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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
 
Well I am totally confused now. I just spent about 20 min listening to the CD of Jennifer Warnes, "The Hunter," track #8, "Way Down Deep". I listened to the first min and half at least 10 times then I reversed the speaker Cables at each of my ProAc studio 200 speakers. I then listened again several times. There is a definitely a difference in sound. I switched them back and forth several times.

On this particular track of this CD with the speakers cables reversed imo bass sounded tighter and Jennifer's voice sound more focused. Is it all in my head...

IF any of you have this CD check for yourself and post back.

Jim
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Trust your ears, Jea48.
jea48
2,944 posts
 
I listened to the entire Jennifer Warnes Cd, I spoke of in my earlier post, with the speaker cables reversed on my speakers. After a few tracks the sound just didn't seem involving, became kind of boring if you know what I mean. After the last track played, I reversed the speaker cables back the way the were originally, Amp+ speaker+, Amp- speaker-. Pushed play on the CDp, to cut to the chase, I prefer the sound better this way...Biggest thing I noticed Jennifer's voice was fuller, more involving.

Jim
gregm
3,021 posts
 
Herman notes:
I haven't conducted any experiments to confirm this hypothesis
Someone else has -- and I tried desperately & unsuccessfully to find the ref. Apparently you WILL notice a discrepancy. This, (afa I remember) is variably termed as "slight loss of detail" or "microdynamics", etc. This "discrepancy" was particularly obvious when the same musical passage was played with fundamental & 2nd & 4th harmonic shifted into the pass band. ANyway, if I find the ref, I post it.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
I wish I had access to a storage scope and a mic. It would be very interesting to examine the shape of transient waveforms (like the drum) both close mic'd and distant. Of course, once the signal is played back through a loudspeaker and rerecorded I suspect that any slight difference due to polarity/phase will be unimportant. Very few speakers can reproduce a square wave (original Ohms were one), and those only at relatively low frequency like 1000m Hz.
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