Thread: Two SACDs out of phase, disturbing!

Posts: 4

Post by sound_labs September 22, 2006 (1 of 4)
I just discovered something rather disturbing, and it finally makes sense why sometimes my rig just didn't sound right. Why I didn't notice this two years ago (or more) I'll never know.

Tonight I'm listening to Beck's Sea Change and something just didn't sound right. It's like the bass with really thin. So I'm at my changer with my head right between the center channel and the right speaker and I hear the sucked out, hollow sound like when you cross a speaker cable, yes it's out of phase.

Horrified that I could make such a rookie mistake, I cross the cables at my center to correct the problem. Bass is fine, sounds great. Next SACD up, the only rap album on SACD, it's back, center and right channel (or the left) out of phase and it's obvious with any track that carries bass in the center and main channels.

So now I'm trying different SACDs, and I'm trying DTS music CDs and DVD movies to see if it's an issue at the receiver. Every movie, every DTS music CD, and every other SACD (except one) are in phase with my original set up.

Norah Jones had this flabby, thin bass and sure enough, that disc is out of phase as well in the center channel. Any one else find other SACDs with this issue?

At this point, I'm bummed that I have to fiddle with my system to hear these two discs properly. At this point, I also can't find a logical reason why this problem would exist in a bad interconnect, or speaker connect, if it was it would be every disc across the board.


- Tony

Post by mdt September 22, 2006 (2 of 4)
sound_labs said:

I just discovered something rather disturbing, and it finally makes sense why sometimes my rig just didn't sound right. Why I didn't notice this two years ago (or more) I'll never know.

Tonight I'm listening to Beck's Sea Change and something just didn't sound right. It's like the bass with really thin. So I'm at my changer with my head right between the center channel and the right speaker and I hear the sucked out, hollow sound like when you cross a speaker cable, yes it's out of phase.

Horrified that I could make such a rookie mistake, I cross the cables at my center to correct the problem. Bass is fine, sounds great. Next SACD up, the only rap album on SACD, it's back, center and right channel (or the left) out of phase and it's obvious with any track that carries bass in the center and main channels.

So now I'm trying different SACDs, and I'm trying DTS music CDs and DVD movies to see if it's an issue at the receiver. Every movie, every DTS music CD, and every other SACD (except one) are in phase with my original set up.

Norah Jones had this flabby, thin bass and sure enough, that disc is out of phase as well in the center channel. Any one else find other SACDs with this issue?

At this point, I'm bummed that I have to fiddle with my system to hear these two discs properly. At this point, I also can't find a logical reason why this problem would exist in a bad interconnect, or speaker connect, if it was it would be every disc across the board.


- Tony

Finally i know what the phase switch on my pre-amp is for. I allways considered it an unnecessary gimmick. Until now!

Post by Claude September 22, 2006 (3 of 4)
That switch will change the polarity for all (stereo) channels ("absolute polarity"). The effect of absolute polarity on the sound are debatable.

To solve Tony's problem with *relative* polarity between the center and the front channels (which will phase out lower frequencies especially), it would need a seperate polarity switch for the center.

Post by mdt September 23, 2006 (4 of 4)
Claude said:

That switch will change the polarity for all (stereo) channels ("absolute polarity"). The effect of absolute polarity on the sound are debatable.

To solve Tony's problem with *relative* polarity between the center and the front channels (which will phase out lower frequencies especially), it would need a seperate polarity switch for the center.

I see, thanks.
On the other hand, with 6 speakers involved, a seperate switch for the center wouldn't help either, since there could be any combination of in and out of phase speakers. Providing six seperate phase switches would be going a bit far imo. I think the engineers will have to take over the responsibility and apply
according care in recording and disc production.

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