Left & right speaker conundrum
 

In message , Jim Lesurf
writes
In article , Tony
wrote:


With music though, it's amazing what sound people will put up with so
long as they can tell what notes are being played. I once found a
quite widely released music cassette that had been mastered in
antiphase.

I have a couple of commercial DVDs of films where the 'mono' soundtrack is
in antiphase stereo. Nastly obvious on a good stereo, but maybe most people
don't notice or assume it has been 'enhanced'. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

When listening to mono on headphones, I usually prefer to connect the
earpieces in antiphase. When they are in-phase (which is, of course, the
normal condition) the audio image is dead in the centre of your head.
This is very 'unreal', and soon becomes rather tiring. When in
antiphase, the image is spread throughout your head, and is much more
pleasant to listen to. I think that the same reasoning could be applied
to loudspeakers.
--
Ian

Left & right speaker conundrum
 

In article , Ian Jackson
wrote:
In message , Jim Lesurf
writes


I have a couple of commercial DVDs of films where the 'mono' soundtrack
is in antiphase stereo. Nastly obvious on a good stereo, but maybe most
people don't notice or assume it has been 'enhanced'. :-)


When listening to mono on headphones, I usually prefer to connect the
earpieces in antiphase. When they are in-phase (which is, of course, the
normal condition) the audio image is dead in the centre of your head.
This is very 'unreal', and soon becomes rather tiring. When in
antiphase, the image is spread throughout your head, and is much more
pleasant to listen to. I think that the same reasoning could be applied
to loudspeakers.


The distinction is that when you listen to headphones each ear only really
picks up one channel. Whereas when listening to speakers both ears will get
signals from both channels.

With antiphase mono in a symmetric arrangement with minimal reverb this
means you will be virtually at a sound pressure null for low to mid
frequencies. In effect, your ears will pick up the differently signed
differentials resulting from their spatial displacements from the null
point.

The result tends to be a very low sound level at the listening location,
with a distorted frequency response that depends a lot on the room acoustic
and speaker dispersion patterns. So the results may vary wildly from one
setup to another. Not the same result as with headphones.

I therefore get totally different effects from antiphase when in the three
different rooms I where I have stereo systems. Can't say I like the effect
in any of them, but YMMV. Interesting with Jimi Henrix, though... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
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Left & right speaker conundrum
 

Ian Jackson wrote:

When listening to mono on headphones, I usually prefer to connect the
earpieces in antiphase. When they are in-phase (which is, of course, the
normal condition) the audio image is dead in the centre of your head.
This is very 'unreal', and soon becomes rather tiring. When in
antiphase, the image is spread throughout your head, and is much more
pleasant to listen to. I think that the same reasoning could be applied
to loudspeakers.

Do you have a special pair for mono with one driver reversed or an
adapter plug?

--
Eiron.

Left & right speaker conundrum
 

In message , Eiron
writes
Ian Jackson wrote:

When listening to mono on headphones, I usually prefer to connect the
earpieces in antiphase. When they are in-phase (which is, of course,
the normal condition) the audio image is dead in the centre of your
head. This is very 'unreal', and soon becomes rather tiring. When in
antiphase, the image is spread throughout your head, and is much more
pleasant to listen to. I think that the same reasoning could be
applied to loudspeakers.

Do you have a special pair for mono with one driver reversed or an
adapter plug?

I use what is known as 'TTT' ('Tobacco Tin Technology'). Two headphone
sockets are mounted through the wall of the tin. One is for the input
from a mono audio source. The other is the output to a normal pair of
stereo headphones. The two sockets are cross-wired so that the
headphones are in series (no particular reason - parallel would work
just as well - it just seemed a good idea at the time) and in antiphase.
If I have a stereo source, I don't use TTT. I just plug the headphones
directly into the audio source. Of course, I really should have added a
phase-reversing to the tobacco tin, but life's too short.

However, I'm sure I've seen adverts for headphones which do have a
reversing switch. I feel a Google coming on.
--
Ian