2. speakers
  3. 1266479522

Polarity mystery: Can you help me solve it?

THE BACKGROUND: My speakers are Focal 1007be. They have a Linkwitz-Riley crossover with a 36 dB per octave slope. Because of that, the two drivers are wired with opposite polarity: the woofers are positive, the tweeters are negative.

WHAT I DID: At the advice of a friend with the same speakers, I inverted the polarity of the drivers, by simply reversing the red and black speaker wire leads to the terminals of both speakers, so that the speakers are still in phase with each other, but now the woofers are negative polarity and the tweeters are positive polarity.

WHAT HAPPENED: To my surprise, the sound improved! Specifically, image focus improved. The improvement can't be attributed to the preservation of the absolute phase of the recording, since the improvement was the same for many different recordings (some of which, presumably, preserve absolute phase, while others do not). And the improvement can't be attributed to the speakers being wired incorrectly at the factory, since the friend who suggested that I try this experiment owns the same speakers and experienced the exact same result. So I don't know what to attribute the improvement to.

Can anyone help with this mystery?
bryoncunningham

Showing 2 responses by gregm

gregm
3,395 posts
 
IIUC you reversed the spkr cable connections, right?
If the sound is really better, it is probably your room acoustics favouring 180 degrees change in phase.

Do you have the impression of a deeper soundstage now?
gregm
3,395 posts
 
Kirkus, that was also my initial assumption --

Anyway, a 180d change can produce a relative suckout in the lower-mid area, whereby the perceived result is more clarity ion the upper register (=better imaging) and a more pronounced upper bass region.
More to discover