Finding Positive wire on Exile Speaker

[slipperyrockTKE300]

Constant Florida sun exposure has turned the flexible plastic conduit on my speakers to disintegrate & fall off, and both white wires on my Exile SXT65 speakers are now black.

Can't see the original markings that were printed on one wire.

Without taking the speaker apart, how do you determine which is the positive speaker wire?

Which wire had the markings - pos or neg?

[mmandley]

9V battery, touch the 2 wires to the + and Neg of the battery.

If the speaker pops out towards you, then the + speaker wire is on the + battery terminal.

[slipperyrockTKE300]

Cool trick - thx!!

Gotta love 9v batteries.

If you connect three of them together, it's perfect for testing irrigation valve solenoids without being near the controller.

[Andy Digital]

Or just stick your tongue on the positive while the wire is attached to the negative and let me know what happens

[slipperyrockTKE300]

Oh, I know what happens - ever strip phone wire coming out of the wall with your teeth?

[BamaMojo]

Oh, I know what happens - ever strip phone wire coming out of the wall with your teeth?

Dude....????


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[philwsailz]

When you consider music is reproduced in a speaker by means of an AC signal in the speaker wire, you begin to realize that as long as all of your speakers are wired the same way, you won't notice a problem. Yup, it is completely acceptable to wire a speaker backwards, as long as every other speaker in the system is ALSO wired backwards. The voltage going into the positive terminal is only positive roughly half the time. The rest of the time it is negative... or ZERO....


There is a fun way to test this is at home. If you have a real old-fashioned stereo system in your living room, (or garage) try taking one speaker and wiring it backwards. Then step back so you are the same distance from both speakers and listen to some music. Two things you will notice, one is that there is a very noticeable lack of bass. The other is that in the vocal frequency range you will hear this weird sound, with a feeling like something is gently sucking on your brain; you feel sort of a negative pressure in your head. Both of these are due to the fact that bass frequencies and vocals are always mixed basically dead-center in the stereo image; electrically, both the bass notes and the singing are reproduced at the same loudness or amplitude for both speaker channels. When you flip the wiring backwards on one speaker, what you do is make that speaker move backwards with respect to the other; it is moving out of phase... At any give instant, one might be moving inwards when the other one is moving outwards. The corresponding pressure waves moving through the air cancel out at your head...

Now go to the other speaker and re-wire it backwards, (so both speakers are wired "wrong") and go back and listen. Peace in the audio world is restored. The bass came back, and the weird sound in the vocal range is gone. Both speakers are wired backwards, but remember audio is AC; the speakers move in AND out. If they are wired the same way, regardless or right or wrong they move in and out together and in-phase with each other.

I know, made your head spin... The takeaway is that ABSOLUTE polarity, (making sure the + terminal on the speaker is always connected to the + terminal of the amp) is not so important. Rather the important part is RELATIVE polarity. As long as all speakers are connected the same way the acoustic output from the audio system is going to be correct, regardless of whether all of your speakers are wired + to + or + to -



Phil
Kicker

[philwsailz]

Oh, I know what happens - ever strip phone wire coming out of the wall with your teeth?

Good thing you didn't do it when someone was calling. The ring voltage on a phone line is 110...

[David Analog]

So Phil, if I wire two AC light bulbs with one in reverse polarity will I have total darkness if I am standing an equal distance from both light bulbs?

[philwsailz]

So Phil, if I wire two AC light bulbs with one in reverse polarity will I have total darkness if I am standing an equal distance from both light bulbs?

Hah!

David...

Certainly not using old incandescent bulbs. The light comes from a super-heated filament. The light comes from the bulb because the wire is hot. The glowing of the wire does not does not oscillate appreciably with the supply voltage because the heated filament does not change temp much between cycles. Besides, the 60-cycle AC current is so low relative to the wavelength of the light that it is irrelevant.

Now as you move past the two bulbs you might experience some comb-filtering and interesting color effects, but the speed at which you moved past the two bulbs would be pretty darned fast. Like close to the speed of light. You would be really-really long, and time would go by real slow based on your perception of time at that speed...