Onhwy61 wrote,
"Not every listener is sensitive to absolute polarity."
>> I never said they were. Some people hear better than others, no doubt about it. And there are exceptions to every rule. I suspect it’s probably true that people need to be trained to listen for the difference between N and R, otherwise they tend to not know what to listen for. Just like distortion or say transparency or grain or whatever. Everyone should go out and and find a guru. ;-)
Onhwy61 also wrote,
"And even if a listener prefers one polarity over the other it doesn’t mean the preferred setting is the "correct" polarity.""
>>I never said it did mean that. People frequently don’t know what the heck they’re listening to half the time, don’t you think? No one actually thinks about polarity when he’s listening. Only if he’s testing for polarity. And then he has to do the test correctly, no? It’s a little more complex than you let on. Most likely 99% of audiophiles do not think about polarity EVER in the course of a year. But that doesn’t mean polarity is not an issue or is a non-trivial one.
"An ordinary man has no means of deliverance." ~ Old audiophile expression