First let me apologize if my questions aren't specific enough to speakers...
I have 5 Mackie HR824s (mk1). I've used them for several years and think they sound great for the money. I've mostly utilized 2 of the 5 for 2-channel stereo out of a dinosaur of a pre-amp which happens to be a Rotel RSP-985. Recently, I decided to put 2 more of the 5 Mackies to work as speakers for my computer. Without doing a lot of research I bought The Asus Essence STX audio card thinking that would suffice and I would be more than happy. But, rather than use the 1/4 to RCA like I did/do with my Rotel I decided to utilize the XLR on the back of the Mackie.
Well, of course the only way to use the XLR on the back of the Mackie is to start with RCA from the soundcard, as that is what it offers and then use an unbalanced to balanced converter (I opted for the RDL 2 channel http://www.rdlnet.com/product.php?page=45) and I'm obviously planning on running XLR from the converter to the Mackies.
Currently I'm waiting for my cables to arrive, so in the mean time I've just gone RCA from the soundcard to 1/4'' on the Mackies and I've experienced mediocre results in terms of sound quality, and a fair amount of hum and or hiss. Yes, I know, using a computer with an upgraded soundcard is not an optimal way to listen. So my first question is whether or not the converter is going to make a difference in my sound quality compared to what I'm currently running? I feel like running Mackies through my computer has taken an otherwise raw sounding monitor and made it's shortcomings (for the home stereo environment) and made them worse.
So, I don't have a lot of questions, but I am definitely looking for some feedback (no pun intended)
