The big gain for balanced inputs is rejection of signals induced into the wire. Of course optical is the way to go if you are really worried about that. Personally I don't care, my ears are old enough that I no longer hear the difference between a high end and a low end amp.

There are cases where the difference is huge; particularly when you have very long runs between the preamp and the amp. This is on reason why you usually see XLR inputs to monitors. Any noise induced is amplified and a long unbalanced wire is a big antenna.

I've heard of cases where you could receive AM radio stations from such a setup; I lean towards "urban legend" for that though. While it seems theoretically possible (since many amplifier topologies can have resonance when fed signals outside their expected operating range), it seems a bit farfetched to actually end up with intelligible audio.

It's actually pretty common on older guitar amps. I've got a Marshall TMB replica which has this issue when the guitar isn't plugged in. If you turn it up loud enough, you can make out sentences clearly. I thought I was going crazy when I first noticed it.

It's not as far-fetched as you might think. While you aren't likely to see the classic AM demodulator circuit appear in an audio signal path, the nature of AM is that any non-linearity will cause some degree of demodulation to occur, so it can appear in all kinds of places unexpectently (especially if a powerful transmitter is nearby).

It is absolutely not an urban legend. I experienced it myself with my Z5500 speakers! It was a bit soft but on max volume you could clearly make out what was being said

There's thousands of options. Schiit are generally regarded for having high quality products that are relatively cheap.

A good place to find DAC reviews is head-fi: https://www.head-fi.org/forums/dedicated-source-components.7...

Thousands of options is why I asked for a recommendation. I know Schiit has good reviews but I'm just interested in ICs. Something like PCM2707C for USB communication or PCM1794A for DAC or whatever else.

Behringer UCA-202 is the best thing for under $50 IMO. It does not have balanced outputs though.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com has measurements of various DACs. Tl;dr: the topping D50 ($250 MSRP) measures really well, and for a combo amp&dac unit the topping dx7s (currently on massdrop for $360) measures really well. Just a heads up, that site is biased towards objective measurements, the Toppings measure really well, so the site is biased towards them. A lot.

According to that site, Schiit stuff measures really bad.

List of all reviews: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/m...