Sean - many thanks for taking the time to reply. I wonder if the firmware 15 afficianado's were listening to the analogue output...
I also agree that a polarity setting (with album/track preference in the database) might be useful. How can I vote for that enhancement request? - it would be a USP (albeit to a very minority customer sector!). Whilst switching polarity on my TACT 2.2x, I noticed that as you have to switch both channels separately there is always a moment when the sound is out of phase until the second channel is switched. This is very bad for comparisons, since the return to "in-phase" from "out of phase" is such a relief that it is hard to compare polarity settings with any confidence. I've been doing so more exploratory research on polarity. First, someone mentioned guitars, so I dug out one of mine where the polarity of each pickup can be switched. The purpose of this is to create alternate "out of phase" (sic) pickup combo settings. However, using just one pickup I could detect absolutely no difference in sound - even using heavy palm muting to create asymmetric transients of the sort that might be polarity sensitive. Believe me, us guitarists are VERY sensitive to any timbre/dynamics changes in our instruments. As an aside, it was my guitars that finally convinced me that cables sounded different...although there is a scale of diminishing return which I may have exceeded on the hi-fi front :o) Thinking this through further - it makes sense. There is no "absolute phase" in an electric guitar - it's just nonsense. Which way (in or out?) does the speaker cone move when the string goes up/down vs. down/up? The very question is crazy... So I've given up on electric (indeed any) guitar. Bass drum - yes, that might make sense in isolation. Vocals - yes maybe there could be something in that. After all, humans are very sensitive to the sound of the human voice - it is "deep progamming". Garage doors slamming - could be... However, using the Alan Parsons test disc and also some very clean Ladysmith Black Mambazo recordings, I stil can't hear polarity effects on vocals. Next I'm going to try some "vinyl drops" to see if I can hear anything there - especially in the background noise. It would still be interesting to get some views on preferred polarity on a few widely available, popular recordings for reference purposes - any takers out there? -- Phil Leigh ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23706 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
