So in theory if a source has its polarity completely inverted, it should sound the same coming out of the speakers... at least that's what I seem to read the most of. Some others claim otherwise, but without any quantifiable reasoning. So I'm thinking to myself, could there be a biological response/reason that lets us hear/feel polarity?

Sound is just pressure right? A traveling clump high and low pressure zones, arranged in a fashion essentially matching the waveform put out by the speakers. These high/low pressure zones then reach the eardrum, behind which is a stable pressure cavity alongside your grey matter (the stability of the noggin itself is inconsequential). The pressure difference between each side of the eardrum makes with the wibbly wobbly which vibrates those bone thingies and tickles all the nerve endings which tell us the difference between baby crying at 3am or Taytay's latest heartbreak ballad.

Waveforms can be asymmetric right? Unless you listen to sine sweeps all day long. The integration under the curve will even out, but you can have different sized peaks on each side. High pressure vs low pressure. Compression vs Expansion.

So the question is: can we differentiate between compression and expansion? Will an impulse with a strong positive peak feel different than one that is negative? Or digging in the implied tangent, could there be a biological reason for compression feeling different from expansion? Is the compliance/modulus of the eardrum membrane or the pressure cavity constant in both directions? (or likely it changes depending on extension, but is that change the same in both directions)