F-XLR to M-RCA recommendations

I've hit up Moon-Audio for suff like this before. An XLR (female) to RCA (female) adaptor should do the trick - plug into DAC, then you can use your choice or RCA cables. Or I guess you could use an XLR cable run - then you'd need XLR (female) to RCA (male). Moon's "house" brand adapators are decent. They also sell Cardas adaptors that are quite nice. 

They can also make patch cables in this configuration, if you have a short run or just want to run directly without adaptors. I've used Blue Dragon (their basic copper cable) for this before; it's good, but you can go for Silver Dragon if you want silver wire. 

Yeah, the adapter’s pin configuration is going to be extremely important to get right. Sorry I didn’t mention that at first! Here’s what Cardas says about their adaptors on their site:

The standard for female XLR to female RCA adapters is for pins 1 & 3 not to be shorted. All other adaptor configurations (male XLR to female RCA, etc.) have pins 1 & 3 shorted unless otherwise requested. Most equipment prefers (or requires) adaptors with the standard wiring. Some equipment requires that pins 1 & 3 not be shorted.

The female XLR to female RCA is what you need here. And Cardas is saying that pin 3 (the inverted "-" signal in balanced drive) is NOT grounded (pin 1) - so the "-" leg of your source output will be left unconnected (floating). I believe this is the safer choice, and the correct choice for DACs with directly coupled active output stages, which is most of them. It’s exactly as safe as running your DAC with nothing connected to the outputs (safe).

Now if your DAC were to have transformer coupled outputs, which the Laiv apparently does NOT (inter-stage coupling doesn’t matter here), then the standard Cardas adaptor wiring wouldn’t work. I don’t think it would be dangerous, but it just wouldn’t pass a signal. I believe the PS Audio DirectStream DACs uses transformer coupled outputs.

If you used an adaptor that shorted pins 1 & 3 (unlike the Cardas config above), then that could possibly pose danger to some DACs (dissipating too much power into a dead short), but this pin config would be the correct choice for PS Audio’s DirectStream.

In short - stock Cardas config for female XLR to female RCA looks like the right choice here. They’re catering to high-end audio enthusiasts like us. But in general, I think most adaptors and patch cables like this would be for pro market. In THAT case, there would be a higher incidence of transformer-coupled XLR outputs, and so they may take the "short pins 1 and 3" approach.

Another alternative is to get a specific Jensen ISO-MAX box that can safely convert XLR to RCA using transformers, for any source and downstream components. I have one for RCA -> XLR conversions and it's quite handy :)

** I am not an electrical engineer

@OP - there is zero point in using balanced connectors unless the connection is balanced to balanced. Balanced circuits are designed to cancel common mode noise, but to do this they only work if the source and receiving component have balanced inputs. Even then, depending on the quality of the balancing circuitry, a single ended connection may be better.+1 to fatdaddy2 for the earlier post on this which bears repeating.

@yoyoyaya Agree with all this, but in @tyray’s case he’s considering a new DAC with only balanced XLR outputs, no RCA outs. And I assume his downstream component / amp has only RCA inputs. It’s certainly a less common use case to interface like this, but it happens.

So looking at the Laiv (I was searching for "microDAC" when it’s written µDAC lol), it says "discrete class A output buffer". Yeah, you want the Cardas XLR (female) to RCA (female) adapator with its stock configuration (pin 3 open). OR use a Jensen ISO Max box for transformer based XLR to RCA conversion.

With the adaptors you’ll have half of the Laiv’s output stage (negative phase for L and R) idling (with class A it's still producing full heat at idle, but safe), but it will work fine this way. With the ISO Max you’d have the extra box / interconnect and "might" hear the effect of the transformer - but in my experience with ISO Max going the other way (RCA to XLR), they’re pretty damn good!