Thanks for the reply, John. Yeah, I'm not really expecting any performance gains using XLR. I don't think noise is going to be a problem, especially with such short distance. It's totally just the status symbol thing in this case.

Unfortunately, the site you linked to is one that Charter feels the need to withhold from me at the moment. I'll have to try again tomorrow. It's hard to research purchases when half of the internet is out of reach.