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XLR Female to RCA Plug Adapter

Looking for direct experience and/or a technical explanation on using an XLR Female to a male RCA Plug Adapter, if it’s a good idea or not, and what adapters are most transparent and do the least damage to the signal.

According to the manufacturer of my DAC, using its balanced output is much preferred to using RCA. My pre only has single-ended inputs, so if I used a good adapter plug would it negate all the benefits of using the DAC’s XLR out or, put another way, would I just be better off using an RCA interconnect and forgo the adapter? Thanks for any thoughts.

soix

Showing 1 response by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,640 posts
 

Running a truly balanced output is only beneficial if the receiving component has a truly balanced input circuit.

@soix ^^ This.

Don't bother with the XLR output since your preamp can't take advantage of it. The RCA connection will work just fine. The adapter will simple convert the balanced output to single ended and if pin 1 is shorted to pin3, you could possibly damage the DAC (so usually this connection isn't made with many adapters). If it works that way you're only listening to single-ended anyway. So just use the RCA connection.

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