You wouldn’t believe how many people have speakers that are “out of phase”. Essentially this means that your wiring is not quite right, and you will not be hearing the sound waves correctly. You may even be hearing the left from the right and vice versa. Having out of phase speakers won’t hurt your equipment, but you won’t get the most out of your speakers if you don’t correct it either.
It can be complicated to explain "phasing" technically, however it’s important to know that when you produce artificial sound from multiple sources, you always run the risk of being "out of phase".
"Out of phase" typically means that one source is “contradicting” what the other source is doing. When a speaker produces sound, it is vibrating back and forth. When you phase a speaker, the idea is to have both speakers moving in the same direction at the same time.
If your speakers have the positive side of the speaker wire connected to where the negative should be, they will be out of phase. It is really simple to rectify this by tracing your speaker wire back to your receiver/amp, and check that the red connection (the + positive) is connected to the red input, and the black (the – negative) to the black input.
A great way to make sure you have wired your speakers correctly is to use banana plugs. They allow you to identify positive and negative speaker cable quick & easy. Check out our blog here on connecting speaker cable.
