story
It's hard to find XLR (or even TRS) balanced connectors on most non-professional (=TV studios, expensive conference room setups, DJs/clubs/similar venues) equipment.
The truth is that we sound engineers who use that stuff for work often do not have the luxury of caring for things that don't matter to the process or the outcome.
Professional AV equipment is expensive because it needs to be reliable on top of sounding as if it wasn't there, one of those units described above was running without fault for 15 years 24/7 in a room that was 30°C each summer (and it still works). Meanwhile my brother bought a silver RCA connector that broke off after a year of use — tip stuck in the amp, guess who had to fix it..
I think this is more of a cultural divide than anything, with tradition being a big part of it. In the olden days balanced I/O had to be done using specialized transformers. Unless you got really expensive well wound ones these could degrade your signal significantly — that might've contributed to a bad rep in audiophile circles. But today you can balance or unbalance electronically with indistinguishable fidelity and... ironically a lot of the analog "warmth" people love in old recordings came from the transformer on the inputs of old mixing desks.
There is really no reason to use unbalanced today other than being really pressed for money or running so short cables that it won't matter - and even then you could do better than RCA connectors.
Yeah but who outside of people already interested in DJing buys that kind of stuff. It just looks ugly, unlike your classic home theater setup.
Out of "looks decent (=passes the Spouse Acceptance Factor test)", "reasonably affordable" and "has decent quality", choose two... unless you got a partner accepting you literally putting up a 2m truss with lasers, movingheads and a strobe in your living room that could compete with a mid-range disco, and a 1.200W fogger on the ground. I'm lucky enough to have such a partner, but I'd say about 99% of people don't.
Balanced outputs have nothing to do with the aesthetics of the object. And I choose option 4 — build it yourself — then it can be done cheap and look however decent, massive, invisible, ridiculous or whatever the aesthetical ven diagram between your second half and you looks like. And it can have balanced I/O if needed ; )
