Audiophile hi-fi market and balanced connections Options

[Brand]

Even many cheap-ish $100 sound cards have balanced connections.
Yet, for a $4,295 "audiophile" amp, it's somehow normal to have unbalanced analog only. (But hey, you get a "Digital Filter Slope" switch..)

Am I missing something or is this just regular audiofoolery at work?

I was doing some RMAA tests and the cables were very susceptible to outside interference. Place them next to some other (power) cables and you easily see 20dB of extra noise in the measurements.
Sure, it's not really a problem with short cables that you keep away from interference, but for premium/audiophile equipment I'd still expect balanced connections to be the standard by now.

This post has been edited by Brand: Aug 26 2012, 14:39

[Brand]

With the "whole chain" I actually meant just that both the output (say, of a CD player) and the input (amp) need to be balanced for the balanced aspect to work. Perhaps redundant, but I wanted to point that out.

[Arnold B. Kruege...]

With the "whole chain" I actually meant just that both the output (say, of a CD player) and the input (amp) need to be balanced for the balanced aspect to work. Perhaps redundant, but I wanted to point that out.

I agree that if you want the best reasonably possible dynamic range easily via analog, you use balanced connections in audio systems.

The classic simple CD player -> receiver system works well enough that way as a rule.

Thing is, as soon as you add much more complexity, even just a grounded FM antenna, to that setup things can easily go west.