Yes, I spoke to Andy about the polarity and he did mention that it was correct polarity with the new models. But he did not mention anything about the "true balanced" design for XLR. In fact, if you go to the following page, it mentions " The Rhumba has 9dB of gain (we can adjust this to suit your specific system) and is single-ended".
http://backertlabs.com/press-release/
So, I am not sure the difference between "Balanced" Vs "true Balanced" that Ralph often refers to.
I am hoping that the Rhumba is much more transparent than my TVC. I am assuming that, it being active, it would naturally sound more dynamic. I do not have a turntable, so phono stage does not matter. But Andy mention that they are coming up with a phono stage later. HT pass through - again it is of no use to me. I would rather have that converted to another XLR IN, if they do it.
Thank You for sharing your positive experiences with this preamp. I found the following instragram message from Backert Labs that is interesting:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg7qbLqBEii/