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RE: Sucker for SET: Sophia 91-01

"I read somewhere in these forums that often in the course of their manufacture polarity is switched on these units. So, I swapped plus and minus at the speaker terminals and ... yeah, Mahler grooves!"

Just to make sure the discussion on this thread isn't going off into murky territory, can you spell out exactly what you did as regards polarity switching? Did you switch the polarity of the speaker connections on one channel, while leaving the other channel unchanged? Or did you switch the polarity of the speaker connections on both channels at the same time?

The first of these two possibilities would indeed have a huge and unmistakable effect on the quality of the sound. With the wrong relative orientation for the speaker polarities, the bass in particular will tend to be weak.

If, on the other hand, you meant the second of the two possibilities, then this issue, of "absolute polarity," enters the territory of topics where more heat than light tends to be generated in audiophile forums. It is likely to be barely discernible as an audible effect, even in the very best of circumstances, for reasons that some of the posters have already mentioned.

Since you were reporting having read previous discussions on the forum about randomness of the input-to-output polarity of *monoblock* amplifiers, then it seems likely that those postings were concerned with the possibility that one particular monoblock amplifier may have been manufactured with an input-to-output polarity reversal relative to another ostensibly identical monoblock amplifier from the same manufacturer. If this indeed happens, then it makes perfect sense to try the experiment of switching the speaker wires on one channel, in case this has happened with the particular pair of monoblocks you acquired. To judge from what you reported, it sounds as if this may indeed have been the case with your particular pair of monoblocks.

If this is indeed what you found (i.e. an improvement when switching the polarity of the speaker wires to one speaker only), then the whole issue of "absolute polarity" is really a red herring here.

So, in summary, if you could clarify the question of whether you switched the speaker polarity on just one channel, or on both channels, it would help to focus the discussion here.

Chris


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