BTW I mispoke in that prious post. I didn't do my math correctly. I will be using 2 x E30s iinstead of 1.
Well yes you may be missing something. We were talking about Trinnov Altitude-16's new +4 feature. Trinnov has an intersing method of adding additional channel outputs. I couldn't tell if you have a Trinnov now or are thinking of buying one. The Trinnov Altitude 16 has 16 balanced out to begin with. So they certainly would have your 7.1 covered, However, with a new software upgrade they have added 4 more speaker channel outputs or what they call +4. Using the Altitude's digital outputs, ,coax SPDIF and optical Toslink, you can feed 2 simple external stereo DACS for 4 extra channels or 16 + 4 = 20 speaker channel outputs. Hence "+4". Thats where the Topping E30s comes in. You could use almost any external DAC so if those DACs had balanced out that would work too. Amazon has several in the $25 range. I'm using my +4 with 2 x E30s (stereo RCA unbalanced)) to drive 4 subwoofers that are not equipped with balanced inputs so I'm not too worried about distortion from unbalanced v balanced. I'm using balanced on the other 16 channels. Basically 16 main and surround speakers using 16 balanced outputs of the Altitude 16 along with 4 powered subwoofers utilizing Altitude's +4 feature using 2 x E30s ( 1 each on coax and optical)
You can drive 20 speakers total in any combination. All of these channels are assignable and can be configured in a variety of ways, position, EQ etc. The Altitude is smart enough to adapt whatever speaker topology (within reason) you have configured, say Atmos, or DTS, or Auro 3D and correct that on the fly to play any of the other formats you want. So lets say I have Atmos as a physical speaker set up. Altitude can recognize a DTS playback format and correct for the Atmos physical configuration to simulate the DTS or Auro.