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RE: Unlikely to be possible

"The point I'm making is that if absolute phase were audible (and I believe it's not), an asymmetrical amplifier probably isn't required in order to hear it."

I agree with you; I doubt very much that absolute phase, in the sense normally understood, is audible. If it were audible, it would presumably only be in subtle effects at the start of percussive sounds, and suchlike, and it seems very hard to believe that one would ordinarily be able to notice these. And if a claimed audibility could not be confirmed in double-blind tests, it would indeed be reasonable to conclude that it was imagined rather than real.

It certainly would not seem to be at all consistent with the kind of "night and day" differences reported by the OP: "As for brightness, with the polarity switched the Sophias are in fact rather lush and dark."

I guess I was trying to be charitable, and wondering if there was any conceivable phenomenon that could account for what was reported. I still feel that if there were a couple of percent of asymmetric distortion in the amplifier, and another couple of percent of asymmetric distortion in the loudspeaker, then it is not implausible that the audible sound could be significantly different depending on whether the polarity of the loudspeaker's distortion was, so to speak, parallel or anti-parallel with that of the amplifier. The effect, if it were significant, could occur even with a pure sinewave as a signal source; it would not in any way depend on the ordinarily understood notion of the absolute phase of the audio signal in the CD recording, which I would consider to be essentially irrelevant in any case. And it would be a continuous (in time) effect, much more in line, perhaps, with what the OP reported.

I know nothing about the distortion levels in the OP's amplifiers and speakers, so I don't know whether such effects could be significant or not. But I would certainly be willing to bet that if instead the polarity of the audio signal going into the amplifier (both amplifiers, in the case of stereo) were reversed, there would be no audible difference. (At least, no difference that could be confirmed in double-blind tests.)

By the way, although it may not be pertinent to the present discussion, I would call a rectangular wave, with duty cycle not equal to 50%, asymmetric in the sense I meant. That is to say, the sign-inverted signal is not equal to a time-translated version of the original signal.

Chris



Edits: 11/15/15 11/15/15

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  • RE: Unlikely to be possible - cpotl 12:40:26 11/15/15 (0)

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