preamp inverts polarity
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" >>>>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 |
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? |
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this whole thread has gone off base and no one has answered my question.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.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. |
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...🐑 🐑 🐑 |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
