Balanced vs Unbalanced Audio in Traktor

Hi everyone.
This WE I came accross a smple little piece of hardware that delighted me. A little control surface with a piece of software that allowed me to mix my mp3 collection. We needed a decent way to play our MP3s and just making an iTunes playlist wasn't good enough, since we all are big House music fans and wanted a little more control over the whole thing.

Well, the party was amazing and we had mixes that everyone could swear were done by a professional DJ.

The device was called Hercules DJ Console and it amazed me and a bunch of friends.

After my lovely experience I started to research more about the concept and found how advnaced we are. I decided to invest in a full-fledged Traktor System and sell the Hercules "crap" to one of my friends.

I already have a G4 powerbook and am planning on getting a kontrol-DJ surface.

My question is wether I should by a balanced or an unbalanced Firewire sound device.
Right now I am in between the M-audio Firewire 410 (unbalanced output) and the PreSonus Firebox 6X10 (balanced output). Both boxes seem pretty similar in regards to capabilities, I/Os and price, except for this factor.
What would you all recommend? I am planning on hooking it up directly to the XLR inputs of my active speaker system (JBL G12). I am looking for:
1.Reliability - I want it to work and not crash.
2.Sound Quality - I would like to eliminate any sort of Hum or ground Loop.
3.Flexibility - I want to be able to hook it up to not only the XLR speakers, but also say an RCA enabled receiver or amp.

Any help would be extremely appreciated.
Thank you all,
Marcello

 

Currently own and use a M-Audio FireWire410 on my PowerBook and my G5. It has a great software routing app that lets you route the sound any way you like.

Had no issues with it to date except a when I had a 2nd Video card in my G5, but this caused issues even with the built-in sound card. Pulled the card and the problem was gone.

Not seen or used the PreSonus Firebox so can't comment on that.

 

While I'm nobody's sound guy or electrician, everything I've read says that you should keep everything balanced in the signal path if at all possible, and that the introduction of unbalanced signal is often a source of ground loop or signal noise.

My experience (admittedly not as comprehensive as many of the forum members) bears this out--but if you're playing out, at some point you'll end up gigging someplace that either won't let you touch their setup, or isn't set up for you to plug directly into the house mixer, and you'll have to plug into the house DJ mixer. Which means using an adapter cable with RCA male plugs, which means introducing unbalanced signal. Usually this works fine, but the only time I've ever experienced ground loop are when I've had to do this. That doesn'tmean it was the unbalanced signal; it could have been the house wiring, not running off of the same circuit, etc. But it's good to know.