SH Spotlight SH Forum members: Are your speakers in correct phase?

Excellent!

 

but this is dangerous, he can mess the polarity of the cables and turn all out of phase.

.... ...better is "upside down" the room and don't deal with cables.

 

I don't remember writing that!

 

I know this thread is as valid today as it was five years ago, but does the resurrection of a thread after such a long duration - does this set a new record on the forum?

 

For all too many people music is just a tool for the removal of silence from their daily lives. In phase, out of phase is of little consequence to them.

We would all like to think that at a Record Company this would NOT be the case, but we all know they are hard wired "out of phase" with audiophiles anyway. The only way to solve this is when someone like you, Steve, gets in the chain, which happens all to infrequently. This is why the reissue business is brisk business...for us anyway.

 

Steve, what's about my KRK active studio monitors? They are internally bi-amped and connected to MBox using balanced wires with predefined polarity (i.e. it couldn't be easily reversed). But the sound (stereo/mono) seems OK so I presume that they are wired inside correctly. Nevertheless, thank you for the reminder - I'll check my secondary passive speakers.

A bit of semi-offtopic: are headphones (any, incl. cheap ones) always wired properly?

 

If you have balanced inputs it's fairly easy to reverse them if you need a phase reversal.

You can either take the XLR type connectors apart and rewire them or get inline phase reversers. These are simple barrel adapters with a male XLR on one end and and female XLR on the other end. Pin 2 on one connects to pin 3 of the other and visa versa.

 

Thanks, these adapters actually can help. But there still may be a chance that tweeters and woofers are incorrectly connected to their INDIVIDUAL internal amps which makes matters even more complicated...

 

I just know about the
red & white thingies .

 

but what if ....red and black?!?



ok, now serious.
i did a stereo 44.1k/16b sine wave 440Hz with -6dB level where have only positives cicles .
was done repeating 6 times with 1 second of silence between each wave.
is cool for test as the speaker will move to the front only when the wires are in the right positions.
if anyone is interested i can upload or you can do yourself easily with audition.

cheers.

 

Yes red & black .

 

True story: I was visiting a pal who had a sort of patched-together, thrift-store stereo. We were listening to some tunes, I wasn't diggin' the sound. Sure enough, I checked the speaker wires and the left speaker had + and - switched around. I fixed it at the speaker end, voila, better sound!

A few weeks later I visited again, and there was that awful phasey sound again. I checked, and he'd re-wired the left speaker OOP again. "Why" cried I; quoth he, "I like the spacey stereo effect".

 

well, is his surround world, a "spacey" odissey.

 

I was checking just now, and I see that the arrows are pointing towards the amp instead, and it's been like that for over three years. So what you're saying is that I should just leave the cables alone? I just want to be absolutely sure here.

 

If your wire has arrows, point them to the speakers or whatever the "end of the line" is, so to speak.

 

It's just that I don't want to have to "break in" my cables again if the arrows don't matter. I've always thought my system sounds fine, anyhow.

 

have any scientific prooves about the correct direction of the "arrows" in wires?

 

http://www.av-outlet.com/en-us/dept_216.html

 

good link, very good.
as old technician, i know about Diameter, equal lenghts for each speaker, capacitance, impedance, distances, D.C. resistance, quality of the material, inductance, resistence of the material but i still don't saw scientifics prooves about the directions as the wires are a sum of little wires together, i only read recommendations, the direction still unclear.

i thanks you so much tootull

 

For some reason I'm one of those people that can hear an out of phase system immediately. I don't even have to be in the same room to be able to hear it. I don't know how many systems I've corrected over the years, but it's been quite a few.

 

I am sure mine are! Every thing sounds fuzzy and low volume!

Just kidding, I now what the out of phase sound is like. What is more of a concern for many is how your subwoofer will sound. If the sub is out of phase with the main speakers, the bass just gets sucked out. Be sure to physically change the speaker polarity, on both speakers and compare. You may surprised to find that the subs and main speakers are out of phase if hooked up with what one assumes to be the correct phase in both.

 

There are some LG LCD TVs over here which suffer from horrendous sound, and it turns out these are wired out of phase internally. Fortunately it's a fairly easy job to get them open and fix them.

Of course if you have the NEW Past Master CD, 'Thank You Girl' is now in glorious stereo!

Chris

 

Oh snap. I'm a bit confused now, really, as I've checked several forums, and most seem to think that the arrows thing is a marketing ploy or plain superstition, while others say they can't really hear the difference, and then we get a rare reply like yours. Perhaps I should switch my cables around so I don't have to think about it anymore.

 

Pretty much describes my experience with this. I had 4 speakers that I had to "correct" the direction. Spent 2 hours fixing them. Do I notice any difference? Yes, maybe, I don't know. Am I happier? Definitely.

 

Just a quick add. I recall this little tip to imagine what happens to the sound of speakers that are out of phase.

Try to make the "P" sound, but suck in instead of blowing out.

Your speakers are doing the same thing on one side.