2ears2hear

Compromises, that is true. The stereophile measurements indicate a crossover frequency woofer/midrange at 250Hz (Fig. 3 blue /black line) and a midrange/tweeter near 3500Hz (Fig. 1 impedance peak). Fig.7 is commented : "...indicates that the tweeter and midrange units are connected in inverted acoustic polarity, the woofers in positive polarity, and that the tweeter's output arrives first, followed by the midrange's and then the woofers'." This is what I described above, in the range of fundamentals below 1kHz the speakers with positive (bass up to 250Hz) and negative polarity (midrange fom 250-3500) give pulses of contradicting polarity. It will be very difficult to tell right from wrong when inverting polarity. Under aspects of polarity detection I would call this SS-AR2 speaker inappropriate, all other aspects are far from being a mess. The step response with all chassis working below 1kHz positively is required, as the hearing cells will fire a signal to the nerve with the first incoming signal and then require a relaxation period. A steady 400Hz signal does not give 400 positive peaks and 400 negative, there are only near 200 positive peaks fired synchronously with the next positive incoming signal after the relaxation time of the cell, which requires 1/200 sec (see Phase locking - Video | Auditory Neuroscience ).

Clark Johnsen uses many words, instead of hitting the nail on its head, he confuses readers with clouds of words until they loose interest. In practice it takes only a few seconds to perform a listening test, swap the bananas or spades at the speaker terminals and listen for the difference. Certain aspects change like the perceived nearness of the soloist, the diffusion zone around the instrument, the sideways expansion of Tzzz that comes with the singers articulation, the "body" of the singer, in other words the richness and integration of overtones,perceived impact and so on.. Correct polarity has effects like reduced jitter, jitter introduces modulation noise, the signal is veiles with a thin layer of noise that diappears with the note played. Inverted polarity makes the overtones earlier audible than the fundamentals of the note played. These appear disintegrated, the stereo set.up of 2 speakers in an equilateral triangle with the listener projects phantom sources between the speakers and our good localization of frequencies above 1.5kHz plus the HRTF raised sensitivity.from angles between 30° to 45° ex center. This equals a raised treble perception for center singer/instruments, maybe corrected at the production mixing console. Computeraudiophiles - the word suggests that audiophiles understand computers for better listening. Hard to understand why such basics like compression and rarefaction are not taken as serious as I and 0 which make a big difference.

George Louis (AudioGeorge) did a good job when he placed his list on the www. First I could not believe the R and N behind the record labels. When I tried I found 98% true, some deviations may have national pressing plant issue reasons. I found an EMI London Beatles Abbey Road album in my collection positive, the EMI Japan version inverted. Jennifer Warnes The Hunter Album original (1993) was positive, the recent remastered album came with inverted polarity, both mastered at Bernie Grundmans mastering Studios. All versions can be checked with Audacity, the screen displays the peaks, usually individual marks for every recording. The HDT KoB appears with limited peaks probably by tape saturation and degradation over the years of storage. If you compare with the 1986 remaster when the tapes were less than 30 years old, you understand what I mean. Now the problems of 50 year old tapes rule the scene. Must we have a 24Bit transfer with clipping distortion while the tape ground noise floor is clearly audible? 24Bits exceed by far the human hearing dynamic range even in the quietest environment, why not allow 3dB headroom for the DAc to avoid intersample clipping distortion? The more I listen to the later remasters of KoB the more I prefer the Pristine XR version. I have inverted them because ALL of them show clear signs of coming with inverted polarity. I have checked the Dynamic Range Meter readings for several versions of So What HDT 192/24 DR 14 (L13.5 R 15.3) Pristine XR DR 16 (L13.4 R 18.0) 1986 remaster DR 16 (L14.3 R16.7) my personal Blumlein-Shuffled version of the 1986 remaster DR 16 (L14.7 R17.1) I dont have the 1997 version at hand, if you listen to the sax part (SW right channel near 7mins (from memory)) you understand why I deleted it. Even when listening to it next room I was alerted and went to the system to turn the volume down, but this was no cure for the distorted sax, the CD was bad already. It is obvious that a late tranfer from tape suffers from poor dynamics as tape noise will be no less and peaks will have lost their original impact as a natural effect observed with magnetic media for decades.

I have the 1986 release, the 1997, the Pristine XR and the HDT, they all have the same polarity. I discarded earlier CDs and I never owned the LP, but I am confident, that they had the same polarity too - inverted because the original recording was already done inverted. No-one has corrected since, so all versions remain like the very first version - inverted. If you listen to your favourite version with (both channels) inverted, to reverse the original inverted polarity, you will perceive the same music with better impact, better focus on the instruments position, less diffusion and at first impression, less width of the whole scene.

Phase locking - Video | Auditory Neuroscience Hair cell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Stereocilia (inner ear) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia My all-digital system has no polarity inversion unless I switch it in the digital domain, both channels simultaneously. Studio mixing consoles have polarity switches to correct incoming signals if the engineer knows his equipment and its behaviour.

Both channels must be inverted of course! Otherwise the channnel to be inverted would have been specified. There is no negative ion transfer on the hearing nerves, so the cells on the cochlea have a kind of rectifier effect. This will be one of the reasons why the sound falls apart if only one speaker is inverted. It explains why absolute polarity makes a difference to our ears.

The issue is definitely in the Columbia recording. In my system all components are polarity correct, a sawtooth or halfsine from CD or harddisc delivers a noninverted signal to the speakers, step response of speaker chassis is time coherent with positive polarity. My digital amp has a remote control that allows easy exact polarity switching. Differences are clearly audible. In music tympany starts with a negative transient, WAV editors like Audacity make it visible. The Mercury Living Presence recordings and Keith Doc Johnsons Reference Recordings are correct, RCA, Verve, and many other traditional recording companies deliver inverted CDs and LPs. Sheffield Lab even printed a hint on their sleeves. WAV editors provide a feature to invert polarity, same with SoX. The effect is audible. Anode-coupled tube stages invert the signal like does the source coupled FET inside electrete mic capsules. Kind of Blue comes inverted like other Columbia recordings. 4 remasterings did not correct the wrong polarity. If you go deeper into the matter using modern facilities, you will find facts.

This is my first posting here, with a question to the experts: Why has no-one reported that the recording comes with inverted polarity and it gives better focus on the instruments and a more natural performance if both speaker connectors are swapped (pos <-> neg)...? I have several versions, among them the 1986 remaster "from the original master tapes", the 1997 CD with the corrected speed but with high compression even into distortion - really ugly despite the corrected speed which is a good step ahead worth mentioning, the 2009 Pristine 48/24 version and the latest HDT 192/24. All are inverted, but not corrected before selling them. To my ears I find the right instruments better with the Pristine, the left better with the HDT. Both versions are better to my ears than all the others I heard. Still Miles trumpet is wide and diffused in both versions, not well focussed. The Pristine has good detail on the cymbals and drums, I like the bass more and the saxes are dynamic and credible. The Prisine is narrower but I can live well with that. The HDT 192/24 is big in bass, below 80Hz the bass appears equalized about +10dB at 20Hz and this gives much boom in my room, too much weight on the bass instrument. The download is 6dB louder too. The loudest and most compressed version is the 1997 CD (the one with the bonus track). Its corrected speed is questonable. The 1986 CD (with the left-handed Miles on the cover) was remastered "from the original master tapes", not even the musicians had noted the speed issues then. Comparing vs the 1997 CD I found a variation of the speed change in the tracks of the first recording session. Any WAV-editor allows to read the time between some significant marks like spikes in the music. 3 tracks, 3 different speed correction factors. How could this be possible?? Did the 1959 tape recorder or the 1986 tape replay machine vary the speed between the 3 tracks? Probably not, usually the speed is constant, but differs from normal by a specific factor. I rather believe that the speed correction was done by hand in 1992, on 3 days individually for 3 tracks, with human errors... 1959 was many years before Dolby noise reduction. What tricks can be applied to reduce tape noise without sonic side effects to meet our modern audiophile demands?