Eh, personally I have to go with balanced. However I feel it is important to point out that in the "pro" recording industry the very issue of balanced and unbalanced is debated heavily. Some believe that the unbalanced systems are better because there is no loss of quality from outputs to inputs. These are the same people who have screen caps of test software zoomed in to the smallest pixel and will tell you that it is quality loss. Those that get on the balanced wagon might have many reasons, but overwhelmingly they all agree that there is too much possible outside interference and having a balanced cable will remove most or all noise that is brought into the signal path.
At the end of the day though, as long as it sounds as good as possible, I'm okay with it.
In the category of cost, I've made most of the cables I have today (with the exception of 4 xlr to xlr and 2 trs to trs), so really it is not that much of a price problem for me.
