Wow! That certainly can’t be normal behavior.
Good advice - I’ve actually already replied to Neural’s reply, doing just as you suggest.
Nothing back yet but I’ll let you know.
I am so intrigued by the number of misunderstandings/misapprehensions/miscommunications you get in correspondence with Neural, and how in general there are certain things that seem really unintuitive about the QC UI, that I wonder if these are quite possibly the result of cultural and language differences, Neural being a Finnish company (although I don’t know where their development team are based)
that’s exactly what I’ve always wondered. Although, from my experience with them I’d say the staff itself is extremely ‘multi-national,’ so I’m not sure.
Or it could be that Support is staffed with call-center-type employees who just work from a script and aren’t knowledgeable enough to improvise or expound?
(I’ve actually had to correct them in a past pitch-shifting conversation)
Bottom-line is communication just isn’t their forte and we get to solve a lot of mysteries ourselves
I totally agree; I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a multi-national element to their setup. For example it is not uncommon to have difficulty communicating effectively with one of their support team, only to find that after several emails back and forth you get a much clearer response, which could have been forthcoming all along. I have always taken that to be the result of a different support staff member taking over the conversation, and understanding my questions and being able to communicate their response much more clearly. (FWIW I say this as someone with over 30 years of experience in both military and commercial aviation, an industry in which you are exposed to many different communication challenges when involved in worldwide operations. In my experience it is not at all the case that because someone speaks English perfectly that they necessarily ‘think’ it or ‘comprehend’ it perfectly too.
This is not a slight on NDSP or their staff in any way, it is just an observation on the apparent communication challenges we seem to have with them.
Anyway, I’ve received a reply back from NDSP on this issue of the volume boost happening when it shouldn’t (ie when I use TS cables);
In response to my question ‘1) So if I understand you correctly, the XLR outputs should be 6dB louder WHEN I USE BALANCED CABLES, but not unbalanced cables - is this correct?’ I go the answer ‘Yes’.
So we have established this but it does not appear that they have grasped that what I’m trying to explain to them is that I get this volume boost when I shouldn’t and that is causing my speakers to clip/distort. More to follow when I hear back…
Interesting.
Have you contacted Neural support by email?
And you’re not ‘@love-a2c’ on Youtube are you? As I’m having a conversation on YT with someone about a similar problem…
they said that about XLRs, not TRS?
Yes, but that’s a mistake, it should be the TRS outputs that are boosted (we may have confused each other after several email asking the same question in a different way, just to encourage a more detailed answer! 
)
They also acknowledged that there’s typo in the manual, and that it should say the XLR ‘output’ level is +9.5dBu, not the max ‘input’ gain.
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dang, they made a mistake addressing the mistake they mistakenly printed in the manual!
Caveat: I’m very new to QC but I’m an old hat at modellers in general and I’ve been a soundman and bass player for a long long time.
A balanced signal and an unbalanced signal at the same output will have about a 6.67dB volume difference. This isn’t unique to QC and it’s just a function of how those signals work. You could reduce outputs 1+2 by the same amount if you connected an unbalanced cable to them, it’s just that unbalanced XLR cables are really rare and that doesn’t really happen. If you think about it, plugging in an unbalanced cable only makes one change, it sends the negative ‘side’ of the output to ground and you just get the positive. Half the signal gain. Please note that this half the voltage/signal gain does not result in half the volume as previously stated in this thread. Sound pressure is a logarithmic scale and double the sound pressure is 10dB (1B) by definition. The confusion is that we use dB for signals as well when we should really use voltage…
The above is fact and applies to any piece of gear, the below is conjecture and applies to the QC.
My guess is that a design choice was made. We are ‘supposed’ to plug the XLR outputs into the pa, and the 1/4" ones into an amp. If you did that then they would be the same volume as you’d have a balanced output on 1+2 and unbalanced on 3+4. It would have been trivial to design it the other way, or to have 1+2 be in the middle of 3+4 if you wanted, but you got to pick a choice.
I know people will use a piece of gear with as many options as this one has in lots of different ways, that’s kind of the point. Fwiw I don’t have this problem as I have the XLR outputs to the pa on a set volume, with the main volume control only affecting the 1/4" and headphones. I very very rarely do gigs with backline but when I do I’ll be using the volume to control the send to the amp and that way it won’t affect the pa volume. That’s what I did with my helix.
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