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Speaker phase observation and question?

Hi everyone,

After months of playing around with positive phase and reverse phase connections to my Monitor Audio Silver 8 speakers, I have made a couple of observations. When connected in positive phase (red - red, black - black), the speakers put out pretty substantial bass, but the mids and treble are somewhat subdued. Upon reversing the phase, the mids and treble open up substantially, and the bass becomes somewhat subdued. To my ears, I actually prefer the reversed phased.

Moving forward to the current day, I purchased an app that tests phase using a generated tone. In testing my speakers, both bass drivers test positive phase, but the mid and treble test negative. I had read somewhere that some manufactures wire the drivers like this intentionally, but am confused as to whether or not this is the case with my speakers, or if it's a manufacturing flaw?

Any thoughts? 
chewie70
erik_squires
16,014 posts
 
Hi Almarg,

I am definitely on team "easy to drive speakers." Get easy to drive speakers and a lot of amps will sound really great.

Get demanding speakers, and your amp costs may go up considerably.

So make sure if your speaker is demanding that it's really worth the cost of ownership. Being able to tell amps apart is not why I buy speakers anymore. :)

Best,

E
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Likewise, Erik. Putting it another way, I prefer the dollars I choose to invest in an amplifier to go as much as possible toward sound quality and build quality, rather than a lot of that investment simply going toward watts and amperes.

Best regards,
-- Al  
timlub
2,039 posts
 
Hi Kalali,    well to answer your question... quality would not benefit from a design with a combination of low impedance and low phase angle,  but when you are designing, if you want a very detailed speaker, you may choose a very stiff cone,  you may want a low qts for a lean sound or a higher qts for a sealed box design, You may want a driver that can cover 4 or 5 octaves or a driver that has no peaks or one that only has a very smooth rolloff on the top end or one with a low fs.  What it all comes down to,  is that when you have a design in mind,  you tend to find a driver that comes as close to  what you are after in sound quality and deal with phase angles the best that we can. 
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 
Thanks for the excellent and thorough explanations. I had completely missed the interrelationship between the impedance and phase angle and voltage/current interplay referenced in the posts. It all makes sense now.
asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
4,562 posts
 
Hey chewie70....late post, but I've 'been away'/out of town/preoccupied...

For eq and room correction, I run a dedicated/in line Behringer 8024 (yeah, PA stuff...but it works nicely and is reasonably 'clean') and the APO eq off Source Forge with the Peace interface on the 'puter...

https://sourceforge.net/p/equalizerapo/wiki/Documentation/

One for room eq, the other for 'tweaks 'n tricks'; monitor the results with an RTA and see what's going on...

Between the 2, I could probably bend an acoustic 2x4, but that's more for grins than accuracy. *L*  I'm not so much a 'purist' of late, but having 'been there/done that/smoked the t-shirt. ;)

I just amuse myself of late...my approach to the 'hobby' isn't as 'serious' as some, but to each...*S*

Hoping to be helpful, J
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