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Everyone here has it wrong!

Sorry, but that is par for the course.

To begin, Grusin has no idea what polarity any of his records is in.

Tapes, records and CDs, all are a mixed bag. Just as polarity comes in one of two ways, without regulation so do the recorded media. Disc-to-disc, track-to-track, there's just no telling.

Nor do those media, or any piece of gear, exhibit absolute polarity. All they have is plain ol' polarity. Here's the definition, plain as I can say, from the abstract to The Wood Effect:

"Masked by random combination with other distortions in the music reproduction chain, an unsuspected major contributor has lain hidden: Aural sensitivity to ‘phase inversion’ — the Wood Effect."

"Music normally creates compression waves. Electronics, however, often invert that natural, positive polarity to unnatural, negative rarefaction, thus diminishing physical and aesthetic impact. The term Absolute Polarity uniquely describes the correct arrival to the ear of wavefronts from loudspeakers, with respect to actual musical instruments."

"Wrong polarity, when isolated, is obvious to everyone. Its present neglect results from habitual disregard for phase response, especially in loudspeakers."

So: Whereas a system is of fixed polarity (whichever one does not matter), the source material is mixed. The only solution (Sorry!) is to listen.

No one ever told you that correct audio practice would be easy.

clark


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