How to check your polarity!

[efarstad]

When I wired my HT I made sure that I always used the side of the wire with the writing on it to the negative terminal. Well I recently switched out speakers and realized one of my back surrounds...doh...I couldn't read teh writing and I forgot which one was positive and negative. I played music with it connected both ways and still couldn't tell. :? :loser:

Well I just was told this little trick. Grab a nine volt battery and at your amp/receiver end connect one wire to the positive and then touch the other wire to the negative end on the batter and if you see the speaker drivers pop "up" a little then your speaker in "in phase" if they "suck in or down" then your speaker is out of phase and you need to switch your wires!

I thought that was the coolest trick...and thought I'd pass it along!

E





The Norwegian A/V Nut!
E-Cinema

[Lex]

Nice trick E!

Lex

[Kevin P]

I've used the 9 volt battery trick to test speaker wiring or to figure out which speaker the wire went to (for connecting to the appropriate channel on the receiver/amp) but I never thought of using it to check phase. Of course if the speakers have non-removable grills that won't work.

I always use the phase tests on the AVIA DVD to verify phase (polarity).

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
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[efarstad]

Kev: You can still check with non-removal grills! Just push down on the grill a bit and then feel for the driver to push up against your hand...vwella! If you don't feel anything then it's probably pulling in instead of out...of course you'll need two people if your equipment/speakers are not in eyesight or too far away like me or in a different room like me! 8O

E





The Norwegian A/V Nut!
E-Cinema

[Chris D]

Or, you can do a variation of the 9-Volt battery trick. Connect the positive terminal to your positive speaker wire, and negative to negative. Then when you're at the speaker making the hook-up, just lick both wires simultaneously. This will provide you with positive feedback to remember to go back and check which wire was which at the source. Checks continuity too. I recommend it to all the HT newbies.

Oh, and I always do all polarity, channel, etc tests from Avia and Digital Essentials.





CHRIS
Luke: "Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself, you know"

[Bruce]

I'm just check'n in on this and maybe it's a stupid question, but what if your 2 or 3-way speakers have the individual drivers connected out-of-phase with each other (many more are like this than you know). Mine aren't but that's because I have 2-ways with first order crossovers.

How do you know when a cone moves out which one is correcty in-phase if all the drivers aren't in-phase with each other? Is it mid-range driver cone, tweeter cone, or woofer cone that you go by? I probably couldn't tell what the tweeter dome was doing anyway.




Bruce
____________________________________________

[Kevin P]

You'd go by the woofer cone. Hopefully your crossover isn't allowing DC to go through the tweeters!




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