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Phase Inverted DAC fix - w/o flipping spkr cables?

Some of the DACs I'm looking at are phase inverting - I do not really want to reverse my speaker cables because I have other compents that are not phase inverting hooked up.

Could I flip the leads on one of the interconnects? Would have to be cut open and resoldered I suppose - is this in any way dangerous or just plain stupid? If its this easy I would have expected someone to have invented a reverse phase IC by now.

And of course this brings up the question - are we really talking about phase or polarity? Reversing speaker cables is really just swapping the polarity - not truly the same thing as phase. So when they say a DAC is reverse phase - do they really just mean reverse polarity in one channel?

Polarity is a binary concept - pos and neg and that's it. Whereas phase is really a continuum of degreed offsets in the time domain. Or so I've read...
gdoodle
restock
831 posts
 
Strictly speaking there is no polarity for an interconnect cable. Interconnects carry an AC signal and by switching the leads of the interconnect you flip the phase, i.e. you shift the phase of the signal they carry by 180 degrees.

The problem with flipping leads is that one lead usually is grounded. Flipping leads would put the signal to ground. I would assume that creates problems with most electronic equipment.

Hope this helps,

Rene
rwwear
2,904 posts
 
It would be simple if using balanced interconnects. All you have to do is reverse the positive and negative on one end. But, phase reversal is not a bad thing as long as each cable has the same phase. It is hard to know what is correct anyway as most recordings go through so many processes that phase is changed many times and can be different from one to the next.
gmood1
1,251 posts
 
If buying from a maker? Just have them to un-invert the phase in the unit itself. I had this done to mine so I wouldn't have to swap speaker cables.
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