreme high end one, there are design parameters that can impact the final product in a way that isn't applicable to balanced audio.

Blue Jeans Cable is another great option if you insist on having an "audiophile" approved brand. I have several of their cables and they are all well made products.

Better options than Monoprice, IMO. What is your budget?

$500 for two meters.

Since all you want to do is try it in balanced mode - and it's a worthwhile experiment - get a pair of Mogami interconnects from Markertek. They are very well made with Neutrik XLR connectors and are fairly thin and flexible - easy to route. They make thousands of these a month for pro-audio and they have no flaws.

The Mogami 2534 Neglex Quad Cable balanced interconnects from Markertek are $50 for 2m pair. You can't beat their service either - usually shipped the same day. These are very neutral sounding interconnects and even if you upgrade them one day, you will have a nice benchmark and a spare set of cables. Always useful.

John Marks of Stereophile thinks very highly of the Mogami interconnects. I run them between a BAT preamp and Lamm ML2.1 SETs

Regards,

Metralla makes a great suggestion as the Neutric connectors are an excellent design.