Balanced vs Unbalanced cable to a stage box

Hi. I was just wondering what effect would it have if I use an unbalanced cable to a digital stagebox like the AR2412 or AB168.
I know about the distance and noise that long unbalanced cables get, but what if I use a short unbalanced cable to a digital stage box and the stage box is connected to the mixer via a long ethernet cable.

The stage boxes are all balanced XLR inputs. To go truly unbalanced in you would need to use an XLR cable that has pin 1 and 3 tied together.
How many channels are we talking about?
Just use a DI box.

Balanced or unbalanced input connection it does not matter once it leaves the stage box on the D Link cable.

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It’s just for a cheap wireless IEM system that has unbalanced stereo input. I did build a cable with the XLR 1 and 3 pins connected but I haven’t tried it out.
I have an AB168 and I’m planning to attach a short custom cable - 3.5mm TRS split to 2 XLR (stereo unbalanced). I wonder if there’s gonna be some weird effect on the sound because of the unbalanced cable, though it’s just really short, like a few inches from the stage box.

If you are trying to connect unbalanced IEM to an output of the AR/AB, then there is no necessary to bridge pins 1 and 3 - there are no output transformers. You can use just pin2 referenced to pin1 and that is it. You’ll have -6 dB on the output comparing to what VU meter will show on the mixer.

Einars

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That will work but be careful, with that it would be possible to send 48 volts phantom back into the devices headphone jack and that could kill the headphone output.

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Thank you for the reminder. :slightly_smiling_face: