I can only speak for my experience. I have a Denafrips stack DAC, Pre-Amp, and amplifier that are all true balanced designs throughout.....I have Morrow Audio MA4 RCA and XLR cables.....same cables, different connections.
My Denafrips Thallo amplifier only accepts XLR inputs, so have only used XLR connections. I did compare the RCA and XLR cables from the Pontus II DAC to the Hades Pre-Amp, and the XLR connections were clearly superior from the very beginning, so much so that I didn't need more than half an hour or so before reverting back to the XLRs.
My assertion is that balanced designs should not be degraded by using an unbalanced RCA connection