[Cortes]

 Hi everyone,

  I'm considering buying a new DAC. It will feed external monitors and a headphone amp. Most of active monitors have XLR inputs, so is it necessary to buy a DAC with XLR outputs
to drive well the monitors?. Or a DAC with non balanced outputs is fine  with a RCA-XLR interconnect provided the cable lenght is just a few feet?.

Thx.
 

 

[Cortes]

Everyone here runs monitors from balanced sources?

 

[JerryLove]

The signal on an RCA (consumer) output is something like -6db from the signal on an XLR (commercial) output. You will need to raise the gain on the speaker or use a gain-adjusting XLR adapter.

 

[Cortes]

Apart from the gain, which is straight to fix, do you know whether there is a loss of quality for 3-6 feet cables with respect to full balanced connection?.  Thx.

 

[JerryLove]

Quote:

Apart from the gain, which is straight to fix, do you know whether there is a loss of quality for 3-6 feet cables with respect to full balanced connection?.  Thx.

No. There's no unusual loss of fidelity going from unbalanced to balanced.

 

[Cortes]

Thansk, Jerry