From the tenor of the last several posts, this "inquiry" may not receive a lot of love, but my interest in the
Topping DM7 is to use it as a DAC for multi-channel music fed by the USB output of a streamer which transmits 5.1 or 7.1 multichannel music files from a
Roon ROCK NUC;
NOT as a part of a Home Theater AVR. The main FR and FL channels would be amplified by a balanced stereo amp fed from the first two channels of the DM7. I would like to feed the the remaining channels back into the single-ended RCA 7.1 multichannel inputs of my AVR and use its amplification for these surround channels.
Because of what John Yang has posted, I think I would not want to use modified TRS to RCA cables (ones which would float the negative line). However, I would consider using balanced-to-unbalanced transformers (two higher quality units are denoted below from
RDL). I know this would degrade the signal of the surround channel signals somewhat, but as they are just the surround channels, they are less of a concern than the main two front stereo channels. And for stereo music listening, I still get all the goodness of the balanced high-quality DM7 DAC.
These are the units I would consider:
View attachment 221153
RDL TX-AFC1F
View attachment 221154
RDL FP-BUC2
The FP-BUC2 has better specs than the TX-AFC1F, but it is also a line amplifier, which could come in handy in balancing the signal strengths of the surround channels with respect to the main balanced stereo line. I would obviously need 2 to 3 of the second unit to accomplish what I want.
I'm asking the more knowledgeable (than me) members of the forum as to what they think of this scheme, audio-wise? -- sound or unsound