Lack of balanced outs was not a dealbreaker for me. I bought the Ultra and love its feature set.
However, I discovered that I do need balanced outs. I heard an annoying ground loop while playing Roon. It came from one of the HDMI inputs to the TV and on through the Ultra ARC input. In the short run, I disconnected the extra input.
The offending device was plugged into a separate outlet than the Ultra and amplifier. It used the same outlet as the TV itself and an Xbox and AppleTV that were also connected to the TV.
I learned that that other outlet was from another circuit on the same leg as the amplifier outlet.
No other devices connected to the TV caused an issue.
The offending device was an old, but highly configured, Intel NUC PC. Its only remaining purpose was a Roon Core.
When the NUC was connected via HDMI to the TV and Roon was playing, the Ultra picked up noise via its HDMI ARC input. The noise was a quiet, pulsing white noise. When the ARC input was selected the noise was absent. It was audible only when the Ultra was only receiving CEC signals from the ARC input.
I don't know if the noise was due to a ground loop and would have been eliminated by balanced connections to the amplifier. All I do know is that it came over HDMI and that removing one HDMI connection eliminated it.
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