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Reversing Polarity -- Voodoo or Easy Tweak?

In a recent thread I noticed a comment about reversing polarity of speaker wires on both speakers which sparked one of my earliest audiophile memories.

On the liner or cover notes of Dave Grusin: Discovered Again on direct to disc vinyl, circa 1977, it too recommended reversing the polarity on BOTH speakers, for best sound.

Although my first system was a 25 WPC Technics receiver with Infinity Qa's and lousy speaker wire, I still remember getting very enthusiastic about reversing the polarity and wondering if it did anything.

Can anyone explain this and/or recommend if this is even worth the experiment?
cwlondon
jea48
2,944 posts
 
I ran across some excellent reading material on the subject of this thread.
Check out the links provided in the article.

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/2661/0
fatparrot
1,314 posts
 
Audiodir, are you sure of the reversed polarity in Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound"? I was told that the effect was done by cramming everyone into a way too small studio. The instruments and vocals were not isolated to the individual mics, but bled into surrounding mics. Then he did his final mix down on a pair of 6" x 9" car speakers. Not much for high fidelity, but a kick ass mix for the AM mono car radios and cheap ass dinky transistor radios of the day. But I never remember anything about a polarity reverse.

BTW, if you want to hear how bad the "Wall of Sound" plays on an audiophile system, listen to the Ramones song "Rock 'n' Roll High School" produced by Spector using his W.O.S. technique.
jea48
2,944 posts
 
Below is a link of a question I asked over on Audio Asylum.
I thought it may be of some interest here for this tread.

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/392659.html
jea48
2,944 posts
 
Tvad, I believe I have the answer....

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/393608.html

Note:
The David I credit at the end is David Aiken an AA member.
tvad
9,467 posts
 
Jea48, Bingo! That's what I thought...adding another amp into the signal chain would have degraded the sound.

Nice research. Now you can sleep at night.

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