Some years ago I have bought a XLR to DIN interconnect cable (from Flashback cable) to use with every source that used balanced outputs.
Now I am testing it again, with a Denafrips Pontus II dac and a Sonic Frontiers SFD-2 MkII dac, and I find the sound not only higher in volume level (understandable because the higher voltage typical of balanced outputs) but above all a tad stressed, with harder treble. It sounds ok at a low volume setting but starts being fatiguing at moderate level.
My questions:
1 - can the higher voltage be too much for the Nac 122x (with Flatcap 2x / Nap 150x)?
2 - are the cables not good enough?
Using a Atlas Hyper rca-rca interconect surely restore the calm back…
Both of your DACs have single ended outputs as well as balanced. Why would you use the balanced output when you are running them into a single ended input?
All Naim pre-amps can take up to 7V before overload, so I don’t think that’s the issue, unless your DACs have unusually high output.
FWIW, you’ll likely get better performance going single ended here if your DACs provide single ended outputs.
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That is the answer I was looking for (7V), thanks.
I am only using the XLR-DIN cable because both dacs are known to sound better throughout the balanced output… but in my case it is not working.
Mixing unbalanced (so called single ended) with balanced is never going to sound optimal unless you go through an UnBal, either a professional in line transformer or active converter.
There are some very good, though not cheap, professional UnBal transformers out there, primarily for the recording industry. I used two with my 552 when driving actives for a while… it sounded rather good.
The same principle holds true for going balanced to unbalanced, here you would use a BalUn for optimum performance.
Balanced out puts are only going to be usually better quality wise if the device is a natively balanced design internally… otherwise converters are required internally which will ever so slightly rob performance, and then if you use BalUns, you are robbing a bit of performance again.
It does look like the Denafrips Pontus II dac is natively balanced however.
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I have an apogee symphony for my keyboards which I keep meaning to try out instead of my tascam da3000 for recording vinyl. I was put off because of the need to go from unbalanced tape out to xlr balanced. I just assumed the suboptimal cabling would outweigh the better ADC. What unbal did you try? That’s something I should test out at some point.
I used Canford inline balanced to unbalanced converters. They provide the following BalUn performance
| Frequency response: | 40Hz-100kHz +0.5 dB @ 0dBu 600 ohm source |
|---|---|
| 10k ohm load | |
| Insertion loss: | Typically 0.2dB with conditions as for frequency response |
| Maximum level before saturation: | +10dBu (30Hz) |
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