@jetter
With 2-way speakers, this is usually the case. The reason has to do with time and crossover phase. It is considered far more important to have them work well through the crossover slope. Stereophile's speaker measurements do a great job of showing this. Look at figure 7 here, and the discussion right above it:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/monitor-audio-silver-8-loudspeaker-measurements
The measurements are typical for a good quality multi-way speaker, like the Monitor Audio line.
You can test any driver you can touch / see with a 1.5 to 9V battery. The + terminal should make the driver move towards the listener when the + of the battery is connected to it, with the negative pole attached to the - battery.
This may be very difficult with an AMT or ribbon however.
From what I have seen, most speaker makers like to keep the bass in positive polarity, and then invert the other drivers to suit.
Vandersteen and Thiel go through extraordinary efforts to avoid doing this, so they are among the rare exceptions.
Best,
E
Or maybe to say it in another way, the woofer and tweeter + and - are attached opposite to the signal from each other?
With 2-way speakers, this is usually the case. The reason has to do with time and crossover phase. It is considered far more important to have them work well through the crossover slope. Stereophile's speaker measurements do a great job of showing this. Look at figure 7 here, and the discussion right above it:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/monitor-audio-silver-8-loudspeaker-measurements
The measurements are typical for a good quality multi-way speaker, like the Monitor Audio line.
You can test any driver you can touch / see with a 1.5 to 9V battery. The + terminal should make the driver move towards the listener when the + of the battery is connected to it, with the negative pole attached to the - battery.
This may be very difficult with an AMT or ribbon however.
From what I have seen, most speaker makers like to keep the bass in positive polarity, and then invert the other drivers to suit.
Vandersteen and Thiel go through extraordinary efforts to avoid doing this, so they are among the rare exceptions.
Best,
E