XLR to RCA conversion

Going unbalanced you will lose near- 6dB of amplifier's gain.

The bigger question is whether you can really improve the sound by adding more connections?

So your Manley is not a balanced design and using the XLR input adds one more stage of conversion for the amp. But is this really inferior to using 2 more connections and lots of soldering? I will think not. And that's the exact reason I did not use adaptor to connect my CDP to my SF Line 3 SE to take advantage of my Line 3 SE balanced design.

Worth trying and sharing your knowledge with us though.

Thanks to everyone for the input. I agree with you, Semi, that with more connections, it may not be worth the effort. At the same time, though, it's probably worth spending $ 49.00 to see what will happen with the Cardas adaptors and if using the single-ended connection improves the overall presentation. I'll let you know what I hear...

I am having the same concerns. I have a fully balanced preamp but currently a single ended source. I'm wondering whether it's better to get the preamp to have a single ended input or simply buy a single ended to XLR cable.

I'm running a single ended Cardas Golden Reference IC from my CD (MF Nu-Vista) to my pre-amp (BAT VK-3i). The MF has only single ended connections and the BAT has both SE and balanced. When I tried SE to SE, the sound was OK, but then I tried SE (output) to balanced (input) with the BAT adapters and ... WHOA! I picked up much more gain and the sound was fabulous.

It appears that going balanced TO the input provides more gain than going balanced FROM the output. Don't know why this is. Anyone have an answer to this one?

As to your idea of getting only one end of the IC terminated with an XLR, I'd forget about it. The re-sale value is likely to be nil and you may eventually be stuck with a cable you won't want anymore.