I’ve been doing audio semi-professionally (I had a real job, but for most periods I also did audio on the side) for decades, and played in this polarity jungle since at least the late 80s, alone and with other audio monkeys.
I have rarely if ever heard disagreement where A and B differ in their preference. The worst case is one or more people express no audible preference or are not sure of their preference (including me). In a group I never heard someone prefer one polarity and someone else prefer the opposite, never.
The OP actually posted this per previous conversation with @James_Romeyn, I have seen Roon scanning the library and creating associated data based on the waveform, let me go back one step, I am not a musician nor an audio engineer, but I am a System Engineer and programmer as well and thought that maybe we can “detect” or use “big data” also known as “deep learning” to flag these tracks and maybe even have Roon to automatically switch the polarity, if and only if there is a mathematical way to extract this. I personally don’t know.
I personally can press the INVERT button on my DAC and also on my PRE, but not everyone have access to devices with such feature.
Thank you all for posting your comments, this is turning more interesting with your contributions.
Yesterday I ripped the Chesky Jazz samples Vol1 CD to the Nucleus SSD since I wanted to check the inverse effect again in my digital chain (analog/LP I flick the switch regularly since the effect of correct polarity is substantial on a high end system).
Guess what…I am missing a lot of audio quality with the inverted absolute polarity! Today, playing some music, found the same while flicking the ROON “Invert Phase for All Channels” in the speaker menu.
It would be a bliss to have this option (manual switch) per album/track and that the chosen setting is kept with that specific album/track. Over time listening to one album/track after the other, the music Dbase is corrected for polarity as such.
Believe me, if you’re going for high-end audio (and Qobuz was my choice for that reason as well), you will hear the difference and you definitely want(/need) this!
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