XLR cables for a reasonable price?

Benchmark XLR are some fine cables and cost almost nothing on a relative scale.

You definitely do not need expensive XLR cables. That link above is likely about AES48 (which I concur).

XLRs are great connectors - I've soldered up hundreds over my career and still have a few now-vintage US made Switchcraft pieces in storage. However, unless you have a true balanced system, they are an expensive vanity. Properly used, as the Atma-Sphere paper (well-written IMHO) describes, they are superior without question. Problem is the vast majority of hifi equipment isn't balanced. It's single-ended, and not intended to drive more than 3M or so of high impedance load, not 30M of low impedance. Also balanced cables are not 'louder' they are passive and incapable of adding gain. The equipment with which they are used may have different gain structures which could lead someone to that conclusion, however. 

The balanced line standard often comes up here when discussing XLR cables.  Here is the standard and here is an article by Rane that provides additional context.  Also, see Chapter 3 of this article by Bill Whitlock, of Jensen Transformers, Inc. on balanced audio interfaces.

The balanced line standard covers grounding of balanced lines but not the 600-ohm thing that sometimes enters these discussions.  The 600-ohms was for POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) for which maximizing power transfer by matching output and input impedances was an important consideration.  With home audio gear, almost everything has a low output impedance and high input impedance so the cable characteristic impedance is not an issue, unless you are running cables for tens of miles.

Benchmark 

1.  Wire world Eklipse , if you need ever more extension their gold interconnect is very good.