Balanced cables

Why and when would you use a balanced cable ? I have a few and do not even know their proper application.

you use them to connect pieces of balanced equipment together, eg pro and semi pro microphones, mixers and outboard (effects).

A balanced cable has +, -, and earth, as wel as usually being shielded too. The receiving equipment inverts the negative and sums it with the positive. This process cancells out any interference picked up by the cable.

So would a balanced cable be used for for direct recording?

If you are referring to a guitar lead no since most electric guitars use an unbalanced cable. Some guitars do have XLR jacks for balanced cable. With an unbalanced cable you would need to use a DI box to match imepeadence, then a balanced cable from the DI to the recording device. But then you are not telling us what kind of equipment you are working with.

Depends on the recording setup. If you want to directly record a guitar, you would need a line converter which basically takes a unbalanced 1/4" input and converts it to a balanced XLR/TRS line level output. Any mic with an XLR connector will work with a balanced cable. An advantage to balanced signals besides the noise canceling is you preserve ~6dB in gain that is lost in an unbalanced signal.