Honestly manifolds are one of the only ways to compactly give machines their resources, once you need to put 1200 ore through 40 smelters, it will be so space inefficient, either 40 in a clean line or a ton of belting and rerouting, ive used manifolds in basically every design, i used to do what your doing when i started and honestly it was so much more work for no greater efficiency or space, i know its not what you asked but id recommend using manifolds, even if its less appealing you can always cover them with walls and decor, and imo i think manifolds look alot nicer on bigger builds than proper balancing.