preamp inverts polarity

I don't believe G Louis. He came into our room at CES once, insisting that the polarity was off in our system without even sitting down to make his revelation. I flipped the switch (which has been a part of the MP-1 preamp circuit since its inception). At that point he said it was only audible on CD- not LP (which was the second sign of baloney).
I had the same cut on CD and played it- he didn't see that one coming... At that point he insisted that if it was recorded analog, but encoded to CD, you couldn't hear it. What nonsense.

The thing was, it sounded better the way we had it. The recording in question was done with two mics (Canto General). He made a hurried exit, apparently aware he had embarrassed himself.

50% is about right. Mastering engineers are not worried about whether their equipment inverts polarity or not. So its just statistics.

Atmasphere, after listening to your explanation I’m even more inclined to believe G Louis. Two microphones or one, doesn’t matter, or three microphones. I also believe him when he states most audiophile recordings, even such famous ones as Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo, are in Reverse Polarity. You can squawk all you like.

I don't buy this nonsense about half or most recordings being out of phase or polarity or whatever you want to call it. It doesn't even make sense on it's face. Inverting the polarity completely changes the presence of the sound. Air is a single ended medium of transmission. You can compress it much more than you can decompress it. If you invert the polarity of the recorded instrument, the single ended nature of air will inject it's own distortion where none should otherwise be. Absolute polarity preservation will avoid that and not challenge the loudspeaker to replicate polarity that air cannot accurately convey. 
What more, the recording engineer I do listening for every now and then is a real fanatic about phase and polarity and most engineers understand that it's critical to achieving the sound they're looking for. 

Another excellent knee jerk reaction by the poster boy of knee jerk reactions. It’s not necessarily the recording engineer’s fault. It could the the mastering engineer. In any case there are no standards for Polarity. Any more than there are standards for dynamic range compression, another big fault that’s not the fault of the recording engineer. If you can’t hear Polarity, which in your case I imagine is true, then you shouldn’t worry about it.

kosst_amojan

Air is a single ended medium of transmission.

It is? Exactly what do you mean by that?

You can compress it much more than you can decompress it.

You can decompress air it until it's a vacuum, so it isn't clear what you mean here.