Speaker wire polarity on a powered subwoofer

Polarity of the sub vs main speakers is important. The output of the sub and the speakers will overlap over a portion of the bass spectrum, and relative polarity of the subs and mains affects the mix. If they are in phase then the outputs add together to produce more bass in the overlap. If they are out-of-phase you get partial cancellation, which can thin out the bass in the overlap.

Try it with the speaker polarity reversed,and normal and see which way sounds better. Sometimes, depending on room, speakers, and placement having the sub and mains out-of-phase sounds better.

Some subs have adjustable polarity to allow for experimentation.

Can you invert polarity of your source? If so just go back to normally wired speakers. BTW its almost 50-50 odds whether a given recording's polarity is normal or inverted, so you might not lose much by reverting to normal wiring anyway.

Note also that some multitracked recordings have inconsitant polarity across tracks so that niether polarity is really correct for the the mixdown (your source).

Thanks so much for the accurate information.

Troy

the biggest polarity problem on far to many recordings is bass, which oftentimes is out (opposite) from the rest of the music. IF your preamp or dac remote has a Polarity button (typically misnamed Phase) then you can bring both in line with the push of a button, otherwise...

since the audio for each instrument is recorded separately, how on earth is it out of polarity with the rest of the music? Thats really not how polarity works.