I asked this question, balanced OR unbalanced, of a well known equipment evaluator and review writer for Widescreen Review about this and here are his responses, paraphrased into one quote.
Quote:
Balanced whenever you can.
Unabalanced only when you have to.
Noise = bad.
No noise = good
Telephony, data, network, etc are all differential. Why?
Inherently low noise, plus excellent external noise rejection.

I question cancelling even order harmonic distortion and leaving odd order distortion, but I don't have anything that could model it and prove it wrong.

Regardless, your ears (and mine) agree... balanced sounds better to me.
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Take Care,
merc
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merc\'s primary system