Looking for a preamp with XLR connections

We've been doing balanced line preamps for home audio longer than anyone else. We did it because if you support the balanced line standard, you can get off of the interconnect cable game and not have to worry about their 'sound'.

It didn't occur to us to not support the standard. But that has become very common in high end audio today; whether by choice or ignorance of the standard I can't tell.

But if the preamp supports the standard you won't have to worry about interconnects. So when looking at a preamp, ask the manufacturer if the preamp supports AES48 which is the balanced standard.

LA4 is AES48 compliant.

I think you should expand your choices by considering a tube preamp.  Specifically, Atmasphere does fully balanced designs and that’s where I’d go first.  Tubes in a preamp are very low maintenance.  But, if you must do solid state I’d look at Ayre, or maybe Boulder.  I’m not 100% sure either is fully balanced, but my guess is they are.  Best of luck.  

Benchmark Media outstanding equipment balanced design thru out including the XLRs.  You are correct in looking for A balanced design, it has many benefits. The comment that was made that balanced doesn’t matter at home Is false. It’s a quieter system period over and unbalanced system. His system just can’t resolve it. Tube sound is a preference not a performance spec. And a CTO to of a big company.

Im an Ayre user as well.   Highly recommended