Is phase control switch a deal breaker for you?

It would be a deal breaker for me. Any preamp that has that kind of extraneous circuitry just won't work for me.

By the way, in multi-tracked recordings you will often find that the different mike feeds are in differing polarities, the result being some instruments in positive polarity and some in inverted polarity. Not to say that having your system in one polarity or the other won't sound better on any given recording.

I have a linestage that has a remotely controlled polarity switch (Levinson Ref. No. 32) and others that do not have such a switch. I like having the ability to make a switch for near instantaneous comparison, but, not having such ability is NOT a deal breaker for me.

I find that, with a lot of recordings, switching absolute polarity has mixed results, for example, the vocals may sound better one way, but the piano now sounds oddly phasey. One can be unduly distracted by trying to find the best position (this can change from track to track on a given recording). My current linestage does not offer this ability, so, I largely ignore the issue even though I know that there is a difference.

You do not need a polarity switch. The great majority of people cannot hear reversed polarity differences. Just one more thing in the way of music. Forget about it

It's not so much whether or not you can hear it. It's whether your speakers LET you hear it (or make it unavoidable).

Dopogue, is Gallo's low-pass filter a 1st order crossover?