[Lorspeaker]

My out of phase headphone sounds like the 2nd pic.

http://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_polaritycheck.php

 

[Tom W]

I'd try listening to a few recordings of classical music as 'most' of the time it's recorded all at once (one Star Wars piece that I have had some instruments added during the post production process and they're totally off the stage and up in the air by themselves).
 
If you're hearing anything behind you other than hall reflections then I'd check that your left and right channel cables are wired correctly.

 

[Baxide]

Or it could be the design of your headphone. My Sony MDR-F1 has had me jumping out of my chair or looking over my shoulders one more than one occasion with its spatial projection. Mind you, my wife has seized it from me some months ago and has been using it since then. I reckon she enjoys that 3D reproduction from them.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

My out of phase headphone sounds like the 2nd pic.

http://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_polaritycheck.php

 

 
If you're hearing anything behind you other than hall reflections then I'd check that your left and right channel cables are wired correctly.

 
 
It's hard to get that wrong with the HD600 as I tested them since they 1) won't fit right if you wear them backwards, 2) you can easily see if the red cable connector is on the wrong side, and 3) you can't even put in the black and red connector wrong because the positive and negative pins are different in size. And if the polarity was wrong (whether L-R or +/-) then all CDPs  I tested that day have to be screwed up, since the only thing I changed on the headphone throughout those two days was the earpads (wear them too long and they compress more, screwing up the tonality for the sources at the tail end of the listening sessions).
 
Initially I was thinking it could have been the cable, since the weirdest sounding CDPs were at the same shop using the same $500 analog interconnect cable they were trying to sell me, but the overall sound makes it unlikely. If one side was out of phase, then the vocals would have been off-center; if both were out of phase, the vocals would be all over the place, disembodied and would immediately sound unnatural tonally. Aside from the abnormal drum placements, the sound was basically normal and neither of these.

 

[Lorspeaker]

i think getting any one side of the cable in reverse will cause the soundstage to "invert" ...
convex vs concave. ( i read it somewhere...not a techqie...), it could happen at the rca too?
Any E engineer here to explain...?
 
( i started reading up a little only recently like two weeks ago... dun kill me ..
cos the diagrams u drew were freaking accurate reminders)

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  i think getting any one side of the cable in reverse will cause the soundstage to "invert" ...
convex vs concave. ( i read it somewhere...not a techqie...), it could happen at the rca too?
Any E engineer here to explain...?
 
( i started reading up a little only recently like two weeks ago... dun kill me ..
cos the diagrams u drew were freaking accurate reminders)

 
Normaly yes, but you're supposed to get a lot of other issues instead of just straight up inverting the soundstage. Perhaps if you get left and right headphone/speakers reversed but the wire polarity are otherwise in phase that may happen as such, but like I said, that's hard to do with headphones because of the fit (try it - even Grados don't fit right when reversed) and the cable (they all have it on the left, and on dual-entry detachable cables, they come with some indicator, not to mention there's only one way to hook them up so as not to reverse the polarity).

 

[r010159]

I did offer you prior notice, so you can't say that you were caught off guard.
I am an ardent fan of Marvin Gaye and often use his music for reference testing. But I was testing a very detailed DAC last year and I wondered why some tracks sounded so messed up on the spacial positioning of his vocals. Not until a recent TV documentary to remember his death all those decades ago did I find out why the vocals were fluctuation from left to right and top to bottom. It turns out that Marvin often used to lie down on a couch and then get up and move about whilst laying down the vocals in the studio. This was creating a difference in reflections of his voice against other obstacles in the studio. This "problem" did not show up on any other DAC that I had owned. But the reason that it happened was no less a surprise. The fact that I could pick it up now even though I have been listening to his music for decades is a testament to how far DAC reproduction has travelled since the introduction of CD.

The Duet has a different sound to it. Since I was unfamiliar with it, I was wondering if it is that all much better than the O2. Now that I am more acquainted with the new sound, I can see that it is noticeably better than the O2. I do now enjoy the sound of the Duet.

There are a couple noticeable differences where I thought the O2 was better, but not necessarily more accurate. In one song, one guitar playing counterpoint to the other instrument was barely audible, almost buried in the background music. The guitar showed up much better and more forward with the O2. I suspect since the Duet has depth, depending on how it was mastered, the arrangement of the instruments may not be optimal. In the other example, which I have stated in an earlier post, there was allot of reverb with the initial notes of the guitar. The sound and it's echo was very apparent with the O2. The Duet had this much more sipubdued,

Bob