Stereophile test CD2 In/Out of Phase test:question

That's amazimg. I need to get out more. I have a recording of Tibetan finger bells, but I had no idea there was so much interest in the gong.

JBL are not the only ones!
I quote from the owqners manual of my Tannoy Little Red Monitor:
"Absolute Polarity
The convention on all Tannoy loudspeakers is as follows:
A positive going signal (ie =ve terminal of 1.5 volt cell) connected to the positive input terminals of the loudspeaker cause LF cone to move into cabinet. In this way, the absolute polarity of the signal from microphone to loudspeaker may be preserved."

Funny that it is JBL and Tannoy, two companies who have probably done more fundamental research into acoustics than all the others combined, would wire their speakers that way.

I had this posted by mistake on another thread. Here it is where it belongs.

I used the example of the bow wave of a ship being "out of phase". In the news we have another example. When there is a Tsunami the initial effect is that the ocean retreats, leaving fish flopping around on what used to be the bottom of the sea.

I suspect that the "near field" sound wave polarity is what we would expect from the cone motion, but that as the distrubance propogates through the air it is modified. I wonder if anyone has done any research on the modification of sonic waveform as a function of propogation distance through air.

The effect I suggest perhaps explains the ambiguity that exists regarding the importance of "absolute polarity". And it suggests that the audibility of "absolute polarity" would best be evaluated using headphones.