Why Single-Ended?

To Ralph's point about the audibility of cables; I settled on DIY CAT 5 cables as interconnects and speaker cable years ago. They are neutral configured as single ended over any practical length in the home. I encourage anyone who is on the cable merry go round to do the same and focus on things that have more impact. If you are a million dollars into your system and want to play around with mega buck cables then have fun. If you have a budget like me then cables are the last thing to spend any money on. IMHO playing with the placement of your speakers will have much more impact than cables and it is free. On the other hand, you can go with Ralph's approach and eliminate cables from the equation

However, as a DIY guy that builds his own SE amps I have the luxury of tuning the sound to my preference with the active circuits and don't have to feed the coffers of ridiculously overpriced cable makers. It is inconceivable to me that someone would pay $20,000 + for speaker cables. That tells me 2 things; PT Barnum was right and I'm in the wrong business

Honestly you need to audition all kinds of amplifiers (I have). They work best with different speakers as well. I personally don't like SET amps at all (and I've owned 101db and now 91db speakers and tried at least a half dozen of them). I tend to prefer 3rd harmonic over 2nd I guess. But the people who are adamant that only one way is technically correct or sounds right are to be ignored. 

Ironically, the best I've ever heard Avantgarde was Trios w/ basshorns on BAT tubes years ago. The audience gave standing ovations - but darn those complicated balanced amps :)

Thank you Ralph for explanation about third harmonics. I understand that advantage of the fully balanced configuration is removal of second harmonic to better hear the third one (that you try to lower?). As for the balanced cable - yes it can run further because of superior noise rejection but still suffers from effects of the capacitance between wires. There is no way of getting rid of it. Capacitance to shield is different story. Reducing it would require usage of low capacitance signal transformers. Otherwise - even if you completely "float" signal ground in preamp and amp it will find return, by substantial capacitance of power transformer, to chassis (that you earth ground) hence to shield attached to it. Am I missing something?

Rane paper shows XLR cable (pattern1) with shield grounded at female end only, while common XLR cables, sold in stores, have shield grounded at both ends.

It would seem so.

In order to support the balanced line standard:

1) pin 1 is ground, pins 2 and 3 carry the signal
2) the signal occurs between pins 2 and 3.
3) Ground (shield) is ignored
4) the system is low impedance.

Again as I pointed out earlier, most high end audio systems don't do so well with 3) and 4) nor for that matter 2).

If they did though, the capacitance becomes a non-issue in lengths of 200 feet or so (which should be practical in most homes- at my place they are only 30 feet).

So, Again. If the equipment supports the balanced standard, you won't hear the effects of the cable. IOW if you can hear the effects of the cable, its likely that your gear does not support the standard.

I come from the 'pro audio' side. Looking for a reasonably priced ( OK, cheap) 5 channel amp, I couldn't believe that so many 'hi-fi' amps are unbalanced. I've never used a fully balanced topology (may be, probably is, superior!), but I've come to the conclusion that an XLR connector (with a short cable run)  just introduces yet another circuit into the audio chain ( balanced->unbalanced op-amp) which is to be generally avoided, notwithstanding that companies often choose to shave-off a few cents of quality at this junction.