Rogue Audio Cronus .... reverse polarity ?

It's very possible... Either that or the recordings you played were recorded in the wrong polarity. Why not e-mail Rogue Audio; I'm sure it's not a secret.

The odd thing is (at least for me) that in my experience tube gear seems to accent polarity differences compared to solid-state gear where the effects seem a bit more subtle.

Ok, admittedly of marginal use, but I remember when I was running a Rogue preamp that something in my system was intentionally designed to invert phase, such that I'd deliberately switched back at the speaker connections to get around it. Not sure that it was the 99, but I seem to think it was. Definitely check with Rogue, Mark is top notch (or likely in the manual?), but it may well be very much on purpose -- and as Plato noted, certainly not a secret.

My Rogue 120's do not invert phase.....don't know about your product (but I doubt it)............probably the recording.

Dave

Rogue has inverted phase in some of their products to eliminate a step in the signal path - when necessary (or possible).

One of my Rogue pieces did this but I forget which...

In fact, the 99 manual suggests reversing the polarity at the speaker end.

My M-180s do not reverse polarity (well at least according to Stereophile).