XLR to RCA cable

The benefit of the XLR to RCA you link to at Amazon is making two audio pieces work together that don't have matching connections.

Even if your phono XLR out is true balanced the conversion to RCA at the other end means only two of the pins are being used. It now becomes single ended.

There is nothing wrong with the cable but unless you can hear the difference between the XLR versus RCA connector itself, there should be no benefit from this versus RCA - RCA.

Hi Marek,

I agree with Albert that using the adapter cable would be unlikely to provide any benefit.

Also, the XLR connector on the cable you linked to is the wrong gender. "XLRM" means that it is a male connector, which can also be determined from the photo. XLR outputs on components are always, or at least almost always, male, so the connector on a mating cable would have to be female (XLR-F). It is the opposite for XLR inputs, which is what this cable would be used for.

Finally, I would not purchase an XLR-F to RCA adapter or adapter cable without verifying that it does NOT connect XLR pin 3 to ground (the RCA ground sleeve and XLR pin 1). That SHOULD be (and usually is) done in an adapter or adapter cable that would be used to adapt to an XLR input, but for reasons that are unfathomable to me it is usually also done on adapters (and perhaps also adapter cables) having XLR-F connectors, that would be used on XLR outputs. That would result in one of the two output signals in the balanced signal pair being shorted to ground. A lot of equipment can tolerate that, but some cannot. Here is one example.

Best,
-- Al

Thank you, Albert and Al. The unit indeed does require female connectors. This fact aside, your answers confirmed what I suspected. In an email exchange, the designer mentioned experimenting with balanced/unbalanced configuration if I experienced issues with noise so I thought I'd explore this option, but it sounds like it would not render any benefits. Hopefully, there will be no noise to worry about...