Riddle me this....

@mahgister @lewm 

On this one I have to unfortunately disagree with you both. In my experience somewhere around half of all recordings are polarity inverted. While that means, that it doesn‘t matter which way you connect your speakers, the actual playback will be out of polarity about half of the time. That‘s why having a polarity switch in the digital domain is so highly desirable. It is actually an advantage of digital over analogue to be able to correct this, and: yes, the differences on a decent system are very audible.

BTW: @mahgister‘s explanation as to why is by a country mile the most lucid I have encountered on the subject.

I think the same as you... It is a big mess... No need to disagree with me on this... 😉

And i want a digital switch for polarity in the digital domain too...

That‘s why having a polarity switch in the digital domain is so highly desirable.

On this one I have to unfortunately disagree with you both. In my experience somewhere around half of all recordings are polarity inverted. While that means, that it doesn‘t matter which way you connect your speakers, the actual playback will be out of polarity about half of the time.

@antigrunge2 ,

Agree...

Standouts where a definite difference could be heard?

Etta James, "Love Songs".
Track #1, "At Last".
Change? Etta’s Voice. Polarity inverted her voice was thin. Correct polarity her voice was full, a more moving presentation.

Chris Rea, "Auberge".
Track #11, "The Mention Of Your Name".
Again the voice of the singer stood out.

Buddy Holly, "From The Original Master Tapes".
Track #20, "True Love Ways.
Difference? Not only Holly’s voice, the saxophone as well. Definitely the saxophone....

FourPlay, "Between the Sheets".
Track #1, "Chant"
Difference? The bass drum.

Jenifer Warnes, "The Hunter"
Track #8, "Way Down Deep"
The drum, which I believe, is an African Djembe Drum.

Diana Krall
Pretty much any early CDs. Piano solo passages.

Use good CD recordings. Best solo passage instruments to listen to:

Horns. Trumpet and saxophone.

Percussion :
Bass drum, Kick pedal drum, African Djembe Drum.

how bout this riddle.....what stays in the corner and travels the world

antigrunge, I hope you and anyone else will get the point that I don’t claim phase makes no difference. Please pay attention to the double negative in that last sentence. I do claim that (1) I, and everyone else who has been subjected to double blind testing for phase sensitivity in my listening room with my dipolar full-range ESLs, cannot hear any difference, and (2) I am not convinced by any argument I have read anywhere, no matter how erudite are the discussants, that changing the phase of an audio system by 180 degrees necessarily ought to make a difference to the listener. Get that last point too.... I don’t see why it ought to make a difference, because there are many counter-arguments that seem also valid and which would lead to the conclusion that phase reversal (of both channels) would just as likely make no audible difference. Seems to me as soon as you have two or more sound sources on one recording (e.g., single piano plus single human voice), the importance of phase in the listening room begins to break down, because the phase relationships of the sounds emanating from those two or more sources is not going to perfect, even if they were recorded using one microphone. Of course, if you are listening for the voice, and if you have "correct" phase for the voice, then that might sound "better" than optimizing for the piano. Dunno.

For the many who say they do hear a difference, how do you know that the difference you hear has anything to do with changing phase? You might have a dirty phase switch or when you switched speaker wires, maybe your new connection is better or worse than the original because you tightened down the connector with such conviction. There’s also expectation bias, etc.

Jea48 tells some other guy to listen for himself and then provides three URLs that take you to arguments FOR the importance of absolute phase. Better to listen for yourself first.