Whats the best way to check that the Polarity of the wire to the spekers is correct?

We have had some resheeting done and the sparkie rerouted my cables so I have no visual way of checking polarity using the trace on the cable. Given he got Left / Right around the wrong way - I thought I'd also better test for polarity. Here is one method I found but is it safe ... http://www.ehow.com/how_4616167_test-speaker-wire-polarity.html

Thanks
Nathan

I'd use a AA battery, not a 9-volt. It has enough voltage (~1.5 when new) to move the woofer noticeably but not enough to do any damage. Just hold the positive wire to the positive terminal, then the negative wire to the negative. If the woofer moves outward, then the speaker is wired correctly.

Thanks - worked like a charm (and they were reversed!)

If both speakers were reversed then it would have been fine to leave them. What you want to avoid is having only one reversed. Glad you got is sorted anyway.

I can understand why speakers being out of phase with each other is the worse cirumstance, but would not having the polarity wrong mean my High/Low pressures be inverted?

They would be inverted, but your ears brain can't tell the difference. Remember that the human ear's audible range is from 80Hz - 20kHz. Picture a waveform (see below). At 80Hz, a sound wave oscillates above (pressurized air) and below (rarified air) the horizontal axis (neutral pressure, 0dB) 80 times in one second. At 20kHz, it's 20,000 times in one second. Your ear brain can't tell the difference.



You can prove it to yourself by using a sound editor on your computer to invert a sound clip and compare the before and after.

Axiom's video says a 9volt battery is fine? Also, I have read that you should only apply the test for less than a second and only to the woofer section, so you don't damage the voice coil of the tweeters?

You meant 20Hz-20kHz, right?

I think he meant his ears.

Oops. You're right. I must have been thinking about localizable sounds. But, yeah, at 20Hz, you can almost count the pulses each second.