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Speaker phase observation and question?

Hi everyone,

After months of playing around with positive phase and reverse phase connections to my Monitor Audio Silver 8 speakers, I have made a couple of observations. When connected in positive phase (red - red, black - black), the speakers put out pretty substantial bass, but the mids and treble are somewhat subdued. Upon reversing the phase, the mids and treble open up substantially, and the bass becomes somewhat subdued. To my ears, I actually prefer the reversed phased.

Moving forward to the current day, I purchased an app that tests phase using a generated tone. In testing my speakers, both bass drivers test positive phase, but the mid and treble test negative. I had read somewhere that some manufactures wire the drivers like this intentionally, but am confused as to whether or not this is the case with my speakers, or if it's a manufacturing flaw?

Any thoughts? 
chewie70
erik_squires
5,268 posts
 
By the way, if anyone wants to learn about speaker design, and how drivers and crossovers work together I have quite a bit of documentation, including real-time simulation tools you can use to play around and look at some of these concepts.  Please visit my LM-1 design page, here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-lm-1-bookshelf-version.html

The files and design info are 100% free for music lovers. :) Haters have to pay.
chewie70 OP
17 posts
 
Thanks everyone. This has been extremely informative, and I have learned far more about speaker design than I could have imagined.
kosst_amojan
2,095 posts
 
@erik_squires My Focal 936's are exactly opposite of what you suggest about woofer polarity. The midrange and tweeter are in positive polarity while all 3 woofers operate in negative. 

The point of my comment was to point out how speakers are reactive and not subject to the superficial presumption that when voltage is applied a driver reacts predictably. A lot of people don't consider that a driver and crossover become more or less capacitive or inductive when driven by a signal and that the current draw that actually drives the speaker can be significantly ahead of or behind the voltage. 
erik_squires
5,268 posts
 
Hi @kosst_amojan,

Well that is unusual, but not the end of the world.

Well, I consider that quite predictable, this is what math and simulations are for.

But your comments seemed to be mixing up phase and polarity.

Best,

E
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,645 posts
 
Polarity is absolute; + or -, phase angle varies as a function of the frequency. Completely different concepts.
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