Pro Sound Web: On most audio consoles above a certain price point, there is a button on each channel with the “∅” symbol. It may be (mistakenly) labeled “phase”.
Mythology runs rampant on the meaning and the use of that switch, and most of that confusion is steeped in stories told by someone who didn’t understand it to others who understood it even less.
1 comment:
It’s funny that this article was posted this week because I was just recently talking to someone about this. I totally see how Polarity and Phase can get mixed up on a conceptual level, but in practice, there is a big difference between what the two actually mean. I think the author does a good job of explaining this difference, with the most important distinction being the fact that a change in polarity is something that is acquired electronically by switching the +/- on a signal path. A shift in phase can graphically “look” like a polarity switch if placed next to an un-shifted signal, but it’s important to remember that this change requires a change in time, and that the polarity of the signal is actually still the same, the frame of reference (to use physics terminology) has just changed. I think another interesting point (and this is about where my knowledge on this subject ends) is that signals can be out of phase to different degrees due to both natural and artificial causes. If you have two audio sources spaced apart from each other (physically), that can result in a misaligning of phase for a signal being produced by both sources, with the same polarity, at the same time. This type of physics-of-sound stuff is important because not only can it cause problems, but it can solve them too.
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