RCA to XLR interconnect wiring diagram

I must have gotten lucky with the preamp/amp combo. The preamp and speakers have been in my system for a while, but the amp is a new addition and I'm just not hearing the distortion. With a transitor amp it should have been wired ground to pin 1 and a 10k resister between pin 1 and pin 3 then right? How about going from a balanced crossover to a single ended transistor amps, would I wire the female XLR the same way with a resister between pin 1 & pin 3? Thank you for the help.

My experience is the same as spfury's. I use the wiring I suggested above with all of my unbalanced source components RCA outs (DVD, VCR, TV) into my balanced preamp XLR ins with not a sign of noise even with the gain at max. I think you're fine as is.

Going from balanced to RCA you would do just as you say. Terminate pin 3 to 1 with a resistor, depending on the the load at the destination (which "looks" from pins 2 to 1).
I'd try and match that load, so the balanced stage sees a balanced load. Not always a necessity, since some equipment just use an inverting buffer for the negative output...
With that kind of equipment, my question would be: why bother?! :-(