It says:Hello @sarumbear and friends,
As for the obvious cons of "balanced" (TRS, XLR) to "unbalanced" (RCA) conversion, you need to carefully read this important educational post (#557 on that thread on DAC8PRO) written by Pavel of OCTO RESEARCH.
4) Cable with floating pin3 (cold)
Using just one of the signals from the XLR side to interface with RCA is a dirty and cheap solution. We cannot guarantee this will be hum-free (depends on circumstances) or that DAC8's output will be pop-free on turn on/off in this configuration, but it is certainly a better way than the previous one. There will still be an increased distortion compared to interfacing a regular XLR input since you will be picking up the common-mode distortion products that would otherwise be rejected. Because you are only taking half of the signal, you will lose 6dB.
He is not saying you cannot connect balanced to unbalance. On the contrary. He says you can.
If you have an equipment that has unbalanced inputs you will have all the issues that comes with an unbalanced connection. We are not arguing if balanced connection is better than unbalanced. That is outside the scope of argument. We are arguing if you can connect a balanced output to a balanced input.
Yes, you can.
Last edited: