CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Curt Palme]

This is a carry-over from a conversation on a 'stagehand' group on Facebook. My original post:

I was a 23 year old nerd kid, just heading into pro audio installations. I went to a Roland sponsored MIDI music event, where a jazz fusion band called UZEB out of Montreal played. The idea was that they would play all sorts of instruments via MIDI on whatever they hand in their hand, be it a sax, a guitar, keyboard, whatever.
It was in a small theater of maybe 1000 people, and it was packed. I was late arriving, maybe 3 minutes to showtime, and I spotted one seat on the far side. I had to walk across center stage to get to it, as I came in from the opposite side. They were playing background music before the performance, and as I walked across center stage, all the bass dropped out. I stopped, walked backwards a step, and the bass came back. I couldn't help myself, I walked up to the closest stage hand, and mentioned that the speaker stacks (all Roland 15" 2 way) were out of phase. As I walked up to my seat, I saw an explosion of roadies come from the back to go to one speaker stack and invert the phase on one side.
What got me was that I was this little nerd, c/w pocket protector and coke bottle glass3es and there were 999 semi pro and pro musicians, at least half of which that had crossed center stage, and no one else noticed or said anything. Still one of my prouder nerd moments of the industry.

So, someone posted this in response:

The speaker stacks were not out of phase, but, out of polarity.

Seems like the younger techs there say that I should not call the speakers out of phase if one set is wired negative to positive, but out of polarity. Are they right, wrong or just nitpicking? It turned into quite the discussion there...

[Curt Palme]

This is a carry-over from a conversation on a 'stagehand' group on Facebook. My original post:

I was a 23 year old nerd kid, just heading into pro audio installations. I went to a Roland sponsored MIDI music event, where a jazz fusion band called UZEB out of Montreal played. The idea was that they would play all sorts of instruments via MIDI on whatever they hand in their hand, be it a sax, a guitar, keyboard, whatever.
It was in a small theater of maybe 1000 people, and it was packed. I was late arriving, maybe 3 minutes to showtime, and I spotted one seat on the far side. I had to walk across center stage to get to it, as I came in from the opposite side. They were playing background music before the performance, and as I walked across center stage, all the bass dropped out. I stopped, walked backwards a step, and the bass came back. I couldn't help myself, I walked up to the closest stage hand, and mentioned that the speaker stacks (all Roland 15" 2 way) were out of phase. As I walked up to my seat, I saw an explosion of roadies come from the back to go to one speaker stack and invert the phase on one side.
What got me was that I was this little nerd, c/w pocket protector and coke bottle glass3es and there were 999 semi pro and pro musicians, at least half of which that had crossed center stage, and no one else noticed or said anything. Still one of my prouder nerd moments of the industry.

So, someone posted this in response:

The speaker stacks were not out of phase, but, out of polarity.

Seems like the younger techs there say that I should not call the speakers out of phase if one set is wired negative to positive, but out of polarity. Are they right, wrong or just nitpicking? It turned into quite the discussion there...

[macgyver655]

I would asked them what they think the difference is between the 2. I would be curious to their responses.

[ecrabb]

[Nashou66]

What if both Speaker stacks were wired out of polarity,that is red to black and black to red on both speaker stacks, they would still be in phase. Out of phase happens when one set of speakers in a stereo pair are wired out of polarity, not both.So Out of Phase to me is the only and correct answer.

Am I right?

[Curt Palme]

I just posted that back on the Facebook group. It's an interesting discussion..

[Curt Palme]

I just posted that back on the Facebook group. It's an interesting discussion..