F-XLR to M-RCA recommendations

** I am not an electrical engineer

Lol!

Me neither Mike, but thanks to reading so many posts of yours and others here over the years, I do know the proper procedures to follow because of ground shorting and they are:

To contact both the dac and preamp manufactures to see what their engineering team has to say and provide them with the product data link of Cardas, Jenson, Purist Audio Design, the custom cable builder or whatever after market company the exact product data link.

And also provide Cardas, Jenson, Purist Audio Design, the custom cable builder or whatever dac and preamp manufacture the exact dac and preamp manufactures product data link so they can have access to their specs too.

I think these are the most important things to do, if one were to move forward with this so you don’t damage your rig.

@OP - there is zero point in using balanced connectors unless the connection is balanced to balanced. Balanced circuits are designed to cancel common mode noise, but to do this they only work if the source and receiving component have balanced inputs. Even then, depending on the quality of the balancing circuitry, a single ended connection may be better.+1 to fatdaddy2 for the earlier post on this which bears repeating.

a single ended connection may be better.+1 to fatdaddy2 for the earlier post on this which bears repeating.

Thanks, I'm listening @yoyoyaya and @fatdaddy2

@tyray, thanks. Just on your earlier post about galvanic isolation - that generally involves using a transformer in, generally, a DAC, to isolate the DAC from incoming noise on the USB input.

However, transformers are often used in balanced circuitry - especially in pro audio - so that can make things a bit confusing.

@OP - there is zero point in using balanced connectors unless the connection is balanced to balanced. Balanced circuits are designed to cancel common mode noise, but to do this they only work if the source and receiving component have balanced inputs. Even then, depending on the quality of the balancing circuitry, a single ended connection may be better.+1 to fatdaddy2 for the earlier post on this which bears repeating.

@yoyoyaya Agree with all this, but in @tyray’s case he’s considering a new DAC with only balanced XLR outputs, no RCA outs. And I assume his downstream component / amp has only RCA inputs. It’s certainly a less common use case to interface like this, but it happens.

So looking at the Laiv (I was searching for "microDAC" when it’s written µDAC lol), it says "discrete class A output buffer". Yeah, you want the Cardas XLR (female) to RCA (female) adapator with its stock configuration (pin 3 open). OR use a Jensen ISO Max box for transformer based XLR to RCA conversion.

With the adaptors you’ll have half of the Laiv’s output stage (negative phase for L and R) idling (with class A it's still producing full heat at idle, but safe), but it will work fine this way. With the ISO Max you’d have the extra box / interconnect and "might" hear the effect of the transformer - but in my experience with ISO Max going the other way (RCA to XLR), they’re pretty damn good!