If you are going analogue-minidsp-analogue then balanced (XLR) will be better than single ended (Phono/RCA). If you're using the headphone out on your macbook then you'll find a major improvement by streaming through the MiniDSP USB input and using the analogue inputs for the other sources. If your main interest is digital source to dac then you'll be best choosing something like the nanoDigi 2x8 and placing it between the two.
Hope that makes sense.
Hope that makes sense.