you have to increase latency. increase it til no glitches are audible anymore. i have 11ms, thats ok, but i have a very good soundcard. for recording vocals or guitar, i´d lower it to 256 samples though.
dont worry about balanced outputs. if the soundcard you are going to buy offers it, good, if not, not a drama.
its only useful if both, soundcard and speaker (monitor) offer balanced outs/ins anyway.
its not necessary imo. some might say theres even no difference audible.
i´ll just quote mike here, who explained it recently