Does anyone know what the inverse on crossovers are used for?

Did a Google search on 'inverse polarity audio equipment' and came up with this:

"polarity A signal's electromechanical potential with respect to a reference potential. For example, if a loudspeaker cone moves forward when a positive voltage is applied between its red and black terminals, then it is said to have a positive polarity. A microphone has positive polarity if a positive pressure on its diaphragm results in a positive output voltage. [Usage Note: polarity vs. phase shift: polarity refers to a signal's reference NOT to its phase shift. Being 180� out-of-phase and having inverse polarity are DIFFERENT things. We wrongly say something is out-of-phase when we mean it is inverted. One takes time; the other does not.]"

Taken from this website: http://www.rane.com/par-p.html#polarity

Try this site: http://www.hifi-cables.com/e-sens.html

Then, I realized this doesn't really help much, so I checked my crossover's instruction manual.

"PHASE INVERT Switch - This switch reverses the polarity of the subwoofer output signal".

If I had to stab at a guess, it would swap the positive & negative signal going to the sub. Why would you do this? Well, I'll leave this up to someone else to explain, since I can only offer wild speculation & half-truths at this point.

quote:

Originally posted by Billabong:
[qb] If I had to stab at a guess, it would swap the positive & negative signal going to the sub. Why would you do this? Well, I'll leave this up to someone else to explain, since I can only offer wild speculation & half-truths at this point. [/qb]

I will give my speculation. EV one of the largest speaker manufacturers in the world, wired their speakers backwards from the accepted norm when Speakon connections were introduced. Don't know why. So I think it was if your speakers are wired differently like EV (or if anyone else did that I do not know). You could reverse the polarity to what it should be with a switch, instead of reversing your wires, or re-wiring your speakers .

That sounds like a plausible answer Stevie Ray!

I was thinking down the whole "wave cancellation" train of thought. Like if you had two or more subs at weird angles (or facing each other, for some reason), and their sound waves were cancelling each other out, you could reverse one, and it would fix the problem.

Then again, that train probably wrecked a long time ago.

werent old home theatre system speakers wired out of phase to give a 3d sound??..... i think my I.T teacher told me that??..hhmm??