Hello Earl, thank you.

On your question: that adapter does something “similar” to what we are talking about, insofar as it allows to connect a 3.5 single ended cable onto any “ordinary” 4.4 balanced output by de facto realising a TRS scheme inside the connector instead of the TRSS one – but this would effectively “downgrade” the signal to single ended level anyway.

Ifi’s “S-Balanced” scheme is “even more clever” in a sense: it allows for the same connectivity (SAFELY plugging a single ended termination into a balanced output) while ALSO retaining at least a part of the advantage. To exploit that, a 4.4mm TRS (!! does it even exist?) male to 3.5mm standard female adapter would be needed, to give an idea.