Rogue Audio Cronus .... reverse polarity ?

It's very possible... Either that or the recordings you played were recorded in the wrong polarity. Why not e-mail Rogue Audio; I'm sure it's not a secret.

The odd thing is (at least for me) that in my experience tube gear seems to accent polarity differences compared to solid-state gear where the effects seem a bit more subtle.

Ok, admittedly of marginal use, but I remember when I was running a Rogue preamp that something in my system was intentionally designed to invert phase, such that I'd deliberately switched back at the speaker connections to get around it. Not sure that it was the 99, but I seem to think it was. Definitely check with Rogue, Mark is top notch (or likely in the manual?), but it may well be very much on purpose -- and as Plato noted, certainly not a secret.

My Rogue 120's do not invert phase.....don't know about your product (but I doubt it)............probably the recording.

Dave

Rogue has inverted phase in some of their products to eliminate a step in the signal path - when necessary (or possible).

One of my Rogue pieces did this but I forget which...

In fact, the 99 manual suggests reversing the polarity at the speaker end.

My M-180s do not reverse polarity (well at least according to Stereophile).

Since there was very little consistency in the way polarity was handled when our stuff was recorded in the first place, and since many speakers do not maintain polarity coherence in the way they are wired (making polarity changes inaudible or nearly so), you don't gain much by switching speaker wires. CDs/LPs/tapes were recorded in inverted, non-inverted, and mixed polarity. If you can clearly detect polarity changes, you're best off with a preamp (like my Aesthetix Calypso) that lets you switch polarity from the remote.

Thanks for the responses so far. I'll get in touch with Mark @ Rogue, but before I do, I just wanted to hear what my fellow Audiogoners have to say. Happy Listenig everybody.

The Vandersteens are coherent, though.

I know of one famous recording that is supposedly effected by polarity inversion: Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. I wonder if there's a list of more such recordings around.

When you change cables or even tighten them you are possably affecting the sound. If you intend to change things try cleaning the ends and connectors then restoring them AS IS. Now listen to them again BEFORE reversing or changing them to see that the real effect of your experiment is not just a better clean connection.

I have my speakers wired in reverse polarity. The reason: My Audible Illusions Modulus 3A preamp reverses polarity so by reversing them at the speakers puts them back to the proper polarity. And yes, there is most definitely a difference when reversing the polarity, for better or worse.

I run M180s into an Athena, and polarity is ok all the way through. I checked it using the pink noise files here:

http://www.eminent-tech.com/music/multimediatest.html

Look at the ones called "pink noise monaural" and "pink noise reverse polarity" - you can use them to verify what your phase situation is like.