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In Reply to: RE: That's easy, Lew. posted by John Elison on December 19, 2014 at 00:32:32
take the room out of the equation. It would be interesting to know whether those who can hear phase differences with certain LPs on certain speakers can also hear the same differences via headphones. Room acoustics can and do also alter phase perception, I think.
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There is a reason that "time coherent" loudspeakers like those made by Green Mountain Audio have relatively narrow, focused dispersion patterns. The old "head in a vice" routine...
Edits: 12/19/14
Well, I could never hear a difference, but Joseph Grado claimed he could easily hear the difference with a live microphone feed. He said he installed the switches because he used headphones for recording and he was sensitive to absolute polarity when making live recordings. None of the other Grado headphones have polarity switched, so I guess John Grado doesn't feel the are necessary.
Happy Holidays,
John Elison
The ability to "easily hear" differences in polarity does not seem to be a prevalent trait, but a small minority of the our population is unusually sensitive to polarity.I wouldn't say that polarity is inaudible because I think that I can hear changes in polarity in some instances, but at the same time, it might be possible for me to train myself to alert to things that might ordinarily pass by unnoticed. Engineers and other obsessive-compulsive types might train themselves to become unusually alert to such things in the same way that white supremacists might train themselves to become unusually alert to variations in skin and eye color within a large crowd of people. Eagle eyes and Beagle ears have something in common, but to the eyes and ears of more easy-going creatures certain types of details simply aren't worth fretting over.
Edits: 12/19/14 12/19/14
I don't have a dog in this fight. I always felt blessed that I was not cursed with the ability to hear differences in absolute phase, but I also have entertained the possibility that my "disability" is due to the fact that I am a devoted fan of dipole speakers, for life. I don't doubt for a minute that others hear what I cannot hear.
Correct.
I don't doubt that others might hear what I cannot always hear, especially when I CAN hear some of the very same things under certain circumstances.
At the same time, after hanging around the audio boards for a number of years, I don't doubt that some people might be deliberately straining to hear minute details that that they might have ignored if they weren't intent on proving how acute their hearing is ("golden ears").
In other words, I don't exclude any possibility...
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