I've been using balanced connections on my system for years, recently just switched to aes/ebu and it's it's fantastic.

My system runs Micromega transport into the 518 as a volume control, then into my Micromega DAC which then is connected via some Van Den Hul The Thunderline balanced in to my M60's. Over the years I've used a few cabled, Transparent, Van Den Hul, Nordost, but end then was using some Van Den Hul The Thunderline balanced for AES/EBU, switched over to using some Van Den Hul The Second, which at the time was using phonos as I liked the sound more, this Feb I sent them back to Van Den Hul and had them rewired for AES/EBU and to be honest I've never been happier, so much better in every way than using them in phono, also can say the same for all the cables, The Transparent stuff was also very good over the phono 75 ohm versions.