preamp inverts polarity

No offense, Costco, but I’m filing your post under Whatever. 

Three things i don’t believe were mentioned.

Some folks don’t hear phase reversals - even those with golden ears. You might be one of those lucky individuals.


Secondly, do we know that your amplifier doesn’t invert polarity? You might have two inverting components which net out to non-inverted.

Finally (and building on the second point), you need to take the entire signal chain into consideration - your digital front end as well as your phono section.
For each source selected, add up the total number of gain stages. An even number means non-inverting and an odd number means inverting.

It could end up (for example) that running through your digital front end, the signal is inverted and through your phono section, it’s non-inverted (or vice-versa).

BTW, I’m one of the lucky ones ;-)

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

Look, first establish whether your system is in correct Polarity or reverse Polarity using a Test CD such as XLO Test CD. Then you have a baseline. Otherwise, you’re just shooting blanks in the dark. 

As I pointed out previously, it actually doesn’t matter whether your systemis in correct or reverse Polarity since at least half of CDs are in reverse Polarity anyway. If the percentage is much higher than 50% then wouldn’t it make more sense to place your system in reverse Polarity to begin with? Obviously, if you have a Polarity switch you can determine the best sounding position of the switch on the fly. But unless you have established whether your system is correct or reverse Polarity you won’t know whether the CD you’re playing is correct or reverse. Follow?

Oh, incidentally, the out of phase track on the XLO Test CD is the same track for determining the absolute best speaker locations in the room. The best stereo image is obtained when the sound is in correct Polarity after you have found the precise speaker locations that produce the most diffuse sound using the out of phase track on the XLO Test CD or any test CD that has a similar track.