I’m really wanting to have the ability to swap between my XLR output tube amp and my solid state amp. Perhaps my first real A/B testing. But the only XLR switch I see for sale is the 3-pin. I’ve briefly caught glimpses of people using dual 3-pin XLR cables on their headphones, and while I don’t understand the use of this I know that I would prefer a switch if even DIY to different cables for all of my headphones.
Does anyone have any leads on articles, video’s or products to achieve this?
Dual 3 pin was introduced as a headphone output maybe a little over 10 years ago, all it does is keep the two pairs separate out of the amp. At the time there were a couple of other competing dual output formats, that no one uses anymore.
Internally the Dual 3 Pin is almost certainly just bridged to the 4 pin (it is on the amps I’ve opened up).
When I got my first amp with dual 3pin out I build two cables with the same materials to see if it made any difference, I was somewhat annoyed to find I could hear a difference, so everything I own is dual 3 pin terminated (except my Utopia), and I use a 4 pin adapter to the one amp I don’t have dual 3 pin on.
You might have a 4 pin XLR switcher specifically made (or make one), it’s only real use would be an A/B box for headphones, and that’s probably not a common enough use for the Chinese manufacturers to have one, though I see a lot of 3.5mm switchers.
My 2c on fast A/B switching, is it’s not a particularly useful way of understanding the differences between equipment, it takes significant listening time (of the order of minutes) IME to hear differences between DAC’s or similar sounding Amps, at which point you may as well just move the cable.
What is the output of the DAC? Is it RCA or XLR? Using a XLR to RCA adapter to the input of a RCA tube headphone amp is not recommended. You will get unwanted noise from ground loops.
We’re talking about Dual 3 pin out from an Amp to headphones.
Not how a DAC is connected to an Amp.
OK. Wasn’t clear to me from the initial question. 