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connecting equipment with XLR: mixing balanced and single ended

GearHead454

GearHead454

Still Lost
Long title sorry about that.

I have a Modwright preamp (LS100) that has XLR inputs that are specifically noted as being "wired single ended". I am about to get a Lumin D2 DAC/streamer that has XLR outputs noted as being "balanced".

I did a little reading to understand the difference in how the signal is carried in XLR when wired single ended and when wired balanced but I haven't found whether it's safe to connect equipment with XLR when one piece of gear is single ended and the other piece of gear is balanced. Also whether there is any actual reason to use XLR over RCA IC when the XLR is wired single ended.

Anyone with expertise to share on this would be much appreciated,

Thanks
 
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There are adapters and different ended cables. They will work.
Using them the signal will NOT be balanced you so would be losing that capability.
 
thanks, I understand that the connection will not be balanced.
Is it safe on the equipment to connect one piece of balanced equipment to a piece that wired single ended with an xlr cable?
 
I've been doing it for years. My preamp has RCA outs. My electronic crossover has XLR inputs. I've used adaptors with no problem. Currently my 20' preamp to crossover cables have RCA's on one end and XLR's on the other.
 
The rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you do not want to short a driven line (unless you know specifically the type of circuit allows it).

So if one input pin on the Modwright is left floating then no problem using an XLR interconnect. I would ask them.

You can buy RCA to female XLR adapters (which shouldn't even be made in my opinion) that have potential to sharply overload output stages or even cause failures. So just because you can buy an adapter doesn't mean it's a good idea.

EV3
 
Connector gender adapters work fine but don't offer the superiority of truly balanced connections in terms of noise reduction and reduced cable metric effects.
 
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