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RE: Why would you invert the polarity of the mid range?

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In Reply to: RE: Why would you invert the polarity of the mid range? posted by unclestu52 on August 21, 2007 at 20:50:16

Hey unclestu52,

"I have sold all the Alon models from the 1's through the 5's, and all exhibit mismatched polarities of the drivers, specifically the midrange. I used to demo them and sell them with the mids reversed. Sold quite a few that way, too."

U have me at a loss concerning this statement. Being a long time owner of both the Alon l's and the Alon Lotus SE mk 11 series of speakers, I have tried reversing the polarity on the Lotus series midrange driver, as it has an external 3 way x-over which easily facilitates this, and found that when I did, there was a huge hole in the midrange spectrum.

Concerning the Alon 1's, unless one physically opens up the speaker cabinet and swaps the midrange drivers polarity by unsoldering the driver leads from the mid/high x-over, reversing them, then resoldering the leads, does one get a true reversal of polarity with regards to the midrange driver.

Just swapping the mid/high polarity on the Alon 1's inputs will put your tweeter out of phase with the woofer and the midrange driver will be out of phase with both of them due to the second order progressive slope of the midrange drivers x-over.

I think Carl did a VERY good job with driver blending in the Alon series of speakers and trying to second guess his vast knowledge of driver blending experience doesn't make sense to me.

With proper attention paid to room acoustics/positioning, both speakers have sounded coherent to this listener :-)

Cheers,

~kenster

Follow Ups:

In my experience - unclestu52 00:22:41 08/22/07 (4)
with the speakers I get a muddiness in the mids compared to the tweeter and woofer. I get a 'suck out' in the mids in stock form, so my experience is diametrically opposite to yours. You may want to try inverting the entire speaker at the amplifier terminals if you wish to repeat the experiment.

In this case the original poster is contemplating crossover mods and is already in the process of disassembling the speaker, so a speaker wire swap for the 2's would be relatively easily accomplished.

As I say, YMMV.

Stu
- RE: In my experience - mingles 02:14:25 08/22/07 (3)
  Stu, I'll try inverting the polarity of the midrange to see how it sounds. I was planning to pull out the crossovers to put them in an external box so tweaks weren't such a big project. However, I tend to agree with Kenster that Carl knew what he was doing when he designed these things. I don't want to second guess you, but muddiness in my experience (with Alon I and II) has been due to room resonances.
  
  > Wiring can also stand an upgrade.
  
  What wire have you had good experience with? These are usualy pretty inexpensive tweaks that I'm willing to do.
  
  Thanks, Mark
  - For me - unclestu52 19:58:30 08/22/07 (2)
    wires are like spicing foods, a little can go a long way, but you need to know what sound change you'd like. So now the question becomes what aspect of the sound would you want to enhance, and the more specific the better.
    
    Stu
    - RE: For me - mingles 12:57:57 08/23/07 (1)
      Stu, I hate to say, but I'm a skeptic when it comes to using wire to change the overall sound of a speaker. I'm sure it can change things, but I doubt it's as significant as changing caps. I understand silver tends to be bright. I definitely don't want that. I'm looking for something warm, but on the neutral side. People generally recommend large gauge wire for the woofer and small gauge for the mids and tweets. Do you have any specific suggestions?
      - RE: For me - unclestu52 18:53:20 08/23/07 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: For me posted by mingles on August 23, 2007 at 12:57:57
        
        You'd be surprised. Try the Nordost Two Flat for the mids and highs and the Nordost Flat-line for the woofers. If you're going to leave the crossovers external, these would be good for the internal wiring.
        
        Stu

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