ok I had some time this morning to figure out what went wrong regarding the cables & rear inputs...as I suspected it was the fault of a bad wire which I haven't used in a while and now I know why,....so I tried it again using a brand new dual 1/4" to 1/4" jacks in the rear inputs connected to the S970 and it works perfectly now as it should! ...
It's official now you can use both XLR or 1/4" with the Maui 5.
I'll take it out to a small Wedding Sunday see what it can do in that situation.

carry on...