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[scottoliphant]

so, I'm a bit confused. I've seen folks use interchange the words polarity and phase. Are they not two different things? (a search here on the forum led to more confusion due to the above). My otari tape deck is pin 3 hot (and have wired my cabling to reflect), but if i plug pin 2 hot cables in both input and output, my phase still appears correct, and I'm hard pressed to notice anything different about the sound, but something must be happening? thanks in advance
scott

[Transcending Music]

Hey Scott, my more or less plain answer is, think of phase as time and polarity as direction. Both situations affect the integrity of audio material (for better or for worse), obviously though in a relationship such as two or more microphones miking the same source at the same time. If you have a phase problem, you would think along the lines of aligning frequencies. With polarity problems, you may think along the lines of "flipping" the signal to match troughs and crests in the same direction.


hope that helps

[Andy Peters]

scottoliphant wrote on Fri, 01 September 2006 12:48

so, I'm a bit confused. I've seen folks use interchange the words polarity and phase. Are they not two different things? (a search here on the forum led to more confusion due to the above).

Polarity and phase are most certainly NOT the same thing.

Polarity is neither time- nor frequency- (which are really the same thing) dependent.

Quote:

My otari tape deck is pin 3 hot (and have wired my cabling to reflect), but if i plug pin 2 hot cables in both input and output, my phase still appears correct, and I'm hard pressed to notice anything different about the sound, but something must be happening? thanks in advance

Assuming that you're talking about balanced cables wired straight through (pin 1 to 1, pin 2 to 2, pin 3 to 3), there's no such thing as a "pin 2 hot" cable.

Consider: your tape deck is connected to a balanced console. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether the tape deck is pin 2 or pin 3 hot.  For example, assume that you're hooked up to a console whose I/O is pin 2 hot.  The pin 3 hot input stage will invert the polarity (NOT THE PHASE) of the audio signal before it gets printed to tape.  On playback, the pin 3 hot output stage drives whatever signal it gets from the playback electronics, but the pin 2 hot input stage of your console will invert the polarity again, resulting in a non-inverting signal path and all is well.

-a

[scottoliphant]

ANDY! thank you so much, you all are invaluable to folks like me trying to navigate the waters of the "theory" side of making records. thank you again.

[tall_phill]

Andy Peters wrote on Sat, 02 September 2006 08:35

Consider: your tape deck is connected to a balanced console. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether the tape deck is pin 2 or pin 3 hot.  For example, assume that you're hooked up to a console whose I/O is pin 2 hot.  The pin 3 hot input stage will invert the polarity (NOT THE PHASE) of the audio signal before it gets printed to tape.  On playback, the pin 3 hot output stage drives whatever signal it gets from the playback electronics, but the pin 2 hot input stage of your console will invert the polarity again, resulting in a non-inverting signal path and all is well.

This will work fine, but there are several situations where such a senario could result in problems. For instance you are using balacned -> unbalanced adaptor cables (that usually short pin 3 to shield). Also you should remember that your entire track would be recorded with polarity inversion. Especially if tapes are moving back and forth between studios, this would be highly undersirable.