Over long runs or in tight spaces with high levels of EM or RF interference, recommending balanced connections is a pretty simple argument. In the average home environment and over the short distances involved in most people's equipment racks, you end up with a sometimes heated debate. The signal rejection benefits of balanced connections shouldn't really be a factor over those distances, and I've seen one argument (made by a very knowledgeable individual) that in those cases a balanced connection could actually be worse than unbalanced - it ends up being related to the manipulations required to achieve a balanced output. In my experience, using balanced connections has not hurt, and it does offer a more secure cable connection than even locking RCA's. Aside from that locking connection, however (which is part of the reason I stayed with balanced when upgrading my amp recently), I can't say whether there's actual real benefit to a balanced connection.