Phil Leigh Wrote: > yes that's right - same as reversing the speaker cables. There was a > theory that we could detect the phase polarity of the initial transient > (ie when you hit a bass drum, the skin moves out first then in as it > springs back - and that the speaker cone should move the same way so > that the initial "wavefront" mimics the real world). > > Having spent thousands of hours in studios, I'm not convinced, > personally. > > However, as no-one knows what the "correct" phase of any given > recording is...some people will sit there switching polarity trying to > decide which sounds best. The problem with this of course is that they > are listening to the impact of phase changes as reproduced by the > speakers interacting with the air in the room and the room itself - and > this is a "chaos engine" - the outcome is going to vary according to > time of day, air humidity, room pressure loading etc...I've seen people > mark CD's with a "polarity" setting and then get puzzled when they > subsequently disagree with their own choice. > S
Wow - I never cease to be amazed by audiophiles.... The initial wavefront in your bass drum example will depend on how the drum itself was oriented originally! Would the sound quality have been much worse if the drummer had turned his drum around during the recording session? It seems to me before you should worry about that, you should first build an exact replica of the room the music was recorded in, with a speaker with a perfectly flat response in the exact position of every sound source. Then you can worry about overall phases. Actually, maybe this is a good opportunity to ask a question that's bothered me for a while. It seems pretty clear that _relative_ phases (between different frequencies) are important, both for spatial orientation and probably for other reasons. But an audio chain (from mic->A/D->D/A->amplifier->speaker) must introduce a pretty strong frequency-dependent phase shift (because it consists of many driven damped oscillators, both mechanical--mic and speakers--and electronic, for example cross-overs). So I would guess that relative phases between different frequencies get totally messed up - is that wrong for some reason? If it's right, why do people worry about phases introduced by equalizers? -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22118 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
