Sorry to resurrect an old thread here - but did this work? I'm going down a similar road - unbalanced RCA outs to balanced XLR inputs on Genelec monitors - and it'd be great not to have get ...

Attaching ground to shield at one end is called "ground lift". It works much better with balanced connections rather than RCA cables. If you're going to do this, connect at the signal source.

Unlike balanced lines, unbalanced lines use the ground for signal return. In typical unbalanced cables, the ground is the cable shield. Unbalanced lines are more susceptible to noise, and cable runs ...