wrote in message
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Hello all...

I recently installed a radio and stereo speakers in my car. The
speakers were a trashpicking find and they seem to work just fine. At
the time I wired them up, I didn't know which terminals represented +
and - on the speakers, so I took a guess and wired them both the same
way. The speakers had no marking to indicate polarity, other than a
"thin" spade lug for one terminal.

Just the other night I found the box the speakers were in. It has a
detailed wiring diagram on the side. According to the diagram I have
reversed the + and - connections on both speakers.

Over the years I've read a number of different views on the effect of
wiring speakers with reversed polarity. I've heard everything from "it
won't really matter if the speakers are both wired the same way" to
"the sound won't be as good because the speaker cone will pull inward
instead of being pushed out".


It wouldn't be hard to fix, but should I bother correcting the
polarity?

William

I've never known it to matter, as long as they are both wired the same way
round, as you say. Reverse wiring just one will result in a lack of bass and
a 'woolly' stereo image, as I'm sure you are aware. If you think about it,
any waveform driving them will have a pretty symmetrical count of positive
and negative half cycles of largely similar amplitude, so there is no real
reason why the speaker moving back, at a time when the diaphragm in the
microphone that made the original recording was moving forward, should have
any effect. The theory also assumes that the phase relationship was
maintained throughout the entire recording process, and that there is no
inversion taking place in amplifier stages in your player, that isn't
reversed again, by the time the signal reaches the output terminals ...

Arfa