so when I ran this, I ran both XLR out and mini out. In both cases I ran with the knobs on the MP2 all the way left. The XLR is a hotter signal, but I could still get the SBM to the 3.5-5 range. If I ran the mini out, I would get around 8-9 on the SBM. I actually preferred the XLR outs because for some shows that surprise me at how quiet they were, I had to jack up the gain on the SBM to 10 and then increase the MP2 gain...which I did not like....the MP2 can get grainy sounding imo. The XLRs gave me more headroom with the SBM...so I have 2 sets of cables...a pair of XLR to RCA AM Hypers and a KindKables crafted mini to dual RCA...
that being said when stealthing, I still prefer the mini out mainly for convenience (all the plugs on one side of the unit)