Some advice on unbalanced to balanced

[shwayne5]

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)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ldolse]

I can't see how switching to balanced from by using a converter from unbalanced RCA to Balanced XLR will remove any of the things you're disliking. The hum and things you don't like are already in the RCA signal. The converter is primarily advertised for converting the physical form factor of the connections.

 

You're probably already well aware of this, but your best option is to get a DAC with XLR out if you want balanced output. Then use the digital output from the Asus to the DAC, and XLR from the DAC to the Mackie. I know the Benchmark DACs support this, not sure which others do.

 

Beyond that the only thing I can think of is to get into some hacking and modify the Asus to use external power.