On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:09:35 +0100, "Graham." wrote:



"Marky P" wrote in message
.. .
Last weekend I helped a friend and his wife moved from Bedford to
Penzance. As I was the only one with any knowledge of 'wiring things
up' I set about installing the Hi-Fi system. Anyway, found out that
they forgot to bring the speakers with them (the house they left is
still there's, so they will go back to get them sometime) so I layed
the cables out for the speakers and told his wife not to get the
cables mixed up. "Why?", she said. And I told her that ones is for
the left speaker and one for the right. "I didn't know there was a
difference", she replied. Now, I know I shouldn't worry about these
sort of things, but I really couldn't believe that people don't know
that left & right should be the right way round. Perhaps I'm being
pedantic and it doesn't really matter, but now I'm sitting at home
thinking about them listening to their Michael Buble CD with the
stereo in reverse.

And I shan't even go there with their idea of putting 'shelf' speakers
on the floor!

If you were listening to a nice piece of Brahms and the cellos
were stage left and you knew full well that by convention
they should be stage right (or is it the other way round, I
certainly don't know) then you might be disappointed.

What about if you were listening to a radio drama and
it was important to the plot from where a sound
appears to emanate.

What if the sound was TV sound and it was reversed from
the viewed soundstage.

So yes it's important, but in practice most people won't
notice.
***BUT MARKY***
There is something even more important here IMHO.
More important because if you get it wrong you won't
get a true stereo image at all, just puddles of sound
around their respective speakers.

What I am referring to is the speaker *phasing*
ie the +ve and -ve terminals being correctly wired.
Did you take care to do that?

I certainly did :-)

I told them that both speakers must be wired the same (plus to plus,
etc). As the cable is white, I showed them the ridge down one side
and told 'em to use that as plus. I've heard out of phase speakers
and it sounds very odd.


Marky P.