Just retired and want to get back to vinyl listening

I do have a question -- if folks would be so kind -- about pro/cons on using the rca line inputs - outputs versus the balanced I/O on some of these equipment pieces -- I have no experience at all on the balance I/O - thoughts?

The simple answer is to not worry about it. Both work well. 
The more complex answer is that a huge amount of gear that offer balanced outputs and inputs don't offer true balanced circuits all the way through so the balanced option is more of a convenience thing allowing someone with a bunch of XLR interconnects the option to use them. True balanced circuits offer significantly less susceptibility to hum caused by various factors including grounding (mostly) but also rejection of EMI/RFI. 
I recently switched over from single ended (RCA) to balanced (XLR) interconnects hoping to take advantage of true balanced hardware and I don't notice much difference. Most of the Stereophile reviewers have made comments from time to time about noticing very little difference between single ended and balanced such that they mostly use singled ended interconnects. From a purely practical standpoint though, XLR is so much easier to connect and disconnect than locking WBT-style RCA barrels-I am happy to be away from those. Also, I don't know why it is, but cable manufacturers dwell over their choice of RCA connectors and often have very pricey options offered as upgrades and yet with XLRs they usually just have one option and leave it at that. I have seen obvious XLR "jewelry" on very expensive IC's but even the manufacturers don't seem to dwell much on the cost/quality of XLR connectors as being crucial. 

I do have a question -- if folks would be so kind -- about pro/cons on using the rca line inputs - outputs versus the balanced I/O on some of these equipment pieces -- I have no experience at all on the balance I/O - thoughts?

There are several things to understand about balanced. I'll try to not make it too confusing.

There is this thing that is the balanced line standard. It is spelled out in the Audio Engineering Society (AES) file 48.  If your equipment conforms to the standard, a fun thing happens- you can run longer interconnects and they don't have to be exotic (and exotically priced) to sound excellent.

Unfortunately many high end audio companies that offer true balanced equipment don't actually support that standard. The reason is that its hard (see points 2 and 3 below) and some companies don't seem to be aware that it exits.

As a result you'll see really variable comments ranging from mine- which usually read something like 'Once you've heard it set up right, there's simply no going back' to 'balanced is just a gimmick and offers no performance improvement at all'. The latter happens when the standards are ignored. So its important to check with the manufacturer to see if their equipment supports the standard.

In a nutshell, here's the standard:
1) pinout: pin 1 of the XLR is ground, pin 2 noninverting (in the US), pin 3 is inverting (in the US)
2) the output occurs between pins 2 and 3; pin 1 (ground) is ignored and is only used for shielding
3) the system is low impedance; a preamp supporting the standard should be easily able to drive 1000 ohms without frequency response or distortion problems.

FWIW, all cartridges made today are balanced sources. That is why turntables always have that funny 'ground wire' that no other 'single ended' sources seem to have. The ground wire is the shield. So if you have a turntable the signal can easily travel from the LP to the preamp input via a low impedance balanced line- and thus the signal will be more immune to the interconnect cable, making for greater transparency and lower noise to boot. Usually all that is required is to change out the interconnect cable.

An obvious advantage of balanced operation is that you can run long cables. 50 feet is no worries between preamp and amp so its possible to run monoblock amplifiers placed by the speakers and run really short speaker cables- which will ultimately help you with impact and definition. Once you've heard that greater definition, its hard to go back.

The most common myth about balanced line is that its more expensive and there are twice as many components. This is false. It does take more parts, but not twice as many- maybe about 50% more (unless the execution is poor). However your interconnect cables don't have to be as expensive. I think mine cost me about $150.00 for the pair and they are 30 feet long. In practice, the cheaper cables more than make up for the difference in price and quite often you can have greater performance to boot.

atmasphere,

Excellent commentary as usual. I have been long IC, short SC for years. I always used RCAs. Recently switched to XLRs - pre to amps. Now in the camp of;  "Simply no going back"

Thanks for the education -- info...... given the comment on cartridges -- curious as to why more TT/tonearms would not have balance outputs and equipment inputs for these in various equipment be the xlr balanced inputs

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given the comment on cartridges -- curious as to why more TT/tonearms would not have balance outputs ...

They do have balanced outputs - don't let the RCA connectors fool you. And you can feed those balanced outputs into a balanced phono preamplifier - some of which also use RCA connectors on the input.