The Ayre P-5xe has the possibility to connect the cartridge balanced. I don't have this phono stage, but i am thinking of it. I am a big fan of MIT cables, so would like to connect a MIT phono cable balanced. Currently i use the Magnum M1 phono, but this will certainly be upgraded later on. The MIT phono cables have 2 conductors and a ground wire, i am not sure if the ground is connected to a shield, but that's likely.
Are there people here that have changed a XLR connector in such a way that the signal is connected to pins 2 and 3 and the shield (ground wire) to pin 1 on the Ayre phonostage?
The Ayre P5xe has a trick. You can connect to the RCA inputs and feed the (-) signal to the differential amplifier by switching to balanced for a balanced input. I currently use the Ayre P5xe this way.
See below post from Audiogon.
"I had a VPI Aries II TT when I picked up the Ayre P-5x. I did indeed order a custom made phono cable that was configured per the Ayre link you provided. The RCA end plugged into the RCA termination block on the Aries and the other end had XLR connectors for the Ayre phono. Worked well. I still have the 1/2 meter cables.
I don't think VPI had a XLR term block at that time.
I then picked up a used Triplanar VII which had single ended RCA connectors on the built in phono cable. After a while I realized that I had never flipped the bal/se switches to the single ended position! When I did it sounded a tad worse so I left them in the balanced position.
I later converted the Triplanar phono cable to have XLR connectors thinking it might be better. Again I did not notice anything after that process.
Curious, I pinged Ayre's Charles Hansen on Audio Asylum and asked him what was going on. It was a while ago but iirc he said with the switches in the "bal" position the negative or inverted part of the RCA input used of course for unbalanced inputs was allowed to float thus the inverted signal from the cartridge made it to the inverted input of the diff amp.
Not the best way, but as long as the inverted signal in the cable is allowed to float, never grounded, it works because of his design."
