preamp inverts polarity

@mboldda1 

Just insert a dedicated stereo signal phase inverter between your preamp and power amp if switching the leads on your speaker cables fails to restore the polarity. 

Huh? Why would I report your posts, Costco? They are often the high point of my day. My substitute for the funny papers, if you will. 

Since Geoff reported my post because "blah blah blah" hurt his feeling, I'll repeat my point. Phase coherence was an 80's fad that made bold promises and generally didn't deliver. It doesn't seem to be as important as it's been sold to be. 

Of course it’s only fair to point out that phase coherence is a different animal than Absolute Polarity.

Phase coherent speakers only offer a potential.  If the speakers are not set up properly its a wasted proposition. Set up is essential. Its like wearing eye glasses.  If one lens side is angled upward slightly, and the other lens is straight ahead... your eyes will tire you out.

" >>>>my preamp requires me to reverse cables at the speaker end, by design my speaker cables have designated cables for negative connection and positive cables. the positive and negative cables are of different compositions by manufacturer design.<<<<"""""
An amplifier’s terminals are "push pull." They are marked red and black so you can get both channels hooked up the same consistently. When a preamp reverses polarity? Now the positive terminal will be pulling when it normally would be pushing. So, who ever designed that cable with its unique negative run? It is a marketing genius for the uninformed. For, at any moment while playing music the direction of the current in the speaker cables can change directions! Its what controls the speaker movement... There is no one direction for each leg of the speaker wires. They share in moving current back and forth. One second a terminal can be pushing. The next split second on the same terminal the direction can be reversed.... There can not be a dedicated cable material for the side that gets called the negative side. For it shares in pushing and pulling the signal.

How can anyone hear polarity reversal correctly unless the speakers are phase coherent to begin with?   Many speakers have their tweeters and mid/woofers wired in reverse phase.  That happens because of the nature of the crossovers they use.  Only first order, or full range, single driver, speakers will be phase coherent. Never the less,  the listener may prefer one polarity setting on their DAC by the way the correct polarity improves the bass...  but the upper range will be diffuse when that happens unless the speakers are phase coherent

Trying to win an argument by insulting someone is a sure sign of losing the argument. 

Anyone interested in the subject should read The Wood Effect. Just received my copy and it covers the (polarity) subject more than I ever thought possible... 

costco_emoji


@geoffkait
As usual, you’re pretty much wrong. Vacuums don’t exist anywhere in the known universe.

>>>>What a knucklehead. I stated that a vacuum is defined by the number air molecules per unit volume. A perfect vacuum is defined as the absence of any molecules in a given volume. There are degrees of vacuums, that’s why vacuums can be measured and there are units of measurement. Obviously some vacuums are better than others. Why do you often give the impression one exists between your ears?

@cleeds 
I didn't invent the idea or make the observation that air is a single ended medium. By definition it is and it exactly parallels how a single ended class A amplifier works. Atmospheric pressure is the parallel of bias in a single ended amp. A vacuum is the parallel of driving a single ended amp below it's bias. Air DOES distort in a low, even order manner, just like a single ended amp. They are analogous. I'm not sure who I first came across the idea from, but the last person was Nelson Pass at a Burning Amp lecture and that's pretty much how he explained it. 

@geoffkait 
As usual, you're pretty much wrong. Vacuums don't exist anywhere in the known universe.

this whole thread has gone off base and no one has answered my question.

my preamp requires me to reverse cables at the speaker end, by design my speaker cables have designated cables for negative connection and positive cables. the positive and negative cables are of different compositions by manufacturer design.

my question is if I follow the preamp directions I will be defeating the design of the speaker cables, so which is it?

Your question was also answered by the post immediately proceeding the one quoted here. Here is that post again:

Invert connections on both speakers then listen. If it sounds better then before, leave it. If your cables are built differently for negative and positive, try it anyway.

If your preamp has a polarity switch, use that instead.

Some recordings were recorded or mastered with inverted polarity, so the “right” polarity may vary.

You can see that inverting the speaker connections with every LP or CD is going to be a pain. So if you have a lot of recordings that are made with only two microphones, get a preamp with an inversion switch so you don't have to be constantly behind the amps making the switch.

OP, go back and read Almarg's post. Your original question was answered two and half weeks ago.

I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the cable manufacturer. I have a feeling you won’t like the answer.

this whole thread has gone off base and no one has answered my question.

my preamp requires me to reverse cables at the speaker end, by design my speaker cables have designated cables for negative connection and positive cables. the positive and negative cables are of different compositions by manufacturer design.

my question is if I follow the preamp directions I will be defeating the design of the speaker cables, so which is it?

I’ve read this whole thread and will never get that time back. 

Invert connections on both speakers then listen. If it sounds better then before, leave it. If your cables are built differently for negative and positive, try it anyway. 

If your preamp has a polarity switch, use that instead. 

Some recordings were recorded or mastered with inverted polarity, so the “right” polarity may vary. 

@ kosst_amojan - of course you’re correct (definitions of polarity vs. phase). By the time I noticed the typo, the 30 minute edit window had expired. It never pays to post before going to bed ;-)

@ geoffkait absolutely (with respect to how media is recorded). This might be the biggest factor as to why so many folks don’t "hear" polarity reversals.  They doubt their perception - as much because of inconsistencies in recordings as any other factor.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

kosst_amojan

The transmission characteristics of air certainly don’t resemble electrically balanced operation.

That doesn’t mean that air is a "single-ended medium," as you’ve claimed. Air is also not a fig newton. That doesn’t mean air is a lemon meringue pie.

Costco, when speakers are “out of phase” I.e., the + - wires are reversed on both speakers, the system is in the Reverse Absolute Polarity from whatever state it was in previously. Polarity is relative. That’s kind of the whole point. And in that sense, as on the test track on the XLO Test CD, “out of phase” is equivalent to Absolute Polarity.

I suspect this is just a simple case of you following the wrong ...you know...🐑 🐑 🐑

Decompress is not the same as evacuate. There can be no vacuum without an enclosure. There can be compression and decompression in a room obviously, for acoustic waves, but not a vacuum. In space no one can hear you scream.

geoffkait

Cleedsy, old bean, a vacuum is created by evacuating air from the system not by compressing it.

Quite so. That's what I wrote:

You can decompress air it until it's a vacuum ...

@thom_mackris 
Atmasphere will probably take me to task on this, but I ended up debating the difference between phase and polarity with another fellow and was eventually convinced that there is a clear and technical difference. Polarity isn't time dependent whereas phase is described in degrees of angle from the polarity. A phase angle of 180 degrees isn't inverted polarity. It's a half wavelength delayed. 
My amplifier is a Pass F5. It inverts the polarity twice through two gain stages to preserve absolute polarity at it's outputs. What's more, its a myth gain stages always invert polarity. It completely depends on the mode the gain devices are operated in and it's entirely possible to get current and voltage gain from a single stage while preserving absolute polarity. 

@geoffkait 
Why do you keep babbling? I know what polarity I'm working with because I've put my fingers on every single transistor. Do you want me to show you schematics and explain to you what modes every transistor is working in so you can follow along? As I explained above, phase and polarity aren't interchangeable. I wish I could remember the guy who schooled me on that one when I argued they were, but he was right. 

Look, first establish whether your system is in correct Polarity or reverse Polarity using a Test CD such as XLO Test CD. Then you have a baseline. Otherwise, you’re just shooting blanks in the dark. 

As I pointed out previously, it actually doesn’t matter whether your systemis in correct or reverse Polarity since at least half of CDs are in reverse Polarity anyway. If the percentage is much higher than 50% then wouldn’t it make more sense to place your system in reverse Polarity to begin with? Obviously, if you have a Polarity switch you can determine the best sounding position of the switch on the fly. But unless you have established whether your system is correct or reverse Polarity you won’t know whether the CD you’re playing is correct or reverse. Follow?

Oh, incidentally, the out of phase track on the XLO Test CD is the same track for determining the absolute best speaker locations in the room. The best stereo image is obtained when the sound is in correct Polarity after you have found the precise speaker locations that produce the most diffuse sound using the out of phase track on the XLO Test CD or any test CD that has a similar track.

Three things i don’t believe were mentioned.

Some folks don’t hear phase reversals - even those with golden ears. You might be one of those lucky individuals.


Secondly, do we know that your amplifier doesn’t invert polarity? You might have two inverting components which net out to non-inverted.

Finally (and building on the second point), you need to take the entire signal chain into consideration - your digital front end as well as your phono section.
For each source selected, add up the total number of gain stages. An even number means non-inverting and an odd number means inverting.

It could end up (for example) that running through your digital front end, the signal is inverted and through your phono section, it’s non-inverted (or vice-versa).

BTW, I’m one of the lucky ones ;-)

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

@geoffkait 
I figured you would since it's WAY over your level of comprehension. 

No offense, Costco, but I’m filing your post under Whatever. 

@geoffkait 
You make no sense. What you're saying here and up above makes no sense. What's more, you can't come close to proving it this or that was mastered in one polarity or another. The polarity of the fundamentals make no difference whatsoever. The problem of polarity lies in the the overtones and distortions generated by the instrument and the recording space. If you don't have those in proper phase/polarity, it completely changes the sound and it's pretty freaking obvious to even a sophomoric listener, much less an engineer who does this stuff for a living. If you're listening to stuff recorded and mastered by engineers that can't hear the difference between polarities and phases, you're listening to some real garbage. The polarity and phase of the spacial and distortion information goes a long way in defining the presence of the sound. Generally, positive polarity even order distortion gives the sound a crisp, clear, forward pop while negative phase distortion extends the depth of the sound field and presents more smoothly. That's the going theory on why odd order harmonics really stick out. They add a stiffness to the peaks of waveforms that sounds inorganic, because it is. 
I'm certainly no SET lover myself, but at least I know why people like them. And unlike you, I've sat around and listened carefully to positive and negative polarity distortion and I'm very aware of what it's characteristics sound like. 

Even if what you say is true, which I actually doubt, it would not change the fact that at least 50% of CDs are mastered in reverse Polarity. SETs don’t magically counteract Polarity. There is no balm in Gilead. Not to mention the fact a lot of people don’t like the sound of SETs.

The transmission characteristics of air certainly don't resemble electrically balanced operation. And no doubt there's more to the character of a triode than how it distorts in a SET. Its undeniable that many fans of SETs like them because they distort in a way somewhat similar to how air does. 

@kalali

Just to be clear here, Push-Pull amps can be class A and also all triode. The 'air is single-ended' thing is a bit sketchy and also a bit of a red herring, since air has nothing to do with how amplifiers operate.

Kalali,

It’s pretty simple. The bias level in a single ended amp defines how negative a signal it can pull it down. If the source drives it below that bias level, the gain device goes more non-linear and eventually shuts off completely. It’s the electrical equivalent of trying to pull a vacuum in air. Push-pull amps don’t do that unless they’re deliberately mis-balanced. Instead, they transition to class AB and one half of the push-pull does all the work. That's why SET amps have such devoted followers. The way a triode distorts as it runs out of bias is very organic and similar to how air behaves.

geoff, read their posts again...they said “ decompress” air not compress. Either way, you’re correct about how vacuum is obtained. 
I’m still stuck on that single ended amp remark...😁

Hey, I’m going to clunk your heads together. You do not (rpt not) obtain a vacuum by compressing air. You suck the air out of the container to produce a vacuum. A vacuum is measured by no. of air molecules per unit volume. A perfect vacuum would have no (as in zero) molecules at all. Obviously, a tremendous mass will compress air a lot but not (rpt not) completely, which is why air shock absorbers work even for very massive commercial jetliners. PV equals RT. The number of gas molecules in the container remains constant. Hardly a vacuum. In fact there are MORE molecules per unit volume when the air is compressed. A lot more.

“why single ended amps best emulate the character of the medium sound travels through”

This is very intriguing. Does this have to do with how the electrons move to create voltage to drive the speakers or something else? Hard to connect the dots.

@geoffkait
Yeah, I can hear polarity. Been playing with that a while on my amp.

@cleeds
You kinda pointed out the point I was making. You can only decompress air to a vacuum. But you can compress air until it begins to change phase. Sea level air pressure is about 16 psi. That's the absolute limit to how negative a wave can be. But it’s not very technically difficult to produce 32 psi or even 50 psi pressure waves. That’s, in short, why air is single ended, why it’s natural character of distortion is low and even order, and why single ended amps best emulate the character of the medium sound travels through.

Costco is close but no cigar. For starters air shocks in cars compress as much as they decompress. Air is a compressible fluid. Pressure, volume, temperature, whatever. Hel-loo! Second, when the system is in Reverse Polarity the speaker drivers move OUT when they should be moving back IN and visa Versace. They are 180 degrees out of phase. Follow?

Cleedsy, old bean, a vacuum is created by evacuating air from the system not by compressing it. Hel-loo!

kosst_amojan

Air is a single ended medium of transmission.

It is? Exactly what do you mean by that?

You can compress it much more than you can decompress it.

You can decompress air it until it's a vacuum, so it isn't clear what you mean here.

Another excellent knee jerk reaction by the poster boy of knee jerk reactions. It’s not necessarily the recording engineer’s fault. It could the the mastering engineer. In any case there are no standards for Polarity. Any more than there are standards for dynamic range compression, another big fault that’s not the fault of the recording engineer. If you can’t hear Polarity, which in your case I imagine is true, then you shouldn’t worry about it.

I don't buy this nonsense about half or most recordings being out of phase or polarity or whatever you want to call it. It doesn't even make sense on it's face. Inverting the polarity completely changes the presence of the sound. Air is a single ended medium of transmission. You can compress it much more than you can decompress it. If you invert the polarity of the recorded instrument, the single ended nature of air will inject it's own distortion where none should otherwise be. Absolute polarity preservation will avoid that and not challenge the loudspeaker to replicate polarity that air cannot accurately convey. 
What more, the recording engineer I do listening for every now and then is a real fanatic about phase and polarity and most engineers understand that it's critical to achieving the sound they're looking for. 

Atmasphere, after listening to your explanation I’m even more inclined to believe G Louis. Two microphones or one, doesn’t matter, or three microphones. I also believe him when he states most audiophile recordings, even such famous ones as Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo, are in Reverse Polarity. You can squawk all you like.

I don't believe G Louis. He came into our room at CES once, insisting that the polarity was off in our system without even sitting down to make his revelation. I flipped the switch (which has been a part of the MP-1 preamp circuit since its inception). At that point he said it was only audible on CD- not LP (which was the second sign of baloney).
I had the same cut on CD and played it- he didn't see that one coming... At that point he insisted that if it was recorded analog, but encoded to CD, you couldn't hear it. What nonsense.

The thing was, it sounded better the way we had it. The recording in question was done with two mics (Canto General). He made a hurried exit, apparently aware he had embarrassed himself.

50% is about right. Mastering engineers are not worried about whether their equipment inverts polarity or not. So its just statistics.

atmasphere, you should agree with me more often. You’ll be much better off in the long run. 🏃

To be a little picky, I have been saying for CDs the percentage might be much higher than 50%. In fact, if you believe G Louis, the Polarity Pundit, the percetage is 92%.  That’s why I’ve pointed out a number of times recently, i.e., the last few years, putting one’s system in Reverse Absolute Polarity might actually be the best long term strategy. What with overly aggressive compression and the absolute Polarity issue CDs have devolved from perfect sound forever to perfectly atrocious.

Absolute phase and polarity are the same thing.
Relative phase is one channel out of phase with the other and should be corrected, regardless of the absolute phase/polarity (IOW, whether your system is inverting or not).
I rarely agree with Geoff on anything, but in the case of recordings he is correct. The recording industry doesn't care about absolute polarity; 50% of all recordings are inverted polarity.
We have a switch on our preamp to correct this if needed. That's a lot easier than swapping the speaker cable polarity in both channels to see if its better or not.
Absolute polarity can usually only be heard if the recording is done with just two mics (possibly also with a third center channel mic mixed in). If more than that, the signal gets too messed up and you simply can't tell.

In case anyone is still reading this thread, I need to clarify the end result of my experiments with "phase" and "polarity".

It turned out I had a speaker wire reversed at the amplifier.  Once corrected, I was able to run "stereo polarity tests" that proved my speakers were "in phase" (https://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_polaritycheck.php).  Also confirmed with my HiFi News test record.

It seems we need some concise definitions regarding "phase" and "polarity".  I have no idea what to call it, but if you get your "red" wires and your "non-red" wires reversed somewhere along the line, you will end up with compromised imaging and sound.

From the intro to The Wood Effect (1988) by Clark Johnsen, audio journalist at large,

Newcomers to Polarity do deserve some introduction though, which for the sake of everyone else I shall make brief. The abstract to The Wood Effect (1988) still explains it best:

Masked by random combination with other distortions in the music reproduction chain, an unsuspected major contributor has lain hidden: Aural sensitivity to "phase inversion", the Wood effect.

Musical instruments normally create compression waves in their attack transients. Electronics, however, often invert that natural, positive polarity to negative, unnatural rarefaction as emitted from loudspeakers, thus diminishing physical and aesthetic impact. The term Absolute Polarity uniquely describes the correct arrival to the ear of acoustic wavefronts from loudspeakers, with respect to actual musical instruments.

Wrong polarity, when isolated, is obvious to almost everyone. Its present neglect results primarily from habitual disregard for linear phase response in loudspeakers, due largely to the erroneous auditory theory of Helmholtz.

No, it's not. We had this discussion a while back. Phase has to do with time. 

"Is "phase inversion" the same as "polarity inversion"?"

Good question.  

genez, the positive and negative cables are different as i posted in an earlier post (4th post)
" Grost chose to construct the negative/ground cable from a mix of conductive composites and wire. The positive lead according to the literature, on the other hand, employs hundreds of stands of microfiber saturated in proprietary liquid ceramic.

The speaker cables are marked differently so you can get both speakers wired consistently.  They are not made of different materials designated only for + or - . 

Are the tires on your car for only going forward?   Reverse the wires and be done with it.