Crossing Left and Right Speakers

Well......I guess the answer is, no one knows, maybe the Audio Analyst on YT knows.

@avanti1960 

"does the reversed image sound the same if the amps are non-reversed and you turn your head away from the speakers? "

There is no image that way.

T

It's hard to believe you get anything other than a mirror image.  However, I do see the point about familiar music and the room not being symmetrical.  I can imagine that your ear is trained for a specific image and it would seem like a different room if the channels were reversed. 

does the reversed image sound the same if the amps are non-reversed and you turn your head away from the speakers? 

I'm wondering if you are listening to familiar music. Could it be that you are not hearing what you expect?

@jimmy2615 

I checked and the records I heard the issues on, only one was Binaural.

There sound should be no different other than reversing the channels of the recorded output left to right and vice versa. 

Unless-

1) Something was inadvertently wired out of phase. 

2) The room acoustics affect the sound of the left and right speakers differently- e.g. reflections, absorbtions, reinforcement of different frequencies, back of room differences- e.g. one side open, one side closed off etc. 

Test this by reversing the output interconnects of the source channels.  If the sound is the same as reversing preamp outputs then it is because of room acoustics. 

@mceljo thank you for the kind comment. @tonydennison the phenomenon isn't super obvious unless you really stop and think 

@jimmy2615

I noticed instruments move to very strange illogical places in the stage.

@jimmy2615 

"this recording is binaural"

THIS IS STARTING TO MAKE SENSE. That might be it !!!

Ok, you guys had me questioning what I thought I had heard recently on this Chesky recording for Audiogon.  Keep in mind when I heard this I was not listening for anything.  I just noticed something sounded wrong, figured out what it was, and switched it back.  FWIW I went back and looked at the liner notes and, interestingly, this recording is binaural. Not sure that makes a big difference or not.  Anyway, I went back to listen again.  The cut I thought had no center image was correct - because it in fact has no information in the center for the first couple minutes.  It had been a long time since I listened to the recording and at that point I was just trying to figure out what was sounding wrong.  I had turned it off before I got to the part where the flute moves from right to center.  Now, the other cut (St. Louis Blues) still sounds slightly strange when the left and right sides are reversed, but I’d be hard pressed to identify exactly what was going on with that one.  It doesn’t sound completely (or only) like a simple reversal of left and right.  The center image seems less populated than when the right and left sides are wired correctly.  My room is not symmetrical either (right side is closer to a boundary) so that could contribute to it…. Anyway, just wanted to set the record straight!

@simonmoon 

Lets see, the album I experienced it on was either, Peo Alfonsi: Amada, or Peo Alfonsi: Alma. These are two separate records, but I can't remember which one it was. And there were a few others but I can't remember them. Might have been New Blood Symphony, the instrumentals download that came with the original Vinyl.

The Alfonsi records are both extraordinary, I bought Alma from Nativedsd.com.

@simonmoon 

Yeah, totally nuts. Last thing I expected. When the YT vid mentioned it I said to myself, "That's a bunch of Bulls**t, but there it is. Some in this thread mentioned it's not every recording, which is even stranger.

Funny, one time in the recording studio we spent 4 hours trying to find an anomaly that just vanished.

Audio is weird.

T

I am a bit dumbfounded by some people’s experiences.

I recently reorganized my system on my rack, and I accidentally connected my mono amps to the wrong channels of my pre.

And all that happened, was I heard orchestral violins come from the right channel, and cellos and basses come from the left (and other instruments switching sides). The opposite as to how orchestras are set up.

No loss of center fill, no loss of the soundstage going past the outer edges of my speakers, no loss of depth. Just everything flipped.

And let me add, my system in my room creates a very large soundstage, with very good image within the soundstage. Great layering, depth, width. 

@newbee 

No biggie, I thought is was hilarious. I was having fun. I experimented as well after I watched that video. And it is weird that switching speaker sides can actually have an effect.

OP, FWIW, I misread and attributed to you statements about soundstage aberrations experienced early in this thread. Obviously I thought you were experimenting with the equipment and getting the odd results. My bad. I should have read the post more carefully. I should have been talking to jimmy2615 as he was doing the experimenting that I attributed to you. 

@gregdude 

"For example  someone walking across the stage from l to r would appear to start in the center right walk off stage to the right"

I would think he would just go from R to L.

@zazouswing 

"By flipping the channels in an audio piece you are familiar with, could the brain be more preoccupied with trying to the push the left back into the right channel? The relatively small imperfections,"

Interesting idea. Yes I tried it with music Im not terribly familiar with. The drum issue is funny because some drummers are left handed....

I was a professional drummer for some time and I always notice the reversed drummer, but as I mentioned it is true with unfamiliar pieces. The sound is quite specific too, doesn't sound like being out of phase.

An example I found in a familiar piece was that the bass lines went way back in the center image, very quiet, which would happen if it were out of phase, but it was different, it was physically farther back in the background.

Still the make question is why? why not just a mirror image.

Your Idea makes a lot of sense but it does happen with unfamiliar pieces.

T

@newbee 

"Since the OP is loosing his center image "

OMG, you guys are trolling me. It's quite funny and I thank you.

Just in case.....I have zero issue with my center stage or any and all stages. There is nothing wrong wi......

ahhh, never mind

🤣

@decooney 

Yes my QS pre is reversed phase and my dac is switched, so....everything is in phase. My source is out of phase, the signal goes to the pre which has switched phased, so now the phase is IN, it leaves my pre and goes to my amps and the speaks IN phase. If I couldnt tell when my speakers were out of phase, I would have no business listening to music. 

The issue is not about phase, at all, in any way whatsoever. Infact there is no issue, it was a statement I heard in an youtube video about switching speakers. Nothing at all to do with polarity or phase.

@decooney 

Are you guys trolling me?

I don't have a problem with phase, I don't have any problem whatsoever with my sound. I heard in an you tube video that switching the R speaker into the left and vise versa would create a change. I would assume it would just be a mirror image, but it isn't.

I don't have any confusion on what putting a speaker out of phase would do, and I wouldn't be surprised at all that putting a speaker out of phase would in fact put that speaker out of phase.🤣

@newbee

:-) I am totally completely unequivocally IN phase. Further I never had any issues with sound quality. I heard the statement made in a YT video and I can’t see how it would make a difference. I tried it and it does make a difference. I don’t have any issues with my phase 😂

If I wanted to be out of phase I would just switch the phase on my source. I can tell what out of phase is.

@gregdude - Comparing how stereo speakers function to having two computer monitors that are setup so the mouse goes around the outside rather than across the middle is pure genius.  You have made my day!

p.s. You might see about getting into audiophile marketing.  There's a place for you in this industry.

Sounds like something out of Dr. Strange  if he kept messing with time.

All the best,
Nonoise

They specifically said, Pre left to Right Amp.

Well then that's weird. :D

@mihorn

While the diagram you provide is true, I don’t know of any theory of speaker dispersion that matches your description.

I suggest you take a look at ANY midrange or woofer spec sheet and examine the of-center frequency response, as well as any of the lateral dispersion charts from Stereophile.

In all these cases the overwhelming issue is the diameter of the cone relative to the wavelength, and the shape of the driver, be it cone, dome, or even flat doesn’t play a big role.

Just think it thru fellas if L is wired to R and vise versa there wouldn't be anything in the middle. Everything is switched so why would there be center fill. For example  someone walking across the stage from l to r would appear to start in the center right walk off stagt to the right and then reappear left of center seemingly walking toward the middle again. 

@jimmy2615 - Your experience is a perfect example of "everything matters" and doesn't make any logical sense unless you assume that there are other unknown factors in play.

Any difference in sound should be expected to result from variances in your components (very minor), unbalanced room acoustics (potentially very significant unless you have a nearly symmetric listening room), and imperfections in your hearing (likely significant).  If all of these factors were truly identical, then switching channels would create a perfect mirror image of the resulting sound.  If you could visualize the sound waves as lasers, you could take a picture looking down for one setup and then looking up for the reverse setup and the two pictures would be identical.

As you noted, hearing a familiar recording backwards is a significant change and the more "stereo" the recording is the harder I think it would be to make any meaningful comparisons.  I have a particular recording that has a guitar so much in the left channel that I've actually disconnected that side just to see if it was heard at all on the right channel (as expected it was).  I happened to catch a local dealer with an interconnect connected backwards on one end with this song.  They seemed confused that I was so adamant but did discover the L/R reversal upon inspection.

I was always of the general impression that soundstage was a relationship between space (audio reflections - both as captured in the recording and from our space), time (frequency - and how it interacts with space and nth order reflections), and our brains attempt to make sense out of things and line them back up when information feels like it’s missing.  By flipping the channels in an audio piece you are familiar with, could the brain be more preoccupied with trying to the push the left back into the right channel? The relatively small imperfections, which the brain would normally interpret as a range of frequencies being narrow / wide / up / down / forward / back, is now such a subtle discrepancy in the music compared to the glaring problem of the drums being on the wrong side of the room.  

Have you tried this with a piece you are not familiar with? Do that for a few weeks, get accustomed to the soundstage as presented, and then switch back to the correct channels. 

Otherwise, this makes absolutely no sense to me. 

Folks want to confuse absolute phase which can be inverted either by a switch on the pre-amp, source, etc. The result of a change of absolute phase is typically minor and in order for it to be heard the source (disc usually) must have been recorded 'in phase' and often its not, as often some cuts in the disc are and some are not.

The 'phase' I was referring to was the relationship of the speakers to each other which occurs when each speaker is wired up identically, i.e. pos on speaker 1 and pos on speaker 2 - negative on speaker 1 and negative on speaker 2. You can invert this phase relationship by switching the connectors on both speakers i.e. neg on speaker one to pos and neg on speaker 2 to pos. If you do this, and its commonly done to facilitate a tube preamp which inverts phase, you will still maintain the imaging that you had before the phase was inverted.

Since the OP is loosing his center image I can not but conclude that some where in his moving wires etc in shifting his amps that he has misconnected his stuff and now has/had the speakers out of phase (not inverted). Make sense to you? :-)

Doesn't make any sense to me either. That is why I suggested that you physically reverse the leads on one speaker. Sometimes strange things happen with electronics that aren't predictable. For example I've actually seen the connectors on a speaker mis labeled and cross overs mis-wired. My suggestion was just to insure that everything was connected properly absent any assumptions. Only takes a minute. :-)

@newbee 

Yes, I was certainly in phase. Let me explain, fisrtly I heard about it on the YT vid and I did some experiments afterward. Agin I am in phase. Just curious how this can be. If anyone knows why or how... makes no lgical sense

That usually occurs when you have the speakers wired out of phase. I know you said they were in phase but just for kicks, humor me, reverse the leads of one speaker and see what happens. :-)

@jimmy2615 

"the instruments were still outside the loudspeakers (but on the wrong side), but to your point what I noticed that surprised me was that there was nothing in the center of the stage, only on the outsides."

That is amazing.... I wonder why. 

@erik_squires 

They specifically said, Pre left to Right Amp.

Generally, direct sounds from LR speakers don’t reach to a listener due to angled woofer cones. More toe-in can result less direct sounds. To hear more direct sounds, move ears(head) closer (5~7ft) to speakers. Alex/Wavetouch

Left speaker to Right shoulder. Right speaker to Left shoulder.  That's all.  

My local AudioNote dealer does this with a few systems setup there.  In some ways it works, and other ways imo it can be confusing how it sounds.  Try it and see.   

I just experienced this the other day.  I have a recording for Audiogon made by the Chesky label (available from HD tracks) that has some really good imaging effects.  On the St Louis Blues cut, there are numerous instruments that appear either to the left or the right of the loudspeakers.  I had changed some gear around in my system and unintentionally switched the channels.  I knew immediately something was off - the instruments were still outside the loudspeakers (but on the wrong side), but to your point what I noticed that surprised me was that there was nothing in the center of the stage, only on the outsides.  There’s another track where a flute travels laterally around the soundstage, from left to right and back again.  In this case I couldn’t track it.  My speakers were wired in phase.  I suspect on a lot of recordings, other than switching left and right within the soundstage, there will not be a huge impact otherwise.  But I guess some recordings are different?  Not sure why or how.

I think this was probably meant differently.

They probably meant to refer to toe-in, or, how much the speakers are angled relative to the rear wall. With the speakers flat to the wall behind them the tweeter axes (plural of axis, say axe - ease) are parallel, but as we angle the speakers in (more toe-in) the tweeter axes cross, either behind or in front of the listener.

Extreme toe-in where the axes cross in front of the listener, can help when speakers are placed very close to side walls.

Changing toe-in can affect the imaging and leave you in one of these situations:

• You hear a L and R but no center
• You hear a L and R and center but the space between seems hollow
• You have a clear image from speaker to speaker with no gaps

By the way, most listeners use too much toe-in. Many speakers sound better with no to modest toe-in instead of being pointed directly at your ears.

Agree with you OP, it will just reverse L and R sides of soundstage

No. I’m talking about inputting the right monoblock with the left output from the pre.

Are you talking about extreme toe in, to the point where the right speaker is pointing at your left shoulder and right speaker at left shoulder?  Spendor used to suggest this as an option. I’ve tried it and it’s ok, but it really depends on your room and personal taste.