Is Phase and polarity the same thing?

They both entail switching the phase of the signal that gets to the speakers, but phase means making sure both speakers are the same and polarity means that both speakers have their positives and negatives changed together. The real question is whether on a positive signal from the mike inputs the drivers of the speakers should retract or move forward. I think they should move forward to duplicate the wave onset.

Wow, how frequently words fail us. Most test records use the word "phase" to deal only with whether both speakers share the same positive and negative connections throughout all that goes before them. Usually if you experience the signature disconcerting location-less sound, one speaker's connections are wrong, the red connection on the speaker wire is connected to the black binding post.

Polarity involves whether what you get in the drivers moving outward when the microphone at the recording retracted as the sound impacted on it. This would work only were recording engineers meticulous in wiring all microphones the same. Since few are concerned with this, what you hear is unlikely to have similar polarities across all microphones. All you can do is to use your polarity button the way it sounds best on each record.

This is further complicated by how your manufacturer accomplishes polarity change. Most do so by adding another stage of amplification to invert the signal. This usually sounds worse than the preamp without this additional stage.

Chazz, I really don't understand this confusion, nor do I understand why Krell would call it a phase button. I have owned two line stages with polarity or invert buttons. Invert makes sense as it changes the polarity on both inputs. I guess also that it would make sense to call a subwoofer phase knob either phase, polarity, or even invert as there is just one speaker being controlled.

It is also confusing that some speaker companies invert the midrange driver and that some see the onset wave as negative and others positive. It seems to me that the withdrawal of the microphone represents an onset of the sound wave so the microphone signal should be inverted to push the drivers out.

Part of the problem, IMHO, is that most recording engineers care little about this. As Clark Johnson always says many, if not most, recordings are a mix of polarities as mikes are connect both ways. While presently I do not have the capability to invert or switch the polarity for recordings, in the past I have often found one setting sounded much better. Other recordings, perhaps because of what Clark says, yielded no best setting.

Why don't I have the capability to switch polarity. Both of my line stages could easily have such capability. The H-Cat has parallel outputs, so when used as single-ended, you could just switch the negative and positive leads to change polarity. My Exemplar line stage is parafeed as just changing the leads to the outputs would allow a polarity switch. Neither designer focussed enough concern to both with this, although both said they could alter my unit to provide the switch.

Eldartford, as I said. But I don't know what you mean that speaker cones don't move in synchronically with the electrical signal. What do they move in synchronically with? If you mean, some manufacturers put some out of phase, I said that also.

Magfan, I was trying to keep this simple as the primary concern was phase versus polarity. Yes, most speakers don't just have no phase shifting at all in their crossovers. Perhaps I should have limited what I said to single driver speakers.

Eldartford, again I know this but was trying to keep it simple and again there are no such complications with a single driver. As I said before, I had dealt with different manufacturers how to deal with the onset wave at the microphone and from the drivers. I had a pair of Tannoys long ago and like JBL they treat the onset wave as a withdrawal of the drivers. I always reversed the speaker leads for better sound.