It’s only an advantage with noise, if the interconnects are over 10mts long. Single ended in most cases sound better, because many balanced inputs or outputs are just a balanced opamps thrown into the signal path before or after the true single ended input or output!!
I believe balanced is advantageous from a noise perspective regardless of the length. But sure, the longer the length, the more advantageous.
And, while I do agree that balanced cables doesn’t necessarily mean a true balanced circuit in its entirety, the signal level is typically +6 db hotter than straight SE, and that too can (although sometimes not do to clipping) also be advantageous.
I disagree, however, that SE sounds better in *most* cases. In fact, I believe the opposite is true, that balanced sounds better in most (but do agree not all) cases.
EDIT:
And what does this have to do with the topic/thread? Well, in the case of the Yggdrasil, Schiit prefers balanced by stating (in the manual) "if you don’t have balanced gear, we’ve provided two sets of summed single ended outputs that preserves much of the balanced "magic" of the Yggdrasil."
I think the operative word there is that it preserves *much* of the balanced magic, but not all.