Why is "beating speaker frequency response into submission" via EQ a bad thing?

It was your midbass drivers that were out of phase. Flipping them put them back in phase with the sub and the midrange. The biggest difference was in the sub to midbass transition.

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Originally Posted by SkizeR

It was your midbass drivers that were out of phase. Flipping them put them back in phase with the sub and the midrange. The biggest difference was in the sub to midbass transition.

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So what would cause the drivers to be "out of phase" like that, assuming they are wired with the same polarity as the rest of the speakers?

Could it be that one of those two drivers was somehow wired or labeled backward at the factory?

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Originally Posted by jtrosky

So what would cause the drivers to be "out of phase" like that, assuming they are wired with the same polarity as the rest of the speakers?

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I bet a dollar they were not wired with the same polarity as the rest of the speakers : )

I will check again but was super careful matching positive to red and checked polarity with the app before buttoning everything up. It checked positive just like the rest of the speakers.

could be crossover settings, wiring, timing, group delay (doubt that)..

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Originally Posted by Jdunk54nl

I will check again but was super careful matching positive to red and checked polarity with the app before buttoning everything up. It checked positive just like the rest of the speakers.

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You may already know this, but just wanted to mention that I had some "false positives" with my dedicated polarity-checking tool at one point - simply because I was checking the dash speakers and angled the polarity-checking tool too much because of the windshield angle. So it was reporting the polarity incorrectly (maybe due to reflections?). I've learned that you really need to get the tool as close to the speaker as possible, make sure no other speakers are playing (can be a pain with speakers using passive crossovers) and keep the tool as close to a 90-degree angle with the speaker as possible.

Y'all are making polarity testing way more complicated than it needs to be as long as we're talking speakers with at least a little bit of excursion. Checking them before install with a small battery like a AA then wiring them up correctly should be all the verification you need. Yes some get labeled wrong at the factory and that can cause a ton of headaches. If the speaker pops out you're in phase. If it sucks in you're out of phase. As far as phasing when tuning way more people struggle with it than most will admit. Measurements are just one tool to get to the final result and as I was told one time by one of the few people I fully trust "sometimes the rta lies".

Polarity on all speakers is correct according to factory coloring on speakers and amps.

Checked everything this last weekend and I did confirm that the polarity is the same in the doors as the rest of the speakers. Positive is to positive and negative is to negative. I did even confirm this with a 9v battery. Everything moved in the same direction. The amp is also confimed that the negative wire goes into the negative side and vice versa with positive. The only thing I can think of is maybe the amp internally is wrong...but it is a pdx-f6 so that would be a pretty huge issue on the production line.....

I even switched out the door speakers to test some other things and confirmed they were wired the same as the others. They also needed to be flipped polarity in the dsp software.

I didn't get before graphs with REW due to the other things but when I was using rew and checking all speaker pairs with the new speakers, the polarity issue was confirmed even in the new speakers. This tuning session matched Justin's spreadsheets curve acoustically very well. So it isn't an issue with the frequencies not being a 24db acoustical crossover.

I will describe what REW showed as I forgot to save those measurements.

1) The graphs together were still louder but the crossover frequency was lower when polarity was flipped. As in the together repsonse still summed higher than a single speaker but was lower than when polarity was correct. It wasn't a huge dip like you sometimes get. It was just lower by a couple db. Noticeable on the graph but only if you take RTA with polarity one way and then the other way.

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Originally Posted by Hillbilly SQ

Y'all are making polarity testing way more complicated than it needs to be as long as we're talking speakers with at least a little bit of excursion. Checking them before install with a small battery like a AA then wiring them up correctly should be all the verification you need. Yes some get labeled wrong at the factory and that can cause a ton of headaches. If the speaker pops out you're in phase. If it sucks in you're out of phase. As far as phasing when tuning way more people struggle with it than most will admit. Measurements are just one tool to get to the final result and as I was told one time by one of the few people I fully trust "sometimes the rta lies".

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Yes, it's easy to check polarity *during* the speaker install, when everything (door panels, etc) is removed and you have easy and full access to the speaker - but in this case, we're talking about *confirming* speaker polarity "after the fact" - where you can't necessarily see the speaker cone at all - or, even if you can see the speaker cone, you still may not have an easy way to monitor it's movement *while* applying the 9-volt battery to it's wires.

This is where the polarity-checking tool (or app) comes in so handy. You can check polarity without being able to see the speaker cone at all - and/or when you don't have access to the speaker wires anywhere near where the speaker is physically located. Just play the repeated "tick" sound and press a button and you can tell if it's wired correctly or not.

Different tools for different situations - that's all. :-)

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Originally Posted by jtrosky

This is where the polarity-checking tool (or app) comes in so handy. You can check polarity without being able to see the speaker cone at all - and/or when you don't have access to the speaker wires anywhere near where the speaker is physically located. Just play the repeated "tick" sound and press a button and you can tell if it's wired correctly..

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When using app or polarity checker tools like that it is also important to make sure you disable all XO, EQ, and Phase/TA on driver’s DSP channel (send raw full range signal for the tick/pop test). It will eliminate false readings.

Guess I'm pretty spoiled that I was able to fairly easily run my own wire to all speakers that way there's no doubt the polarity is correct.

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Originally Posted by Jdunk54nl

Polarity on all speakers is correct according to factory coloring on speakers and amps.

Checked everything this last weekend and I did confirm that the polarity is the same in the doors as the rest of the speakers. Positive is to positive and negative is to negative. I did even confirm this with a 9v battery. Everything moved in the same direction. The amp is also confimed that the negative wire goes into the negative side and vice versa with positive. The only thing I can think of is maybe the amp internally is wrong...but it is a pdx-f6 so that would be a pretty huge issue on the production line.....

I even switched out the door speakers to test some other things and confirmed they were wired the same as the others. They also needed to be flipped polarity in the dsp software.

I didn't get before graphs with REW due to the other things but when I was using rew and checking all speaker pairs with the new speakers, the polarity issue was confirmed even in the new speakers. This tuning session matched Justin's spreadsheets curve acoustically very well. So it isn't an issue with the frequencies not being a 24db acoustical crossover.

I will describe what REW showed as I forgot to save those measurements.

1) The graphs together were still louder but the crossover frequency was lower when polarity was flipped. As in the together repsonse still summed higher than a single speaker but was lower than when polarity was correct. It wasn't a huge dip like you sometimes get. It was just lower by a couple db. Noticeable on the graph but only if you take RTA with polarity one way and then the other way.

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This sounds very much like the problems we see with subs, even when EVERYTHING is absolutely correct we still need to adjust T/A or polarity or add an all-pass filter to correct environmentally induced problems. Since the problem was with midbass speakers, it kinda makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Hillbilly SQ

Guess I'm pretty spoiled that I was able to fairly easily run my own wire to all speakers that way there's no doubt the polarity is correct.

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I have my own wire ran to all speakers. I am not using any factory. Polarity is correct with the wire.

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Originally Posted by ckirocz28

This sounds very much like the problems we see with subs, even when EVERYTHING is absolutely correct we still need to adjust T/A or polarity or add an all-pass filter to correct environmentally induced problems. Since the problem was with midbass speakers, it kinda makes sense.

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Ya, I think this is more about environment than anything else. I've had some interesting environment issues with the 14 F150. Even Justin Zazzi is confused as to why my speakers respond as if they are in an open field and not in a door that is fairly well deadened and sealed (CLD, CCF, MLV). Two different sets of speakers having the same issue leads me to think it is the environment.