Robbo is the King of Hifi

Julian,

I would say the most obvious thing is very diffuse imaging, vocals dont tend to come from a central position, and you get some weird sounding instruments. the other noticeable thing is the bass. As the drivers are out of phase you generally dont get very much of it.

Now as flat earthers, these sorts of things may not be that much of a priority, which is probably why Mick never noticed all these years!

A dreaded test disc should easily highlight the problem.

Robbo

 

The easiest way is to simply reverse the end of one speaker lead, if the bass goes west and the image collapses then it was initially wired up right and is now wrong. If the reverse happens then you need to go across and check things more thoroughly. Naim A5 (which I assume you use) is easy to check as it has a rib down the positive conductor, just make sure this goes to the positive socket at both the amp and speaker.

Its worth checking that absolute phase is right too, i.e. the speakers are pushing, not sucking – stick a 1.5v battery across the terminals of the speaker cable, when the batteries positive terminal is connected to the positive of the lead the bass cone should move slightly forward. Some speakers are incorrectly labelled for phase, Quad 57s being one (most Quad amps also reverse absolute phase, both the 303 and 405 do IIRC).

Tony.

 

A genius in the art of sign language maybe…

Tony.

 

Hi Julian


I have an test LP that plays an out of phase, then in phase bit of speech.

Yours are in phase, dont worry about it. It stands out like cleopatra's nose when out of phase.

If I had a tape deck Id do you a copy of it so you could see.

As someone else said, with singing/speech if it comes from bang in the middle of the speakers they are in phase. If it sounds like they are coming from everywhere at once, either the recording engineer did it that way or its out of phase....kind of like playing with the balance controls on your car hifi till it sounds skew-iff.


Chris

 

Absolute phase is completely inaudible. My DAC64 reverses phase and initially I reversed my speaker connections to get the absolute phase correct but there was zero audible difference so I switched it back. I'd be amazed if anyone could tell absolute phase differences as sound waves are roughly symmetrical (take a look at a .WAV file in a .WAV editor).

Michael.

 

Re: Merlin

You may well be right Mick. But not by you or anyone else who cannot even tell when a system is functioning as it should.

Mick, it depends what you are listening for, but provided you have an idea of what a good system should sound like, it should be pretty obvious. I remember John Harker at Oxford Audio rigging a dem up out of phase. I had to tell him. I also remember a speaker manufacturer of some repute doing the same. Again it was easy to hear the effect.

Again sorry Mick but the argument just goes over your head. The reasoning is simple enough. Focusing the attention on the leading edge of percussive elements at the expense of timbre and decay robs the listener of the ability to garner the emotional content contained in those areas. I would not argue for one minute that Naim excels at reproducing rythmn, something that is essential to the reproduction of all forms of music. What it won't do is give you the subtle inflections in voices, the glorious decay of a ringing bell into a hall's natural ambience, or many other musically important qualities.

Music is made up of notes, spaces, and the interpretation of them. The notes consist of three phases, the rise, sustain, and decay. The emotional content of music can be found in each and all of these qualities. To focus on just the one aspect is tantamount to the dumbing down of music and results in the loss of a great deal of musical information that many former Naimees are discovering has great meaning.

Now it may well be that you like your sounds focussed for you, this explains the continued success of some brands that have a loyal following looking for the same thing. They play to their strengths and just keep giving you more of the same hoping you'll never notice (although I concede that the new Classic series and 5 series are trying to give a slightly more balanced perspective) But don't confuse that with ultimate music reproduction, as you did with the speaker phase issue above.

Cheers

 

Try again - there is a difference, albeit a pretty subtle one. Right sounds a little more solid and weighty, wrong a little thinner and less 'together'. Its not anything to get worked into a Ken Kessler like tizz about, but as its free it is IMHO worth getting right.

Tony.

 

Merlin what the f**k are you dribling on about? This is just your (poxy) opinion, why can't you at least state that fact?

Contrary to your own popular opinion you arn't the final word in hifi.

You are playing with a graphic equaliser FFS.

 

Some DVDs come with test features. There's a THX one on T2 which does a couple of sound tests, including Phase IIRC.

 

Alex, is quite right, I've been out of phase for years, Phase incoheirent tis me, I personaly run with .45 phase variant, that keeps me inbetween multi dimensional shifts, I find it easier to listen to briks that way, and find kans little more than Tinny ear muffs that woodlice enjoy on a very irregular basis Oh you poor insignificant species, the loss you bear is infitessimal on the grand scheme of this universe (phase variant .23 from normial).
Now where's my boogistic tune-dem ometer, I need my daily fix Wm

 

The DAC64 is completely unlistenable.

Paul

 

Before ranson get typing My bro had a six pack on briks, and they were still merely ok, but thenm he didn't have them sitting 12 feet in the air either

 

Because Gary, whilst I admit I am not the world's greatest audio sage (just as you are not the greatest interior designer known to man), what I have stated is fact, pure and simple. It's just that some find it impossible to accept which I feel proves the point that continued exposure to Naim equipment alters ones perspective. (Julian excepted I might add)

So are you Gary. You just choose to call it speaker positioning and decorative room treatment, all very labour intensive if you ask me. Why use a slide rule when you have a perfectly good PC.

 

"...Music is made up of notes, spaces, and the interpretation of them. The notes consist of three phases, the rise, sustain, and decay. The emotional content of music can be found in each and all of these qualities. To focus on just the one aspect is tantamount to the dumbing down of music and results in the loss of a great deal of musical information that many former Naimees are discovering has great meaning.....etc etc" -- Merlin

Good grief Merlin, what a load of wotsit! You've clearly never heard a properly set-up Naim system, it's much worse than that (shome mishtake)

I want to grab you by the thingies and make you sit down and have a proper listen.

Emotion???!!! You can tell a human voice's emotion down a (very restricted bandwidth) phone! It's not difficult, we latch on to emotional inflections very easily. If your hi-fi is emotionally-challenged (as Mr Toy might say) it's farked.

 

OH ER!!

 

A more concise description of exactly what a great hifi system should do I have yet to see James!

Well done Sir

 

James,

I'm actually quite glad you said that. You are correct.

Have you done my female vocal experiment yet?

I'm not suggesting that you have anything out of phase or anything, just that it does provide a valuable emotional insight as to the more subtle elements of musical reproduction.

You can then lie down afterwards if you wish.

An emotive phone conversation will give us that kind of (emotional) info - in context.

Next: Try it with your fave female singer and discover if she can deliver the same unexpected emotional impact out of the real you-and-her context, and still perceive that it is a you-and-her thing.

 

On balance, I agree with Merlin.

 

thanks for the practical tips on discovering relative and absolute phase. i'll probably have a mess about with it some time soon just to make sure although deep bass isn';t a problem and i believe i have a respectable image between and outside my speakers so it's probably just going to be a peace of mind check.
chris - i sacrificed my nak in order to purchase my new pre so i am also sans tape deck now.
mike,
i think micks 'schoolboy' remarks are about the ridicule being thrown about due to someones lack of knowledge. just because someone isn;t able to detect an out of phase system immediately doesn;t mean they are defective in some way. Many people heard micks system and only one said that it *may* have a phase problem. my personal belief is that they were expecting it to sound a bit odd or 'naimlike' or not natural and when it did they just shrugged and went on in their belief that naim wasn;t for them which suggests that the mind has perhaps the biggest impact on what a system sounds like.
it's interesting that i remember WM and Robbo saying that in micks system cd sounded flat whilst vinyl sounded great so perhaps micks tt had a complimentary phase problem which 'fixed' the speaker one. i believe he's had his tt fettled since then so it's probably not possible to find out.
cheers


julian

 

The easiest non-fiddling way to work out if your speakers are in phase is to play a MONO recording - not all stereo recordings have vocals dead centre. Something like the first 4 tracks on the Beatles' red album will do it.

It depends on your music, room AND hearing as to whether you can discover if your speakers are in phase. I like imaging when I hear it but don't worry about it too much, so I check my cabling - although I use the red album when I'm setting the speakers up in the first place...

I have a Denon test CD (£2 ex-loan from the library) and that has in and out phase tracks and I find it really hard to tell the difference!

Julian - an example of deliberately out of phase is on many of the psy-trance tracks out there; they use antiphase to make effects wrap around you - I'm trying to think of a good example, but there's definitely some on track 3 on Trance Waves 6, and the B.P.Empire CD by Infected Mushroom uses it a fair bit as well IIRC.