I'm surprised to find that professional component vendors are still confused on this issue. In that paper, I found the common conflation of balanced interconnection with differential amplification. Along with personal bias offered as technical rationale. As I've before mentioned, it is fully possible to have a single-ended amplification stage driving an balanced interconnection. For single-ended gain stage afficianados, this could provide the best of both worlds - single-ended sound character plus the ground noise rejection of balanced interconnection.