Having read a few of your posts now, I have come to beleive that you do not have very much real life expereince and love to just spew out stuff you have heard. Your statement concerning unbalanced and balanced patchbays certainly confirms my belief. In the professional world, and for that matter probably also in the majority of the HR world, BALANCED is standard. If you can't think of a reason to even have a balanced patchbay, then you obviously have never worked with any gear out there and so maybe should not be making comments and statements about it. BALANCED is pretty darned standard. In professional studios, TT patchbays are also very standard. TT cables are balanced cables as well. In fact, it would be rare to find an unbalanced patchbay in a professional studio unless it was there specifically for a piece of equipment or two.
Then again, I guess I should have expected this from the person who reccomends that guitars be recorded straight from a BOSS floorboard as opposed to an actual amp and mic. I guess maybe micing a cab is also extraordinarily rare?
What you should maybe consider is that it is OK to not know these things. There are some people here who can help you learn these things. However, if you decide to pretend that you already know them, those that do will figure you out very quickly and will not go out of their way at all to help you. I run into people like you all the time that just want to talk shop to make themselves look cool or to try and get me to hire them. In the end, I want absolutely nothing to do with those idiots. In EVERY case I would rather hire a person who admitedly does not know yet but exhibits the capacity and desire to learn.