Well, I thought I'd post this here, as opposed to Music Circle, because it also directly relates to the post above.
One of my newest finds in audiophile land is the 24k cd of Janis Ian's Breaking Silence (Analogue productions). Well, I noticed the cut above was from the same album so I thought I'd post here:
A while ago I got into an interesting thread on Steve Hoffman's forum about inverted phase, absolute phase, reverse phase, etc. The net was that there a a number of cd's (even whole labels) that distibute their software in inverted phase. One must reverse the left and right plus and minus leads on one's amp (or speakers, just not both amp AND speakers) to hear the difference, but if you are looking (listening) for it, it's a pretty obvious manifestation of cloudy center imaging, a lack of focus, etc. because some amps, DACS, tubed preamps, etc invert phase as part of their topology, this becomes a difficult thing.
Anyway, once you get your system right, it's pretty obvious what is correct polarity or phase, and what is totally inversed. There are demo discs that can ehlp but the esiest test is to put on a mono signal and make sure it sounds like it's coming from the center of the soundstage, and in a pinpoint image.
OK, so a couple years ago the folks at Silent Running Audio, a companyy specializing in audio isolation products (platforms, etc.) set about catalogging music labels that almost always deliver out of phase recordings. Their list is here:
http://www.silentrunningaudio.com/imagegallery/images/sourceimages/SRA-DISPLAY-New-Print.jpgAnalogue Productions is one of the culpriits, it seems. So when I got the Janis Ian cd I first listened in normal mode. It sounded ok, but maybe a bit unfocused. Then I reversed the leads....voila....what a great frickin recording. Highly recommended for music and sound.
Summary: trust your ears, then try reversing speaker leads (especially if they are on "the list"). You might discover something.
Ted
P.S. Although the list includes such large labels as Sony, Warner, WEA, RCA and EMI, I am batting 1.000 so far....I would guess the smaller labels are more consistent.
