Hrmmm. My first encounter was in the early 80's in Transparent Audio's humble showroom basement of a house in Hollis, Maine. I had brought a few audiophile records to sample the Electrocompaniet Ampliwire II amplifier, which, along with early Mark Levinson, Phase Linear and a few others, marked the beginning of decent solid state sound. Golden-eared Karen Sumner quickly nailed an out of phase recording coming from the Quad ESL 63s. Great preamps from that day forward included switchable phase controls. My experience is that vinyl "showed" the difference more distinctly than my digital playback in later years. I can switch phase on my NAD M2, but rarely feel the need. (I'm not attempting to start analog/digital controversy...both are deserving.) That's simply my experience. This topic does motivate me to give some of my top shelf song cuts another A/B all these years later! Thanks for the posts. More Peace, Pinthrift
Impact of phase inversion by preamp
This will be my first post on this forum so I thought I’d pose a question I’ve always wondered about. I have a Conrad Johnson Premier 18LS preamp that I’ve been extremely happy with since first acquiring it some years ago. This is a solid state single ended, single stage design that inverts the phase of the input signal at the output. The manual states that you should reverse the connections to the speakers to account for this. Obviously this is easily done but I really can’t see how it would really matter as long as things are connected consistently between the left and right channels. I’d be interested to hear what others have to say on this subject.