Hopefully the mods will see fit to make this a sticky. First, I have a good bit of experience in the audio world. I worked on the team that placed 5 cars in IASCA finals 2 years in a row. Some have heard of them, some have not, but Keepin' It Clean Car Stereo (affectionately known as KICCS) in Pittsburgh had some very bright and knowledgeable people creating some killer systems. Most of which used Orion products. Anyway...on to the guts.

Are your speakers properly phase aligned? How would you know if you didn't know to look for this phenomenon? When someone tells you that your speakers have to be hooked up pos to pos and neg to net are...well....they are fulla****e. Yeah, i know, most of us think of pos and neg in DC power terms...i mean after all, cars use 12volt DC systems, right? The problem is, the output from your amplifier is more like AC (alternating current) than anything else. The reason for this? Think of your speaker as a remote control car or plane servo. and the radio reciever is your amplifier. The reciever takes a signal, fed by you by moving the levers on your radio control transmitter, and converts this to a POSITION at which the servo should go. You turn the little wheel right on the car transmitter and the the servo controlling the steering moves to the appropriate position. The same thing happens with an amplifier, speakers and a head unit. The head unit takes the place of your thumbs and fingers on the transmitter, the amplifier replaces the reciever, and the speaker replaces the servo. The only difference is now the servo (speaker) is being told to move from one location to another VERY quickly. Sometimes 20,000 times a second (20khz). the range of human hearing is about 20hz to 20,000hz (or 20khz), so that speaker could be asked to move in and out anywhere from 20 times a second to 20,000 times a second.

So far so good. We also know now that a speakers size dictates just how much of that sound is being produced and at any point in time each speaker in the system is being asked to wiggle in and out at different frequencies to produce different sounds. When you take one speaker and wire it pos to pos and neg to neg, and wire another speaker neg to pos and pos to neg, and feed them the exact same signal, one speaker will push out, and the other in. When placed together, the resultant sound waves would effectively cancel each other out...at least in the lower frequencies. the higher frequencies are harder to cancel...and this is a good thing and you can actually use this function to "shape" the sound in your car...but that is more trial and error than anything else.

Now...we are finally to the point that we understand phasing...lets apply that knowledge. When two speakers are out of phase two things happen. You lose all bass response resulting in a tinny sound, AND, the sound you hear first and notice most comes from the speaker that is closest to you. Go get a test disk that plays a nice long track of pink noise.

Usually when I do this, I am sitting in the drivers seat in a comfy listening position with the head unit pulled out of the dash to gain access to the speaker wires there, or i make sure I have access to the amplifier connections. Leave your speakers installed...if you have crossovers and component sets, you will want to phase the tweets and mids separately, starting with mids. Adjust your fader and balance to front left. Close your eyes and "SEE THE SOUND", and move the balance to the center position. Did your sound go tinny or get richer and deeper? If tinny, reverse the polarity on the right side mid. Repeat. The sound should have gotten richer this time. Using capacitors and coils you can tweak this even further, but that is not in the scope of today's lesson. Now that your front stage mids are phased, it's time to adjust the tweets. All you are looking for with them is which one is louder. If it's the drivers side door tweet that is loudest by far, revers polarity on the right tweet. now your soundstage should sound fairly even. Repeat this process with the drivers door and drivers rear. Once you have the drivers rear phased right, fade to rear and phase the right rear to the left rear. Lastly, center balance and fader and listen very intently. If your soundstage sounds "muddy", reverse both rears...this will bring the stage up front a little and you are now done.

So there you have it. Phasing 101. start the flaming and the questions. [sm=icon_cheers.gif]

 

geez...i was hoping to spur SOME kind of discussion with this. I guess you are all either in agreeance, or think i'm some quack that jumped the wall at the asylum LOL

 

... im just too lazy to read this whole 'essay' right now.. lol
later on tonite tho, after work, i'll read it...