XXHighEnd

Sorry to interrupt, but what does this (switching absolute phase) mean or do? In the US I work on death penalty cases for the public defender, I don't know much about either computers or audio engineering. But I do love music and have gone to another level with xxhighend! Your patience appreciated.

Hi, I moved your post to a separate topic and adjusted the quotation a bit (it looked a bit unclear).


Whoops, am I glad to live in the Netherlands ! :o
(which is not always the case, and my vacation to the US last year was the best I ever experienced. But then I did not run into you of course 8) )

Allright, on to the Invert hence Absolute Phase (a bit stupid that there is no tooltip on it, as that nobody ever asked ...).

Very simply it comes down to this :
When you hit on a drum, there will be a "blast". Or better, a blow. This, opposed to a "suck". Now, if you'd be looking at the loudspeaker diaphragm when this happens, it should excurse (out, towards you). This would happen at proper absolute phase. When the phase is inverted (hence "wrong"), the diaphragm would go the opposite way. You'd hear a suck instead of a blow.

Some people claim to be very sensitive to this, and this is how the option originally originated.

In practice all starts at the recording, and it is said that recording engineers usually don't know how to connect their mikes, and the one is in proper absolute phase, while the other is not. This may be so, or it may not, I don't know (but I find it hard to believe).

At my attempts to auto-sense the proper phase I failed. Or the story about the randomly connected mikes is true, or something else is the matter. A funny example :

Well, the same one as before. The veil of the drum is hit. At this very first attack, what would happen ? Ha, this may depend on where the microphone is. But let's say it is overhead of the drum. There would be a suck, right ?
So there you go ...

As I said, this is how Invert originated, but it was not implemented because of this ("discovered") fuzzyness in the behaviour. However ...

In a later stage, it was found that when the Q1 slider was brought down more, it seemed that the phase in general changed. Asbsolute phase, left/right phase, things would change. It was never explained why this happens, but people could agree on it easily; at some stage of the setting of Q1, Invert must be ticked for the best SQ.

I for one, am not bothered by the blowing/sucking phenonemon. I propably can't hear it. But Invert On/Off does make a difference somewhere. This usually is about the sound stage, and often the depth of it.

Please note that switching on Invert does not lead to bit perfectness. All the data is changed. All the relative data though, is unchanged. So for that matter you could say all stays bit perfect. But I guess you should leave it off when you're playing DTS tracks ... :)

Peter

Thanks for such a thorough explanation. Of course I want to ask at what point in moving the Q1 slider down should one consider checking invert but it doesn't sound like thats "known". I'll experiment with it.

Actually, if you were in the US and got into trouble, I would be the guy you would want to meet. I work to get guys off death row and into the general prison population, if they are guilty, or out of jail if they are innocent.

Ah, ok. Well, I'm not such an "illegal" person. Speeding maybe. A lot of it. But that's all. :)

For me, when I'm listening for phase changes, I can sometimes imagine/hear/feel the music sucking away from me or blowing more forward... dunno why, but that's kinda what I listen for... it does move the soundstage, which is part of that sucking/blowing bit.  At the moment I'm finding Invert on working best most of the time, but some recordings require me to hit off.