Looking for the expert opinion on this: my Stellar GCD is connected to a set of M700 using XLR. While playing with SACD on my Oppo 103, I mistakenly connected its analog output to the Stellar GCD’s other RCA analog output, and was baffled that music would still come out though the volume could only be controlled by the Oppo player, and the sound quality is actually quite good.
So, could connecting and using both sets of analog outputs at the same time cause any damage to the SGCD, amps or the Oppo player? Thanks.
Connecting 2 outputs together is not good practice.
Sound quality is probably diminished.
In theory the Oppo and GDC could be damaged but most likely will be fine.
Your M700 power amp’s input should not be effected at all.
Since the XLR and RCA outputs of the Stellar GCD are in parallel, you were feeding the output signal of your OPPO back out of the XLR outputs (electricity takes the path of least resistance.)
Do not ever do this again. You risk shorting out one or both pieces of equipment and/ or damaging the output stages.
You can connect two different outputs of your OPPO to their respective Stellar GCD inputs and switch between them e.g. connect the analog outputs and the RCA (SPDIF) output to its related input.
My Sony UBP-X1000ES is connected to both the Analog “3” inputs. My S/PDIF from the Sony is connected to Coax “5”. The HDMI out is connected to my Sony AVR which I’ve added true balanced XLR outputs which feed the Analog “1R” & 1L" SGCD/Preamp’s XLR inputs. The XLR outs of the SGCD feed a Balanced to Unbalanced adapter the into my Bose Series 2 heavily modified EQ Box. The output of that goes to another Unbalanced to Balanced adapter which feed two M700’s.
The Sony X1000ES has a built in DAC that does true DSD decoding up to 11.2MHz. The coax out I use for PCM playback, and HDMI for playback of 5.1 SACD’s/2.8MHz DSD files, DVD and BluRay Audio.
No damage but I don’t think it’s the best idea. Essentially, the two outputs are now in parallel. It might just work and, if it is, there’s no harm done.
Thanks for all of your feedback. Is my understanding correct that this output-to-output connection essentially bypasses the preamp, so what heard was the DAC in Oppo going straight to the power amps? Reason I asked is that the SQ is much better than connecting Oppo to the analog input of the SGCD. I quite frankly have been struggling with SGCD as I think it degrades SQ as a preamp vs. connecting my DSJ directly to my power amps. Now, this could be another example.
The RCA OUT is directly connected to one single end of the balanced XLR OUT. So in case you connect a source to the RCA OUT, that one side of the XLR plays whatever you have connected to the RCA out connector, the other side might play the remaining output of the Pre Amp. But because the line signal of the source you connected to the RCA OUT is most likely stronger than the clean processed volume controlled pre, you have literally bypassed the pre amp and volume control.
You can use the RCA OUT parallel to THE XLR OUT in cases like mine, where I connect active monitor speakers to XLR OUT. The monitors offer no Sub Woofer connection. PS Audio informed me that utilizing the RCA OUT of the Stellar to connect to RCA input of the Subwoofers will have no detrimental effect on the overall XLR OUT performance and quality. This is due to the high impedance of the SubWoofer input, so it’s wise to ensure the SubWoofer has high input impedance.
