Comments on Profile Post by MLegend

Depends on the track for me. Some I can tell a slight difference, others I can't tell any.

Yes you can, just run polarity test on YouTube, you'll notice the difference. Inversed polarity sounds defused while "in the head", with some low mid boost.

for me it's most noticeable on tracks with synthesized bass, or with well recorded female vocals

Just to be clear this is absolute polarity and not the "oh this one's evidently just bollixed" test tracks as you may find on audiocheck, yeah? I seem insensitive to it so far based on fiddling with the micro iDSD and I'm grateful for it haha.

^Yes. Like @Lyander stated above, absolute polarity is what I'm referring to. From my experience, it seems there are two different instances of reverse polarity. 1. Audio that is completely "inside/behind your head", thin, and broken sounding.

2. Audio that sounds sucked out; loss of bass/fullness, more in your face/forward mids, less center stage depth, and more "clarity". The former is what I typically hear when listening to polarity tests. The latter is what I'm referring to in my original post. I dislike both.

If one channel is flipped, hell yes. If both channels flipped, it depends on the track and headphones, but most of the time no.

audiocheck is a wonderful place!

No, I can't. Even though I a few right. Don't think that is just my ears now. Probably not, as ISTR once having had some box with a phase-reversal button, and it didn't, to me, seem to do anything.

If it's both channels are flipped, it's only obvious to me with loudspeakers and subs.

I can hear when absolute polarity if flipped using real music. Some headphones make it more audible than others. Some headphones not at all. Audeze does very well. Also DAC is important. Schiit multibits do very well. Some DACs not at all.

A part of me wonders if the fact that I don't do speakers (unless phone counts lol) and have grown accustomed to headphones' presentation over many years has anything to do with my brain having trouble discerning the difference.

The reason I brought this up and asked in the first place is that I recently received a balanced 1/4 TRS to connect my audio processor to my interface and while recording a sample I noticed that the waveform was traveling 180 degrees in reverse (downwards) instead of up.

When I listened to the sample, it sounded different and off compared to how my microphone normally sounds. So I inverted the track in Audacity and by doing so the polarity was correct again and it sounded normal. If you guys are interested, I can post the two tracks so you can see if you can hear the difference.

I've never been able to hear it myself. Pushing the "parallel universe button" on BF2 doesn't seem to change anything. Would be interested to hear your tracks.

@MLegend
My wife is in the hospital so I won't be able to check out your recordings for a while. Thanks for starting the thread.