sjjohnston

You don't really lose that much (other than 6dB of level) because of the fact the RNC is unbalanced. Balanced lines help get rid of noise that gets into the signal while it's running through the cable. If everything is close together, there shouldn't be any such noise anyway - plus, the signal at this point is line-level, so any noise that does exist will be tiny compared to the signal. When you care about balanced lines is when (a) there's a long cable run and/or (b) the signal isn't that much bigger than the noise (like the signal from a mic).

If you were, say:

- To connect a balanced output to a stereo input, what the input box thought was the "right" channel would actually just be an inverted copy of the what it thought was the "left" channel. Result: you get essentially identical right and left tracks, but the right is inverted - nothing gained and, indeed, something lost (the entire signal) if you sum left and right to mono.

- To connect a stereo output to a balanced input, what the input box thought was going to be an inverted copy of the "hot" input would actually be the right channel. Result: boxes that get balanced inputs typically treat the difference between them as the "signal," so you'd wind up with a signal which was only the difference between the right and left channels. Everything that's panned in the middle would actually vanish!

Stereo and balanced are two entirely different things, notwithstanding the fact they sometimes use the same connector (a TRS). A balanced output uses a TRS because it wants to send both a "hot" and "cold" signal (the second is just an inverted copy of the first); a stereo output uses a TRS because it wants to send both a "left" and a "right" signal, which are at least slightly different from one another (and both of which are, incidentally, unbalanced).

You really want: XLR out from preamp -> TS in to left channel of RNC -> TS out from left channel of RNC -> TS (or TRS) in to left channel of audio interface. Just don't use the right channel of the RNC at all.

The XLR-TS cable should be wired with pin 1 of the XLR to the shield, pin 2 to the signal line and tip at the other end, and pin 3 to the shield. If you've somehow got a cable with an XLR at one end and two TSs at the other end, you can probably use it, but just don't plug one of the TSs in at all.

It would sort of be stereo,* but not in any meaningful sense: you'd just have two effectively identical signals on the left and right track. There's no advantage to doing this, and it uses up disk space (and processing power and ram) without actually accomplishing anything, and possibly doing harm.
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*Assuming the TRS input in the interface is a stereo input.

Hey sj,

If you're around I could really use your help. What if I run single XLR to dual TS into the RNC, then run dual TS to single TRS from the RNC to my audio interface? Will this keep the signal in stereo for vocal and guitar tracking? Unfortunately as previously stated, the RNC only accepts unbalanced lines.

Thanks,

Arlen