Balanced is always prefered, but unbalanced can be just fine. Most modern preamps offer both balanced and unbalanced 1/4". And if not, can be use unbalanced cable. I would just try it and see if it works. Worst case it won't work, or you may pick up some noise and lose a little level. Many times, balanced or unbalanced doesn't even make any difference that you can hear or notice.

Thanks AG,

But will the fact I'm adding a mixer into the signal chain make a difference to the noise level?

It could but I would thing it would be very minimal. Noise is not really a problem most moderen gear the it was with older gear. Any additional noise has more to do with how much gain you will be needing from the added mixer and how you set your overall signal chain gain staging.

You could just use a descent Low Z-to-High Z transformer to completely bypass the mixer all together. You could even make a simple 1/4" TRS to RCA unbalanced cable (short the Ring and Sleeve together at the TRS - or just use a TS if the unit will allow), and 99% of gear will do just fine in this configuration.

Some actualy prefer unbalanced in short cable runs as you have no issues with the 2 out-of-phase signals being slighty offset, and possibly causing issues once re-combined at the input (in a balanced configuration).

I would recommend leaving the Behringer OUT of the signal path if at all possible. Any channel strip you get and the 24/96 will likely be degraded by the Behringer... :cool: