Balanced vs RCA preamps

I think people who like balanced enjoy plugging in the cables more than RCA. They look really cool.

I have a Conrad Johnson gat2 preamp which does not offer balanced.  by Having both balanced and unbalanced to me means they gotta spend more money duplicating circuits and I would prefer they spend even more money on one circuitry related to the unbalanced. Why spend money on stuff you're not gonna use and after all, balanced in my view relates to when you have really long cable runs which many of us do not.  But they are really cool to plug-in.   

https://aricaudio.com/the-motherlode-xl/

Balanced interface is superior to single ended, not matched impedance RCA (or DIN) one, because:

1) truly balanced (not pseudo) interface has common mode noise rejection, which eliminates / reduces noise between two connected devices chassis / gnds, RCA (or unbalanced DIN), transfer all noise to the signal. 

2) balanced interface, originally designed for 600 Ohm driver / receiver impedance match, eliminates problem of time delayed signal reflections from original signal, thus enables long cables w/o tangible signal quality loss).

3) balancing in RCA or other single ended interconnects can be achieved by adding isolating / balancing transformers, but good performing transformer is costly. 

VAC, BAT, Atma-Sphere & Aesthetix all make tube preamps that are truly balanced. Most BAT models have only balanced inputs & outputs. My VAC has both types. Cheers,

Spencer 

+1 maxdukecapone

I own the Arik Audio Motherload XL. Balanced following the AES48 standard, also with RCA. It is a well made, beautifully sounding pre-amp.  And dead quiet. I have two amps, the Atmasphere Class D (a beautiful pairing) as well as a Radu Tarta SET 45 amp. These also sound wonderful together, but a SET does not have XLR inputs (AES48 standard). My understanding is, by definition, single-ended-triode (SET) operation involves amplifying the entire signal with only one output device. A balanced circuit cannot be built this way. But I may be incorrect.