Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Ivan Beaver" data-source="post: 41428" data-attributes="member: 30">Re: What is the audible effect of 180 polarity change between HF and mids?AgreedThere is no &quot;standard&quot; as to whether to flip the polarity or not.&nbsp; As usual &quot;it depends&quot;.And what it depends on is phase.&nbsp; You want to have both pass bands in phase around crossover.&nbsp; This may or may not require the polarities to be the same.&nbsp; It depends on many different factors-which include (but are not limited to) signal arrivals fro both devices-type of crossover filters used, slope of crossover filters used-eq points with an octave or so of crossover (in band and out of band eq).With our products it is all about the phase.&nbsp; The best phase wins the crossover argument.&nbsp; Sometimes adjacent bands are in polarity-sometimes not.&nbsp; And with 3 way cabinets, they can bee all over the place (in terms of polarity).As usual this is not an easy question to answer-and one size does not fit all.Now if all you are concerned with with is the electrical signal out of the crossover-then that is a lot easier.&nbsp; But we don&#039;t listen to the electrical signal-we listen with real loudspeakers attached to it, which introduce their own phase shifts, and therefore skew the phase of the electrical signal.It is the combination of BOTH the electrical and the loudspeaker that give us the final result.My opinion why phase is not talked aobut very often is that historically it has been much harder to measure and a lot harder to understand than simple amplitude.I believe our ears are more sensitive to phase than amplitude-but it is much easier to get you head around amplitude-so that is what most people are concerned with.But loudspeakers can have identical amplitude responses and very different phase responses and sound totally different.&nbsp; Not even close.&nbsp; Yes I have done some testing like that.And when you remove all the eq that was used to make them flat-the same tonal differences you heard-are still there.&nbsp; Due to the major phase response (and other issues).It is pretty easy to get a loudspeaker with flat amplitude- and quite another to get a good phase response.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ivan Beaver, post: 41428, member: 30"] Re: What is the audible effect of 180 polarity change between HF and mids? Agreed There is no "standard" as to whether to flip the polarity or not. As usual "it depends". And what it depends on is phase. You want to have both pass bands in phase around crossover. This may or may not require the polarities to be the same. It depends on many different factors-which include (but are not limited to) signal arrivals fro both devices-type of crossover filters used, slope of crossover filters used-eq points with an octave or so of crossover (in band and out of band eq). With our products it is all about the phase. The best phase wins the crossover argument. Sometimes adjacent bands are in polarity-sometimes not. And with 3 way cabinets, they can bee all over the place (in terms of polarity). As usual this is not an easy question to answer-and one size does not fit all. Now if all you are concerned with with is the electrical signal out of the crossover-then that is a lot easier. But we don't listen to the electrical signal-we listen with real loudspeakers attached to it, which introduce their own phase shifts, and therefore skew the phase of the electrical signal. It is the combination of BOTH the electrical and the loudspeaker that give us the final result. My opinion why phase is not talked aobut very often is that historically it has been much harder to measure and a lot harder to understand than simple amplitude. I believe our ears are more sensitive to phase than amplitude-but it is much easier to get you head around amplitude-so that is what most people are concerned with. But loudspeakers can have identical amplitude responses and very different phase responses and sound totally different. Not even close. Yes I have done some testing like that. And when you remove all the eq that was used to make them flat-the same tonal differences you heard-are still there. Due to the major phase response (and other issues). It is pretty easy to get a loudspeaker with flat amplitude- and quite another to get a good phase response. [/QUOTE]

Verification