Daft question?

[Pieoftheday]

Afternoon all, at the weekend I hooked up my new power amp, Roksan k3, I'm using van damme star quad xlr's. Now I realise RCA inputs have negative/ positive inputs/out puts,do balanced connections? Am I making sense? Ta Jim

[Puffin]

[Beobloke]

Afternoon all, at the weekend I hooked up my new power amp, Roksan k3, I'm using van damme star quad xlr's. Now I realise RCA inputs have negative/ positive inputs/out puts,do balanced connections? Am I making sense? Ta Jim

RCAs don’t strictly have positive and negative; they have positive and ground.

Balanced XLR connections have positive, negative and ground.

[Pieoftheday]

Thank you

[Puffin]

No problem.

[Filterlab]

Balanced XLR connections have positive, negative and ground.

It's also why the hot and cold pin configuration doesn't matter, as long as the ground is correct and both cables match. On most XLR configurations pin 2 is positive and pin 3 is negative, but on Japanese equipment pin 3 is positive and pin 2 is negative. As the cables are balanced it matters not as the phase is reversed equally on both channels

Balanced equipment is great (my opinion).

[Pieoftheday]

It's also why the hot and cold pin configuration doesn't matter, as long as the ground is correct and both cables match. On most XLR configurations pin 2 is positive and pin 3 is negative, but on Japanese equipment pin 3 is positive and pin 2 is negative. As the cables are balanced it matters not as the phase is reversed equally on both channels

Balanced equipment is great (my opinion).

I getchya

[Barry]

Also some American equipment uses pin 2 negative, pin 3 positive. Mating equipment with this polarity convention with equipment that uses the opposite convention, will result in a change of absolute phase, which may or may not be audible. (I can't hear the difference when the absolute phase is changed, but some can.)