In Reply to: RE: Absolute phase/polarity posted by Renman on August 2, 2013 at 15:59:26:
I am familiar with Clark Johnsen's work, but I have not read Wood's original study. One thing that concerns me with Wood's results is that second harmonic distortion in the playback chain (e.g. speaker) could invalidate a conclusion that human ears can hear polarity reversals, as the amplitude spectrum would differ for the two polarities of Wood's asymmetrically clipped waveform. Perhaps Wood controlled for the possibility of speaker distortion, but if so, I've not seen this discussed.
In addition to the ability to hear the effects of polarity reversal, there is the question of whether recordings sound better (e.g. more natural) when presented with correct polarity vs. reversed. There are some logical issues here, especially given that some musical instruments radiate to the audience with differing polarity according to their orientation. It would also be interesting to see if (a) one individual is consistent in his selection of preferred polarity of a particular recording and (b) multiple individuals agree as to the correct polarity when listening to the same recording on the same system. There are test devices that are designed to aid in setting up correct polarity of public address systems and these can be adapted as an tool for recording polarity experiments.
From a practical point of view, I have a polarity reversal button in my DAC and can swap it whenever I want. Along with the volume control and the location of my listening chair I use polarity to fine tune a playback so that it sounds "the way I like it", for whatever that's worth. Your mileage may vary. :-)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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Follow Ups
- RE: Absolute phase/polarity - Tony Lauck 08:09:23 08/03/13 (5)
- Just for the record... - Poles Apart 12:38:32 08/03/13 (4)
- RE: Just for the record... - Tony Lauck 12:47:04 08/03/13 (3)
- RE: Just for the record... - ahendler 21:30:40 08/12/13 (2)
- RE: Just for the record... - Tony Lauck 09:51:00 08/13/13 (1)
- All very true.. sorry to be so late signing in. NT - Poles Apart 08:24:01 08/21/13 (0)