Reversing Polarity -- Voodoo or Easy Tweak?

Some manufacturers (Bat for example) allow you to easily swap absolute phase with the remote & others (Hagerman for example) give you manual switches to play with.
My take from playing with a BAT integrated I owned was that on most recordings keeping absolute phase 'correct' sounded subtly better and on one or two recordings (The Blues Brothers being a prime example)swapping absolute phase made a nice improvement.
I think a lot has to do with how well the recording studio does at keeping track of absolute phase in the mixing & recording processes.
FWIW, a dealer I know has a classical album that was recorded out of phase and you have to swap wires on one speaker only to get it to sound good, & I suspect that on many recordings some of the mixing is 'right' and some of the rest is 'wrong'.

Jeff_jones...Speaking of what I will call "relative" phase (one speaker with respect to the other) the "proper" phase is not always clear. Out of phase signal has a diffuse and directionless quality, and that might be what the recording engineer intended. In a matrix multichannel setup out of phase signal localizes to the rear channels, so reversing one set of speaker wires just swaps front and back speakers. When played back on a two-channel system a source that is intended to be well defined center front (typically a soloist) is a monaural signal (same in both channels). All recordings have some degree of out-of-phase signal, often nothing but ambience. However, there are some exceptions. One good example is the recording by Buffy Sainte-Marie, "The Angel" where out-of-phase signal is used with stunning effect.

I do not suggest that anyone deliberately connect stereo speakers out of phase, but a signal being out of phase is not inherently "wrong", and can be used to great effect when a recording is mastered.

Whoops! I should have said that reversing phase of one channel BEFORE MULTICHANNEL DECODING will swap front and rear. Doing speaker wires in a 2-channel setup will localize ambience, and make the soloist diffuse and directionless.