@atmasphere Thank you for the xlr cable suggestion. I too like to save money and even if on short runs, an unbalanced cable is able to sound "clean", that cable is likely to be much more expensive to get similar performance to the balanced path.
audio-gd responded that "The preamp convert the SE input to balanced output.".
without getting into the weeds, it seems there is one highly desirable outcome of balanced/differential circuits. A balanced cable will have less noise, giving a higher signal to noise ratio.