Polarity mystery: Can you help me solve it?

I looked at your system page, but I don't see any pictures of the room. Does your room contain many highly reflective surfaces? If so, from looking at the Stereophile measurements, the reversing of the driver polarity could result in a mid-treble suckout which would have many of the sonic effects you descibe. Stereophile concludes that the speaker is best suited for a large, well damped room. If that's not a description of your room, then intentionally having the speaker malfunction might actual work better.

Perhaps it is Folie à deux!

LOL!

I wonder if it has something to do with how the sound from the tweeter and woofer "sums" at a particular listening distance.

Does your room contain many highly reflective surfaces? If so, from looking at the Stereophile measurements, the reversing of the driver polarity could result in a mid-treble suckout which would have many of the sonic effects you descibe.

It seems to me, as I indicated earlier, that while all of these are factors that may be relevant in a general sense to the sonic characteristics of the system, they are inapplicable to the observations Bryon has stated. The reason being that they would not have effects which are simultaneously consistent both with connection polarity and across recordings that maintain absolute phase, that have inverted absolute phase, and that have randomly mixed phases.

It seems to me that that observation, of consistency across many recordings, shoots down all of the theories that have been offered, aside from mine which has been shot down in other ways.

Best regards,
-- Al

Onhwy61 - No, my room does not have many highly reflective surfaces. It has a thick rug over a wood floor and 2" acoustical foam over a large area on the ceiling. Both side walls and the wall behind the speakers contain diffusion. Also, the room is not particularly small - it is 14x17x8.

However, there is something implied in your theory that seems plausible to me, namely, that somehow the crossover design could be relevant to my (and my friend's) findings.

Al - Assuming that the improvement I experienced really is constant across all recordings, regardless of their polarity, then surely we are right to conclude, as you and I both have, that the ABSOLUTE polarity of the recordings is irrelevant to the issue. But does it follow from that, that the RELATIVE polarity of the tweeter/woofer is irrelevant to the issue? I'm getting a little lost in the how that inference works.

BTW, I don't know if it's relevant, but the two drivers are not on the same plane. The woofer is recessed in the speaker cabinet, so that its center is slightly farther from the listener than the tweeter.

I inverted the polarity of the drivers, by simply reversing the red and black speaker wire leads to the terminals of both speakers, so that the speakers are still in phase with each other, but now the woofers are negative polarity and the tweeters are positive polarity.
Bryoncunningham 2-18-10

so that the speakers are still in phase with each other,

Am I wrong, aren't the two speakers still out of phase with one another.

If the woofer, bass driver, is now wired so when a kick pedal strikes the bass drum does the speaker produce the same amount of energy, air movement, sucking back as it did wired the other way pushing out? Does the woofer now produce less bass?

Jea48 - No, the two speakers are in phase with each other. And no, the woofer does not produce less bass. I believe you are confusing the following:

(1) The ABSOLUTE polarity of a recording - positive or negative.
(2) The RELATIVE polarity of a component - preserving or inverting.
(3) The RELATIVE polarity of the system - preserving or inverting.

Re: (1) The ABSOLUTE polarity of a recording refers to whether or not the waveforms represented in the recording correspond to the waveforms of the sound waves created by the real musical event. In recordings with POSITIVE absolute polarity, a COMPRESSION wave at the microphone corresponds to a COMPRESSION wave represented on the recording, while a RAREFACTION wave at the microphone corresponds to a RAREFACTION wave represented on the recording. In recordings with NEGATIVE absolute polarity, a COMPRESSION wave at the microphone corresponds to a RAREFACTION wave represented on the recording, and a RAREFACTION wave at the microphone corresponds to a COMPRESSION wave represented on the recording.

Re: (2). The RELATIVE polarity of a COMPONENT refers to whether the component preserves or inverts the polarity that it receives at its input. By reversing the speaker cable leads to my speaker terminals, I have changed the RELATIVE polarity of the speakers, that is to say, RELATIVE TO THE SIGNAL BEING SENT FROM THE AMPLIFIER. But because I reversed the leads to BOTH speakers, they are still in phase RELATIVE TO EACH OTHER. That is why I did not experience a diminishment of bass due to cancellation.

Re: (3) The RELATIVE polarity of a SYSTEM refers to whether the playback system, taken as a whole, preserves or inverts the polarity of the recording. A POLARITY-PRESERVING system will preserve the absolute polarity of recordings. A POLARITY-INVERTING system will invert the absolute polarity of recordings. When you put this together with (1), i.e., the fact that some recordings have POSITIVE absolute polarity and some have NEGATIVE absolute polarity, you get the following result: A POLARITY-PRESERVING playback system will preserve the "polarity" of the original event (i.e. compression=compression/rarefaction=rarefaction) ONLY WHEN the absolute polarity of the recording is POSITIVE. A POLARITY-INVERTING system will preserve the "polarity" of the original event ONLY WHEN the absolute polarity of the recording is NEGATIVE.

Al will correct me if I got any of this wrong.

Apologies if I'm telling you things you already know.