Atma-Sphere and BAT opinions are of little value unless you use their equipment.That is not entirely true. Some high end cable manufacturers obtain Mogami wire and re-brand it. The wire is oxygen free and the dielectrics are polyethylene; pretty nice stuff. Overall its pretty inexpensive and thus totally worth a try. FWIW, Neutrik connectors are excellent; some of the best made.
Now the whole point of balanced operation is that the cable shouldn't be a big deal in the overall sound- its a system meant to eliminate interconnect cable artifact (in addition to ground loops). You'd think an audiophile would like that sort of thing- after all, it worked pretty well for all those recordings that people play on audio equipment :) And some of those microphone signals had to go a long way!
So it is advantageous if the equipment supports the balanced standard. To my knowledge, this is a rare thing in high end audio so we have all these exotic balanced cables as a result. As far as I can tell the BAT stuff doesn't support the standard.
