We have an organ at front of house that we're hooking up to our sound system. The organ has a balanced 1/4" output that we're planning to use and send to our mixer over XLR. We were considering sending the organ output through a direct box to protect the organ in case phantom power was accidentally turned on for that channel. However, since direct boxes are normally for unbalanced inputs, I'm concerned running a balanced connection to the direct box could short the connection or otherwise defeat the purpose of the balanced connection. (We seemed to be getting dropouts and other weird issues using an unbalanced 1/4" cable, hence the need to stick with a balanced TRS cable and make sure the entire flow supports balanced signals.)
So, how best to address our two concerns/requirements without over-complicating things?
- Prevent phantom power from reaching the organ.
- Keep the entire run compatible with balanced signals (so that at no point in the flow the inverted signal is simply ignored, as I'm afraid could happen with a direct box).
I'm fairly new to this area, so forgive me if I'm not explaining things 100% correctly.