How to tell speaker + from -?

Turn up the bass, put it in mono and try it both ways. Whichever way has more bass is the right way.

With the speakers facing each other...

Play an asymetical signal. One that does not have glide reflection symmetery, eg: 33% PWM use a low low frequency so that the cross-over doesn't mess it up too much.

view the sound on an oscilloscope (or audacity etc)

O'scope, separate mics, two channels?

I wonder how speaker phase affects our perception of sound. Assume both speakers are phased to each other. Now can human hearing discern when they are phased correctly for the program material? I can't, but maybe there are people who can.

And what happens in a orchestra... the wind section, for instance, takes great pains to see that they are all playing the same note frequency-wise before the concert starts, but surely some slight variations on timing must cause one or the other to be phased slightly different from the rest of the section.

Damn, back to Google for me.

Use a mic or small speaker attached to a pole and view output on a scope.

The resulting asymmetrical sound pulses will be the same polarity when the wiring is correct.

.... Phil

How about connecting the speaker leads to a dual-trace scope and making a pressure pulse in the room. Slam a door. Pop a balloon. Firecracker.

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 9:41:54 AM UTC-7, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrot e:

more bass is the right way.

I second this.

When I was in college a friend helped me install new speakers in my car. A fter installing the first speaker, the bass was impressive. When we instal led the second one the bass was much less impressive; my friend said I was "getting used to it." Then even later when I switched to JUST left OR righ t channel, the bass was louder. Dad finally told me one of the speakers wa s wired backwards. Yep.

Michael

Generally, the "+" is near a red dot.

Anyway, the most important is that both speakers are in phas, connected the same way.

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 9:31:41 AM UTC-7, snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com wrot e:

Standing in the center of both speakers, in mono it should sound like its d irectly in front of you. If the phase is wrong, sound will seem to come fro m inside your head. If you don't notice and it doesn't bother you , who car es?

Reversed phase bothers me a LOT.