Nobsound 3-IN-1-OUT XLR Audio Switch, Balanced Audio Converter, 3-Way Stereo Passive Audio Selector Switcher (MC103 Pro 3-IN)

£35.455
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Nobsound 3-IN-1-OUT XLR Audio Switch, Balanced Audio Converter, 3-Way Stereo Passive Audio Selector Switcher (MC103 Pro 3-IN)

Nobsound 3-IN-1-OUT XLR Audio Switch, Balanced Audio Converter, 3-Way Stereo Passive Audio Selector Switcher (MC103 Pro 3-IN)

RRP: £70.91
Price: £35.455
£35.455 FREE Shipping

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Description

The MC103 is a fairly simple design, with the XLR ports connected to a rotating switch, allowing the user to select between three options. Option 3 will fix this. By using a switch, we keep the DAC connected to only one amp at a time, avoiding the effect of resistance (input impedance) in parallel, keeping our impedance matching ratio nice and high, and we don’t have to fumble with cables either. The only question is; will the switch degrade audio quality? It’s a passive device and in theory shouldn’t have an effect on audio quality in the way that an active device like a preamplifier might, but does that hold up in practice? Lets find out! Design Needless to say, I recommend the MC-103 Pro. I plan to use it to select between active speakers for listening tests.

For instance, My Gustard X20 is internally fully balanced and so is my Hypex nCore power amplifier. When I added my newly built XONO phono preamp clone (which is also balanced by design) to the mix, I felt I was spending more time unplugging cables than actually listening to music. My problem was that I needed a super-flexible preamp with multiple XLR inputs. Unfortunately, even the most expensive ones from Burmester or Accuphase come with 1-2 inputs at best. And there was no way I wanted to spend that kind of crazy money. So, other than the slight concern in regards to the shorting issue, the construction seems to be pretty nice, with an attractive price to match, but can this switch be considered ‘transparent’? Measurements Measurements Include: One to route the mono output of my preamp in 2 different directions (one going to EQ; one going to Apollo) The Douk/Nobsound MC-103 Pro does what you expect it to do: switch between three balanced inputs with essentially no degradation even when held up to the high standard of my audio analyzer. If you don't need gain/volume control or remote control, it would make a nice "pre-amp" replacement. Once things are line level after the preamp I’ve been toying with using the humble Y splitter cable but this is more for hardware monitoring than recording clean and processed simultaneously. I’ve been meaning to do my own tests to see how much (if any) signal degradation there might be other than slight level drop. So it could be a cheaper solution rather than buying a dedicated box - though I’ve also been looking at the radial splitters.Hey man,But it gets even better since the little unit can also convert between XLR and RCA which is fantastic if you haven’t got an adapter handy and need to feed an unbalanced signal into a balanced amplifier or vice versa. I wish there was a remote control version and I’d gladly pay for that convenience but I’m ok with a manual solution.

Mine arrived in what appeared to be perfect condition; I finally got around to hooking it up today, and everything seems to work fine. No audible distortion, and while it looks like a Christmas tree when powered thanks to all the colored LEDs, it seems perfectly functional both in active and passive mode. That said, I haven't listened to the built-in headphone amp; that's not really what I bought it for, and I just assume it's probably terrible. I was not expecting to use the volume controls, but they've turned out to be more handy than I expected, and being able to switch easily between the balanced and unbalanced inputs means I can use this in a lot of places where passively routing signals around would be useful. All of these values are consistent with a typical XLR cable. Impedance is slightly higher though as would be expected due to the switch itself. SummarySo far, I haven't noticed any degradation in audio quality. But I prefer to not take any risk in potentially worsening audio quality by using RCA switches. But at the same time, prior to using RCA switches, I was disconnecting and reconnecting the RCA cables to switch amps which was eventually going to wear out the RCA cable and the RCA output of the amp over time. Measurement setup and device under test are running on regulated 230V power from a Furman SPR-16-Ei A DAC has an output impedance, and an amplifier has an input impedance. Ideally you want the output impedance to input impedance ratio to be as high as possible, though keeping it above 10:1 at a minimum is an ok rule of thumb. (See our glossary for some info on input/output impedance!) The MC103 comes in a ‘1-in, 3-out’ variant and a ‘3-in, 1-out’ variant. There is also an MC303 with a ‘3-in, 3-out’ configuration facilitated by two switches instead of one.



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