This comment about "leaving the downstream (or upstream) sheild unconnected puzzles me. I've never read that this is something to consider. It must only come into play with a 3 conductor + shield cable architecture... or xlr to 1/4" I just peeked at some star quad xlrs that I have and the sheild is soldered to the 3 pin at each end. Im confused. (There's a shock.)
With the starquad balanced cables you have no choice but to use the shield for the ground. I've come across a few unbalanced IC construction recipes that put the signal and return on a twisted pair, then shielded the twisted pair with the shield tied to ground at one end just like described above. Usually the shield ground is connected to the source component, as mentioned earlier, so that the collected noise is not drained into the subsequent gain stage.
If you wanted to try this with balanced cables, you need an additional path inside the shield for common or run an additional braided sleeve around the outside of something like starquad. I never tried this but I have read several reports that shielded cable sounds worse than unshielded twisted pair when no interference is present. So I wonder if the additional braid would be bad or good. Also, I don't imagine that this is much use for mic cables since the source is a small signal and there is not place for the noise to drain at the source end.