I'd say no. I run 24 channels of 10ft inserts to the patchbay with no real addition in noise floor, maybe 1db of course i keep all other sources of noise like halogen lamps and such away from the cables too.

I'm sure some will agree and some will disagree but it's up to you. try both and see if you can tell a difference.

Cheers

I'm in the same situation. I plan on getting all-balanced connections eventually, but at this point theres a lot of other things I can do which will make a bigger difference. The balanced cables are down the pecking order quite a ways.

Kase
http://
"to hell with the CD sales- download the MP3s and come to the shows!"

the cost of rebuying

Just remember that if you go unbalanced now, and balanced later, the real cost of the interconnects is $unbalanced + $balanced, not just $balanced.

Buy smart, buy once. It adds up.

The only real issue is that some balance gear like the Speck MP5.0 do not perform well into unbalanced loads. As long as you pay attention to this and are sure to use balanced connections for those pieces, you shouldn't have any problem. You will also get around 3dB more out of a balanced connection vs. an unbalanced one. In some situations this may be percived as nearly twice as loud! Last, a general "rule of thumb" is to use balance connections for any run over 10 feet...