B&W 602S3 Messed up with polarity

[pramod]

B&W 602S3 Messed up with polarity

Dear All,

One of my friend have by mistake connected one of his 602S3 (from 1075 amp) speaker wrongly meaning he has connected +ve to -ve and -ve to +ve on the speaker end and he felt that something is going wrong on the speaker when he was doing the spl check and soon realized the the polarity gone messed-up on the speaker and then immediately corrected it but before that he have already done and good part of 4 Hrs listening on them. one a low to mid level volumes. after correction it is sounding right, but he is feeling something might have gone wrong, even I felt that something is wrong but cannot say that is has completely gone wrong but may be its just a feeling, because we both don't know, what worse the wrong wiring on the speakers can make. can anyone or all tell us what worse can happen if the speaker polarity if messed for sometime....??? we Thank you all in advance for your time....

[marcelhold]

Hi Pramod,

There is no need to worry about connecting the + and the - side of your speakers to the - and + side of your amp.
The only difference it will make to the speaker is that the cones move the other way compared to connecting the + to the + and the - to the - : instead of moving out on the first part of a wave signal and in on the second, the cone will move in on the first part and out on the second part of the wave if you've reversed the polarity.
The only thing you do need to be careful of is that when you've connected the left hand side reversed, you will need to connect the right hand side reversed as well, because if you don't, the left cone will move in while the right cone moves out (this is called out of phase) and the effect that has is that you seem to lose bass output from the speakers and mess up the stereo image - if you have connected the speakers this way it's really easy to think "these speakers are bass light!" and crank up the volume, which could cause damage if the amp isn't entirely up to the job...
What you did was the right thing: make sure that both speakers are connected to the amp the same way and the problem is solved!

Hope this helps!

Marcel

[greggz]

Simply hooking the wires up backwards will not harm a speaker.

In fact, some people when doing a break-in period using a "break in noise" CD will purposefully hook up one speaker out of phase to cancel out some of the noise to prevent it from driving family and pets crazy.

[Arneson]

There is a test cd for 5.1 speaker phase. I was testing it the other night to make sure I hadn't screwed up. It was the least expensive of my setup disks but has some usefull tools.

You will definetely hear any phase problems with this, except for subs.

[pramod]

Thank You All Friends,
For the good new you all gave me, I did not get time to check back with my friend. I will chek and let you all know in any problems.. Hopefully *NOT* as you all said.

This Forum Rocks... Once again Thx much ;x( and God Bless.