Hey George....that’s exactly the way I was thinking about it. The question is whether your ear can tell the difference. From the other comments, it sounds like you may be able to which makes sense.
Impact of phase inversion by preamp
This will be my first post on this forum so I thought I’d pose a question I’ve always wondered about. I have a Conrad Johnson Premier 18LS preamp that I’ve been extremely happy with since first acquiring it some years ago. This is a solid state single ended, single stage design that inverts the phase of the input signal at the output. The manual states that you should reverse the connections to the speakers to account for this. Obviously this is easily done but I really can’t see how it would really matter as long as things are connected consistently between the left and right channels. I’d be interested to hear what others have to say on this subject.
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"They" whoever they are, I can't rembemer, it was said back in the 80's. Say that "if" the inital bass driver movement is into the room, that you get a better leading edge attack to the sound of a bass note.????? This is most probably why it's said you can only hear the difference in the bass. Cheers George |
@ligjo- This may be of interest(scroll down to the actual article): Polarity Think Piece: A Speculation Regarding Perception of Detail and: https://www.stereophile.com/content/absolute-phase-fact-or-fallacy Stereophile again: https://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/988awsi/index.html Then, there are ways to test whether it matters to your ears, or not. ie: https://www.stereophile.com/content/stereophile-test-cd-tracks-6-9 |
To answer part of your question twoleftears, in the case of hifi equipment, swapping phase and polarity should be the same. Phase can be “rotated” by varying amounts within 360 degrees but that would not be applicable in home hifi systems. Rotating by 180 degrees flips the phase. I can’t answer what specific vendors might be doing when they implement a polarity switch but as almarg stated earlier, the circuitry is being changed which could impact the sound beyond just changing polarity. |
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