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

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Steve Hoffman, Oct 25, 2004.

  1. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Turn your amp around to the back, connect left speaker to "left" as marked. When you sit in the sweet spot, the left speaker is on your actual left.
     
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  2. charlie W

    charlie W EMA Level 10

    Location:
    Area Code 254

    The 1st Stereophile test CD has a pink noise track recorded both in stereo and mono that I find useful to check phasing.
     
  3. Emberglow

    Emberglow Senior Member

    Location:
    Waterford, Ireland
    I learned many years ago that an amplifier must never be powered on "open circuit", i.e. without a load. Whenever I have to disconnect speakers, I always make sure that the amplifier is powered down. Does anyone know if this is still necessary with solid-state amps or is it just a habit carried over from using valve amps?
     
  4. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Always necessary, just make a habit of it and you'll never blow an amp up.
     
  5. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff

    Location:
    NY
    As you said, I made it a habit a long time ago whenever I have to do any plugging/unplugging into the amp (or CD player, turntable, etc.) I always power off everything.
     
  6. My amp is powered up 24/7 so I'm grateful it has a mute switch as it allows me to plug/unplug cables without turning the amp off.
     
  7. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff

    Location:
    NY
    I could be wrong, but I don't think that the mute switch is going to help if you accidently cross two speaker wires and your amp does not have a short circuit cut off ability.
     
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  8. mindblanking

    mindblanking The Bourbon King

    Location:
    Baltimore, MD
    Very necessary. Trust me.
     
  9. That is true but I always check connections carefully before I turn off the mute switch. :)
     
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  10. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Most audiophile speakers are not dedicated, no. The ones that are would mention it in the instructions.
     
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  11. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

  12. Mmmark

    Mmmark Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    • Was going nuts chasing wires a few weeks ago until I realized that one of my speakers was accidentally cross-wired internally, i.e., the connections on the inside of the speaker going to the clips on the back were flipped. As soon as I reversed the wires to 'un-cross' the connection from the clips to the amp everything fell into place.
    • I also found some phase test audio clips on YouTube to be extremely helpful, and frankly a little more obvious than playing a mono recording.
     
    timind likes this.
  13. mikaal

    mikaal Sociopathic Nice Guy

    Which, when you think about it is a safe practice with anything electrical.o_O
     
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  14. jupiterboy

    jupiterboy Forum Residue

    Location:
    Buffalo, NY
    Some speaker designers do wire the tweeter out of phase.
     
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  15. Mmmark

    Mmmark Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    No, this was the main driver. I realized it sounded 'off' but was confused because the wiring looked fine. As soon as I flipped the one set of wires though, the sound came into phase.
     
  16. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Woofers sometimes, too.
     
  17. wolfyboy3

    wolfyboy3 99 Red Balloons Go By...

    Location:
    Indiana
    I thought directionality on cables was "snake oil"?
     
  18. Lanark

    Lanark The French for deja-vu

    Location:
    Bath, UK
    The alternating current travels from your amplifier to the speakers and provides the power to move the speaker cone in one direction, a fraction of a second later the current reverses direction and travels back from the speaker to the amplifier, moving the speaker cone in the opposite direction. This happens thousands of times per second.
    However when the electrons travel towards the speaker it is important they can read the brand name along the side of the cable, having been suitably impressed by the expense of your SuperMagicCable9000 they will obviously make an effort to perform better when reaching the speaker cone.
    (When returning back in the other direction, this doesn't matter because they will already have read it by then.)
     
    docwebb, fogalu, BeatlesBop and 3 others like this.
  19. jmxw

    jmxw Fab Forum Fan

    Sometimes listening to The Beatles SirusXM channel on my car radio [whole car bought on the cheap with as little money put into it as possible], I find myself wondering.... "Is that a different mix...? or are my speakers just wired out of phase..?"
     
    DK Pete likes this.
  20. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Internally as a crossover design choice, sure-but I assumed
    meant that one speaker was out of phase compared to the other speaker, which should not be the case.
    - I'll also note Audyssey would say we had a speaker out-of-phase though we re-checked the connection. I'd hope Focal wouldn't screw up like that.
    - Come to think of it I have not done a basic low frequency tone phase flip test, d'oh!
     
  21. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    My old Venture Speakers had the woofers out of phase, drove me bonkers. But, since the design was a bi-wire one, I would simply reverse the wire to the woofers and boom, normal bass!
     
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  22. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    That is funny!

    But actually, it is a good tool to test...I could have disconnected the mid/tweet of the Focal 936 and rerun the Audyssey to see if it still reported "out of phase" (which can be from reflections it seems or something, I forget exactly). However now we have moved on to an Anthem AVM70 with ARC, no phase issue reported.
     
    Steve Hoffman likes this.
  23. ATR

    ATR Senior Member

    Location:
    Baystate
    Interesting you bring this up. I wired a new pre/pro that had an Audessey set up for speaker calibration. I'm pretty careful about wiring but when I ran the program the first thing it told me was my right front was out of phase, and darned if it wasn't right.
     
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  24. Adagio

    Adagio Forum Resident

    Stereophile used to sell a nice test CD where they had recorded a bass guitar in phase on one track and then recorded out of phase. The in-phase track was dead centre between the speakers (if the wiring polarity was correct) and the out of phase track had no central image and sounded kind of spacey. Of course if your speakers were out of phase you got a central image with the "out of phase" track.
     
  25. Brian Lux

    Brian Lux One in the Crowd

    Location:
    Placerville, CA
    Before he became an aeronautical engineer, my pop worked for Ampex. He showed me how to set up stereo equipment properly from the get-go. I kind of grew up with this notion that if I did it wrong, my stereo would blow up, or worse, I might have to do time in hell. :laugh:
    It's all good here!
     
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