Please consider this post more general with any DAC with digital balanced inputs than particular to Antelope Zodiac. Which digital interconnect would sound better balanced or RCA?
Agree with Irvrobinson. The "balanced" format is what is used exclusively in the pro/studio world-for good reasons mentioned here many times. The XLR is 110 ohms vs the RCA 75 ohm format so they are not directly interchangeable, you can easily mix and match.
Like 99.9999% of the questions, it all depends on the component and cable. Last month I demoed an expensive highly regarded DAC at home for a week and found AEB/ESU was much superior to RCA eventhough the RCA digital cable is 3X more expensive. The only way to know for sure is try both in your system.
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