Stop. Hold it right there.
Where are you doing to connect that XRL female?
The reason I am asking is, if you connect to a balanced output pin three may or may not carry a signal. To cut it very short and not entirely accurate:
- if your output has a transformer the connection you described will work perfectly.
- if your output is "pseudo-balanced" your connection will work.
- if your output is true balanced and transformerless you will burn a lot of energy channeling the - signal directly to ground. This may not have any effect at all, create distortion or even destroy the output stage (only in really bad designs) in a scale of increasing problems.
If your output is transformerless your best bet is getting a transformer, balanced to unbalanced. (Expensive)
Your next best bet is to connect only pin 1 to shield and pin 2 to signal.
In some case you will get a better result connecting only pin 3 to shield and pin to 2 ground. My suggestion then is to use a two-wire + shield cable and connect the cable shield only at the output end to pin 1.
I never connect the case of the XLR connector to anything else, even if that is the preferred method. In my experience that only creates problems.
Gunnar