Hi-Rez Highway

Posted by jeromelang (A) on March 15, 2012 at 01:49:10

In Reply to: RE: Kind of a non-issue, at least for me. posted by Doktor Brahms on March 14, 2012 at 08:07:28

"....I realize that this does not really address the issue of absolute polarity. However, I suspect that in real-world situations, preserving phase integrity is probably not a top priority at the average recording session. Think of all the cables, the mike preamps, the mixing consoles, and on and (alas!) on. It is possible--even likely--that the average recording comes to us with the phase integrity compromised to one extent or another. I may be completely off base here, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it...."

There are 2 separate, but interrelated issues at hand here.

I have a friend who was terrible unhappy with his system.
But he couldn't put a finger on it why it was so.
As it turned out, his accuphase cdp balanced out was wired pin 3 hot, going into pass amps.
Switching to unbalanced brought back imaging focus and better sense of dynamic impact into his system.
The sonic differences were marginal at best, but with RCA connection, everything just clicks.
It's a fine line, but my friend just knew it which side of the line he was in.

There's another fella whom I communicated in an audio forum.
He is using marantz SACD player with polarity switch.
He just went ahead engaged the switch, thinking that it would help compensate for polarity inversion.
We discussed it at length, and he agreed to take a test

1.  SA11S2 polarity switch engaged (180 degree polarity invert), player end of interconnect wired pin2 hot
2.  SA11S2 polarity switch disengaged (0 degree no polarity invert), player end of interconnect wired pin3 hot

He had another set of identical balanced cable wired pin 3 hot at the player end.
He heard the difference straight away.
In this test, absolute polarity was the same in both cases, so why would he hear a difference?

His own words were someing like "...Frankly when the phase invert switch was engaged, there was very little difference.  Some have said that this switch is for recordings recorded out of phase and not change in polarity of the pins.  That's why I had to change the polarity of the  interconnects which did have a difference...."

i was the one edging him to change the pin configuration on the XLR connector at the player end, even though everyone else was saying that absolute polarity was the only problem and merely engaging the polarity switch was sufficient.

You see - it's all about maintaining the correct signal flow directionality.

despite the fact that his marantz already have a polarity switch to correct absolute polarity reversal, the bigger (and more audible) problem for him then was that the positive signal from player's XLR output pin3 was being transmitted down the negative signal carrying conductor of the interconnect and vice versa. this constitute a reversal of signal flow directionality on the balanced XLR interconnect cable between the SACD player and his pre-amp, which was audible to him, and was retified by the XLR terminal pin configuration change.

Edits: 03/15/12   03/15/12