[WarmColors]

Hi all,

I own a Rythmicaudio sub/plate amp (A370PEQ). I will be pairing my PS Audio DAC/Pre with an Odyssey amp. I was by a rep. from PS Audio "So the Gain Cell DAC is balanced by design, and we tend to advise against grounding pins of the XLR to make it compatible with RCA or using XLR to RCA cables.

It tends to be a lot more sensible to use RCA cables in a case like yours. It's less stress, and provides less chance for weird interactions to come up.

Additionally, if you're also trying to hook up a subwoofer, then a splitter cable would work, or if possible you could always feed XLR to the sub and RCA to your amp."

I will be using RCA's to connect to the amp, but I still need to connect to the sub via XLR. Should I just purchase an adapter XLR to RCA and connect to the sub that way? Or should I purchase a splitter RCA?

Thank you,

[tino27]

If it were me, I'd go with the less damaging option to the sound. Any type of converter/splitter is going to have a negative impact on the sound (compared to no converter/splitter at all in the signal path). I would send the non-split RCA output to the amplifier and then use the XLR->RCA adapter(s) to send the XLR output to the subwoofer. That way, you are really only potentially affecting the sound that the subwoofer is going to produce.

The only thing to keep in mind, of course, is that you'll be sending the full spectrum of frequencies to the amp (20hz-20hkz) and the subwoofer will be taking care of signals starting at 20hz (or whatever your sub starts at), so you'll probably need to fiddle a bit with crossover and gain in the sub to match it to your main speakers. I do something similar with my current setup and it took me a good 4-6 weeks to get the sub tweaked to where it complements the main speakers and doesn't overpower the room.

[JackD]

Does the Rythmik amp not have speaker level inputs?  If so the preferred method would be to connect it that from the speaker outputs of the Odyssey amp.