Must XLR pin configurations match?

If you use a standard cable you'll flip the polarity of the system. This may or may not be a problem - many people can't hear differences in polarity. Also many recordings have inverted polarity anyway, the extra flip provided by your gear actually restores normal polarity.

To fix it you'll need to swap pins 2 and 3 at one end (only) of the balanced cable.

I'm sure that somebody makes such a cable, but I've never looked for one and can't help you there.

To maintain polarity, you must connect pos. pin out to pos. pin in (and ditto the neg. pins) and ghostrider's suggestion is correct. If you're handy with a small soldering iron, you should have no trouble disassembling the XLR's at one end and making the switch. TIP: I've always found the female XLR's easier to work with :~)

As an alternative, if you don't want to mess with the resale value of your cable, you could simply swap the speaker terminal wires and restore absolute polarity. Just take speaker wire + and attach it to the speaker terminal -, and vice-versa. A lot of preamps also have a polarity switch on them.

Click on this link, and view a Polarity adapter made by Ridge Street Audio ... Ridge street audio polarity adapter... It is a XLR adapter with a toggle switch in it, that allows you to switch Polarity back, and forth with out modifing your existing IC's. Saves you the soldering, and your cables shouldn't loss any resale value.

Robert claims they are very transparent ... "I'm not a big fan of adapters but they can serve an important purpose and these are about as transparent as you'll get." His words

HTH dave

Thanks for all your comments. I never realized that a recording could have polarity reversed - isn't polarity an electrical characteristic only? How and why would this be done? Also, has anybody ever seen stats on what % of CDs are reversed in polarity?

There was a thread that talked about this in a bit more detail here:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1081184159&read&keyw&zzwood+effect