Redcarmoose
Headphoneus Supremus
This is a never ending question at Head-Fi.
Why?
Well, manufacturers actually use two styles of cable polarity when building an IEM. In fact qdc makes the V14 two different ways. One with positive and negative normal and one with it reversed!
Normally (if reversed) you use special cables with the polarity reversed with qdc and a couple other brands.
Now obviously they also switch the (actual) cable polarity when doing this so the polarity is again correct. Interesting though you also have two trains of though on this subject.
Switching cable polarity means the positive and negative connectors have been modified to support the reverse polarity. Except.........
As one group is routinely putting normal (regular polarity) cables on reversed polarity IEMs and running with it!
Absolute phase can be noted with a drum sound with a DD driver. Still ether way the phase is set still can’t be noted with strings or piano sounds. Also with complex music it is not noticeable. But remember correct phase is in relation to a DD driver moving the air “out” where in this case they are BA drivers which do not move the same way?
So my question....................is it true that the people using reverse polarity on standard polarity ear hooks are getting artifacts with BAs, and of course DDs? Or is an audio effect that is so small that it does not matter? It seems this is actually a big deal, way more of a deal than it’s made out to be?
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Below is a quote from a member who believes it’s meaningless?
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“Yes, my understanding is qdc inverts absolute polarity on its iems, I’m not sure why they do this.
I spent my career in high end home audio, both the retail side and manufacturer’s side. Many of the high end preamps that were released in the 90s and later had invert phase switches which allowed switching the absolute phase of recordings. The reason for this is recording studios do not worry themselves to maintain absolute polarity in its signal chain, so any produced recording may or may not be in absolute polarity. Please understand I’m not speaking about relative polarity where the plus and minus connections are the same between speakers, this type of polarity is mandatory for proper playback else you will have cancellation effects between the loudspeakers and it will be obvious something doesn’t sound right.
Absolute polarity is where an instrument creates a compression wave, as an example, hence the diaphragm of a microphone recording the event moves inward. Ideally in playing back this recording, you want the resulting signal to cause the drivers on your loudspeakers to move outward: this is playback in absolute polarity. If instead, the same recording is out of absolute phase, the loudspeaker driver will go inward, and this effect will cause an audible effect, sometimes subtle in nature, but more often heard with low frequencies. On high end music systems, the effect of this is more audible, so some users will switch the phase invert selector on their preamp back and forth on a given recording to hear which sounds better.
Since there is about a 50% chance any recording in one’s collection may be in absolute phase or not, this is why qdc’s decision to design its iems as they do is a non-issue for cable switchers. I hope that helps explain why I don’t worry about the reversed polarity on my qdc iems. “
—————————————————————————————
So my question is does it really matter or not? Is this person correct in not worrying about it?
Why?
Well, manufacturers actually use two styles of cable polarity when building an IEM. In fact qdc makes the V14 two different ways. One with positive and negative normal and one with it reversed!
Normally (if reversed) you use special cables with the polarity reversed with qdc and a couple other brands.
Now obviously they also switch the (actual) cable polarity when doing this so the polarity is again correct. Interesting though you also have two trains of though on this subject.
Switching cable polarity means the positive and negative connectors have been modified to support the reverse polarity. Except.........
As one group is routinely putting normal (regular polarity) cables on reversed polarity IEMs and running with it!
Absolute phase can be noted with a drum sound with a DD driver. Still ether way the phase is set still can’t be noted with strings or piano sounds. Also with complex music it is not noticeable. But remember correct phase is in relation to a DD driver moving the air “out” where in this case they are BA drivers which do not move the same way?
So my question....................is it true that the people using reverse polarity on standard polarity ear hooks are getting artifacts with BAs, and of course DDs? Or is an audio effect that is so small that it does not matter? It seems this is actually a big deal, way more of a deal than it’s made out to be?
———————————————————————————
Below is a quote from a member who believes it’s meaningless?
—————————————————————————————
“Yes, my understanding is qdc inverts absolute polarity on its iems, I’m not sure why they do this.
I spent my career in high end home audio, both the retail side and manufacturer’s side. Many of the high end preamps that were released in the 90s and later had invert phase switches which allowed switching the absolute phase of recordings. The reason for this is recording studios do not worry themselves to maintain absolute polarity in its signal chain, so any produced recording may or may not be in absolute polarity. Please understand I’m not speaking about relative polarity where the plus and minus connections are the same between speakers, this type of polarity is mandatory for proper playback else you will have cancellation effects between the loudspeakers and it will be obvious something doesn’t sound right.
Absolute polarity is where an instrument creates a compression wave, as an example, hence the diaphragm of a microphone recording the event moves inward. Ideally in playing back this recording, you want the resulting signal to cause the drivers on your loudspeakers to move outward: this is playback in absolute polarity. If instead, the same recording is out of absolute phase, the loudspeaker driver will go inward, and this effect will cause an audible effect, sometimes subtle in nature, but more often heard with low frequencies. On high end music systems, the effect of this is more audible, so some users will switch the phase invert selector on their preamp back and forth on a given recording to hear which sounds better.
Since there is about a 50% chance any recording in one’s collection may be in absolute phase or not, this is why qdc’s decision to design its iems as they do is a non-issue for cable switchers. I hope that helps explain why I don’t worry about the reversed polarity on my qdc iems. “
—————————————————————————————
So my question is does it really matter or not? Is this person correct in not worrying about it?
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