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

[RonaldDumsfeld]

We can already buy USB microphones, turntables and digital powered monitors so presumably the issue will solve itself in a few years when all signal manipulation and transfer is carried out digitally and all transducers have clean but inexpensive built in ADC/DAC chips?