Diving into balanced

You will not discern an audible difference between balanced and rca with an interconnect run of one meter ... now, six meters may be a different story.

Max Townshend and Andreas Koch both feel that RCA's have more "pure sound" due to the additional circuitry of XLR's. So unless someone is going for long distance cables, I think good RCA's are better. I swapped out all my XLR's for Townshend F-1 Fractal RCA's. 

Some components like Jeff Rowland's new amps only have XLR inputs. So the decision is made for all. 

Definitely go with a one meter cable. The amount of stress of the bend at the connector can and will become weakened over time .

I have some equipment with the owners manual telling me " to get the best sound use balanced interconnects".  And others with no balanced connections. And + 9 on the 1 meter length.

It is "well accepted" that balanced is better by many audiophiles but not by people who understand science and objectivity. It's not.