What Happens When You Wire Speakers Backwards?

If you wire your speakers backwards and listen to country music, the guy actually gets back his horse, his job and his wife

I learned about the importance of polarity when I was young. I received a ghetto blaster for xmas and I was shocked that AM radio sounded so much better than FM. AM was in mono and only came from the left speaker but FM being stereo came from both. My natural curiosity got the better of me and I opened it up 2 days after getting it. My mother was furious. I had no idea what I was doing or should be looking for but I knew the difference between positive and negative and colour coding. I saw the left speaker was wired white to + and black to - which seemed normal to me. But the right speaker was wired white to - and black to + which seemed wrong. I had already been soldering for a few years so I desoldered the wires from the right speaker, switched them and soldered them again. I put it on FM and was amazed at how good it sounded. My mother was so happy that it worked but still never gave me any credit for fixing/improving my gift. For years she would say "Do you remember that xmas you took apart your radio?" and I would always ask her if she remembered that not only did I put it back together but that it was better than when I had taken it apart. Never got any credit for that.

Having some education in electronics and a half century experience with home stereo, I can't say I learned from the video. But oh how I enjoyed seeing it explained so well. This young man has a gift for explanation.

When you listen to the initial hit of a kick drum there is a definite change of sound and feel with a single speaker wired with reverse polarity. Especially with a PA sub system that covers the 25Hz range. If everything is wired correctly you should feel the air hitting your chest. If the sub polarity is reversed then the kick drum completely loses it's impact. This because the first positive peak of the sine wave is the largest and sound pressure waves in compression have better projection than ratification of sound waves.

"Why are my speakers not speaking" "They don't agree with each other'

Years ago, I found I had accidentally wired one of my two subwoofers in reverse (in my mobile DJ rig). When I saw how I had screwed it up, I laughed so hard! I had been struggling for several months with my system - asking myself, "Why can I hear the base coming out of each sub when I stand right in front of it but when I move to the center of the dance floor, I don't hear or feel it?" No amount of EQing or compression made any difference. When I saw I had the cable to one sub wired backwards (positive to negative and negative to positive), man oh man, I was relieved. I still laugh today thinking about it.

Every time I wired up my speakers backward's,, They wouldn't play but only listened.

I knew this but this was the absolute best depiction of the principal I have ever seen. Well done!

This how noise cancelling systems work, listen to the unwanted sound and invert it add back to cancel the unwanted sound dynamically.

Fun fact: I once installed a dual subwoofer setup in my Nissan 100NX (yes it's been a while) .. After installation I played some subwoofer test music and was disapointed by the lack of bass from the subwoofers. I didn't understand, I had two subwoofers and still heard almost nothing. It was at this point I thought about polarity and I changed the phase setting (on one of the amplifiers). It was at this moment I learned that I should not have done that while the system was running a subwoofer bass test on 80% volume. The moment I flipped that switch I was scared to death, the system was playing so load suddenly. Learned some lessons that day!

i was taught this about 30yrs ago from some sound engineers for both studio and live situations. there's also been several articles in guitar magazine about this because especially important to the life of your gear and what's going to go on record. the last interview i read about this was from one of the sound engineers who worked on crew for Jimmy Hendrix on tour. it is as follows: when you wires your speakers backwards your cones hit in reverse. the initial blast from the speaker, i.e. that first vibration should always be the cone pushing outwards to deliver that first hit. when you wire them backwards the cones take a breath instead. i.e. pull in instead of pushing forward. that's going to affect the sound quality and volume of your session and speakers. if you got several amps going and one is in reverse, your phase is going to be messed up. it won't be something crazy like a full cancellation but your signals won't be balanced. over time, if the speakers are wired in reverse, the initial hit from your speakers will lead to damage from always sucking in at first instead of blowing outwards.

Really interesting to see how little most people (including myself) actually know about these simple concepts. I was taught I could blow up or short circuit speakers when I connected them wrongly

Very simply, when one speaker is out of phase (wired backwards) in a stereo system, they cancel each other out. Mainly heard in the lower frequencies, but also affecting image and sound staging.

If you have two stereo speakers wired with opposite polarity (a.k.a half a cycle out of phase), you get an interesting effect because the signals cancel each other out in a fringe pattern which generally makes it feel like the sound is coming from around or behind you, because it will bounce off the room walls before it reaches your ears. This effect is used in legend of zelda ocarina of time for the sound of the townspeople in the castle town courtyard, and in the movie twelve monkeys for the mystery voice he hears in his head Flipping the polarity of one of the channels in a pop song can also work as a useful hack to get something approximating an instrumental version of the track, because generally the vocal is dead centre but the backing is not so the vocal gets cancelled out

In a world of misinformation, particularly on audio, this channel is such a breath of fresh air! Superbly explained too.

Extremely clear and methodical explanation. Well done.

On a side note, the term phase and polarity are often used to describe the same thing but are actually different. Polarity inversion (flip or swap)is what is described in this video and is a 180 degree phase inversion. It is possible to have phase discrepancies that are not a full 180 degrees.

It's actually fun to experiment with out of phase speakers and placement. If they are directly facing each other with the listener in between, you get a push-pull effect that's pretty cool. It depends on the spacing and frequencies as well.

Well explained. Thanks... ❤

Nice concise presentation. Thank you.