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It has been said that most people cannot tell whether what you are hearing from your system is in correct polarity or not.
This is an interesting article that shows how may CD's and CD players were reverse polarity
If one cant hear it then why bother? I just find it curious
https://web.archive.org/web/20180806090750/http://absolutepolaritygeorge.com/

Absolute recording polarity is an interesting topic. Have read both sides, including The Wood Effect book.

I tried it with simply mic'd recordings like RCA Living Stereo early recordings and there is a distinct difference in violin and other string tone. The history of those recordings was that the mic to recording system reversed absolute polarity. Easy to swap by either reversing the speaker connection or some DAC's have polarity reversing switching.

The other half the equation is trying it with headphones as they are single driver, so polarity is the same for the entire frequency range.

Was interesting trying it here and there was a preference for different recordings. Most modern recordings with multitracks do not seem to exhibit as much change as the simple mic recordings.

That's because half the tracks are out of phase with the other half....

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Walt

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I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

I do not think I can hear a difference when I switch speaker system polarity.
I can hear when I accidentally switch the mids on my maggies(easily done on my system).
I get better balance when my subs are out of phase to my mains

Without doing any experimentation, it seems to me that on impacts there may be a perceived difference, but on sounds that are more than a cycle or two it's unlikely there is any objective perceived difference. Impacts, in real life, generate a positive pressure. If the impact created a sudden negative pressure I can believe it would be perceived differently. Pure speculation.

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Perhaps we could try it when we listen to the Elsinore speakers.

ray

The difference between polarities shows up most for instruments that have asymmetrical waveforms when recorded. Brass is one type of instrument that has a very asymmetric waveform when recorded.

Those are ones that show up absolute polarity differences when I have tried listening to both polarities of a recording.

Should be interesting to see feedback on the speaker test.

I tend to agree with this. How to determine absolute phase in a multimiked recording where absolute phase can vary by mike?

I set my system from source (cartridge/DAC) to speaker cables to be consistent and not change absolute phase as best as I can. Then I just play music.

I took into account my amps gain stages (2, so invert and than invert again, no overall change) but they are cap coupled (looks at amp suspiciously, "have you been fooling me all along?").