Do stick with balanced, but here is an interesting aside. I am running my Cd player to my McIntosh 2102 tube amp, using the RCA connections. I have a tuner that also has only RCA connections so I contracted The Cable Company to make me a set of cables going from RCA to XLR. To get the pins right the technician called McIntosh and McIntosh said this was silly as the 2102 amplifier converts the signal to unbalanced so the 'cleaner' path is tto use RCA-RCA. Again, it probably would be better to run XLR-XLR, but this is an interesting aside.
balanced cables
What exactly do balanced cables do, and is there any difference in sound quality? What is it that gets "balanced"? I'm in the process of buying a new(used) Mac amp and preamp, and the literature says they accept balanced cables. Is this to connect the two pieces? I'd really appreciate having some light shed on this question. Thanks.