Balanced vs RCA preamp output

I have to agree with Tswhitsel. Depending on your gear, single-ended may actually sound better than balanced. If you have a noise problem or slight ground loop hum or buzz because of all the gear piled into your audio rack, the balanced interconnects will likely solve this problem. Otherwise, balanced isn't ALWAYS better.

Hmm.. Well, lots of opinions here already, but here's my experience.

Without fully balanced gear, you will not be able to take advantage of what XLR connections are intended to offer.

The presence of an XLR connection does NOT mean that the equipment is fully balanced. You'll only realize the serenely quiet background with fully balanced gear.

If ALL of your gear is fully balanced, you're cheating yourself a bit if you don't use XLR cabling. A fully balanced design is very expensive to execute properly, and if that's what you have, you paid a lot of good money for it. I STRONGLY suggest that you make the most of it.

With regards to cable lengths, XLR is better, but again only a real benefit with fully balanced gear. Many people find that high-quality RCA cabling does an excellent job even over long (8-10 meters) cable runs.

Balanced cabling can help with longer runs, but honestly, you're just transporting all your noise intact from component to component if your gear isn't fully balanced.

And I second TSwhitsel's statement that unlike the single-ended RCA realm, any well-made XLR cable is pretty much as good as any other. BEWARE, though.. There are several makes of inexpensive XLR cables available that are better called "XLR terminated" than balanced, as they don't keep the signals separate and you lose the benefit.

It really depends on the equipment being used as the manufacturer may have put more time, effort and money into developing one connection versus another. Some companies may add XLR inputs/outputs to gain market share but they did not spend the money to make that section of the product as good as it could be whereas the RCA circuit is top of the line. A truly balanced system takes more money to make and if they did it right then XLR is the way to go, but RCA or single ended designs are much easier to get right and thus very common. Just because a component has XLR inputs/outputs does not make it a "balanced" circuit.