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Speaker phase observation and question?

Hi everyone,

After months of playing around with positive phase and reverse phase connections to my Monitor Audio Silver 8 speakers, I have made a couple of observations. When connected in positive phase (red - red, black - black), the speakers put out pretty substantial bass, but the mids and treble are somewhat subdued. Upon reversing the phase, the mids and treble open up substantially, and the bass becomes somewhat subdued. To my ears, I actually prefer the reversed phased.

Moving forward to the current day, I purchased an app that tests phase using a generated tone. In testing my speakers, both bass drivers test positive phase, but the mid and treble test negative. I had read somewhere that some manufactures wire the drivers like this intentionally, but am confused as to whether or not this is the case with my speakers, or if it's a manufacturing flaw?

Any thoughts? 
chewie70
erik_squires
15,641 posts
 
OP,

So, positive polarity means a + voltage causes the driver to move towards the listener and away from the cabinet.

A speaker designer may need to flip the polarity of individual drivers to get the correct frequency and phase alignment across the crossover region. It is rather rare for a flat baffle, multi-way speaker to get the drivers all lined up in positive polarity.

When this happens the convention is to wire the largest driver, the woofer, in positive phase, and then flip drivers going upwards as needed to align with the next driver down.

For instance, almost all 2-way speakers end up with the tweet reversed. My LM-1 however happen to have aligned in positive phase.

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-lm-1-bookshelf-version.html

But this was a result of a great deal of luck with driver sizes, location, and crossover design.

Best,


E
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
chewie70, My speakers are factory wired inverted by default (woofer wise - tested with battery). This default inverted phase gives me more bass (and fuller nicer sound) while opposite phase brings more treble/mids.  My amp and the source (DAC) are non-inverting, but many recordings might be.
cedargrover
302 posts
 
Some speakers, e.g., Vandersteen, are purposely designed to have all drivers in the same, positive phase.  As Mr. Squires implies, Vandersteen does not use a flat baffle.


sfall
346 posts
 
" I have made a couple of observations. When connected in positive phase (red - red, black - black), the speakers put out pretty substantial bass, but the mids and treble are somewhat subdued. Upon reversing the phase, the mids and treble open up substantially, and the bass becomes somewhat subdued. To my ears, I actually prefer the reversed phased."

Somethings wrong. Even though your speakers don't use first order xovers, you shouldn't have that much change. Can you list your amp and speaker cables? Be very specific with your speaker cables. (brand, model, single or biwire,)

tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,741 posts
 
Vandersteen also uses first order filters which don't honk up phase
...
and his crossovers are incredible feats of engineering without a big baffle to smooth frequency response - a big baffle is a nice flat horn

wiring a driver out of phase to attempt to fix a steep filters phase shift is NOT excellent crossover design...
but the magazine guys love it...


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