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
Thanks everyone. This has been extremely informative, and I have learned far more about speaker design than I could have imagined.
@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. 
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
Polarity is absolute; + or -, phase angle varies as a function of the frequency. Completely different concepts.
Polarity should not make that much difference. Unless you go one speaker reversed polarity and the other normal. 

That said - you are deaf in one ear.  In those with full hearing the brain does a lot of processing using BOTH ears - perhaps you are experiencing more masking from bass frequencies in one polarity vs the other because you only hear with one ear.