Reversing absolute phase

IMO, there may be no such thing as "correct" polarity on the recording end. There may only be such a thing as one polarity sounding better than the opposite one to a given listener at the other end of the electronic reproduction chain.

Lewm, I agree under the present circumstances.

A manufarturer's choice to include polarity reversal is based on budget and the sonic dgredation involved in the extra stage that most designs would require, and that of the switch to control it.

Piedpiper, I agree about the degradation. I had a Millennium preamp made by Siltech, with a remote switch to invert. I noticed that the best sound was to invert the speakerwires at the speaker but not on the preamp. It turned out to be an inverting preamp and did use another stage to allow inverting. I was hearing the loss in using the inverted setting. As you say some designs could easily provide this. All line stages with parallel outputs even if they just use a transformer could provide it without an additional stage. Parafeed designs could also.

Would it not be great were recording engineers to chose one polarity and stick to it? All you would have to do would be to decide which you preferred with your speaker connections and stick too it.

were the world that simple.