Just got another pair of speakers at the local Goodwill. Impressive looking towers, but quality seems a bit on the K-Mart side.
Anyways Paid 30 bucks for the pair. Front tags say Audio Reference/Liquid cooled. There is a woofer, a mid, and a tweeter in each tower. There's a pot for the high, and one for the mid. Looks to just control the level to each. All 3 drivers in each tower have a single shared ground. The positive goes through a little breaker, then straight to the woofer, then two more positives go thru some little electrolytics. One for the tweeter and one for the mid. I had them apart to peek inside. Cheap speakers but for 30 bucks, they're ok.
My question is.... Why would the mids be wired out of phase (negative leads going to positive terminal) on BOTH towers, and the woofers, and tweeters be wired correctly?

I checked the terminals of each driver with a AA battery, and positive to positive makes the cone push out, so the mids are wired backwards.

That's an interesting hook-up. Its seems counter to what I understand about speaker circuitry.
If its not too difficult to change, it might be interesting to do some A-B testing with the tweeter/midrange wired in-phase and out of phase with the woofer. I can't see that it would have any adverse effect to operate it that way...

Are you sure that they are electrolytic Caps? If they are, then IMHO someone has been in there - they should be non-polarised - just see if they say XXuF 50volt (maybe) then "NP".

I'm not sure, but I don't think the phasing of the mid and tweet is that important providing that both speakers are the same.

This wiring looks to be a very cheap set up, just a first order type to each high frequency unit and none to the bass unit. First order gives a 6db / octave attenuation

The capacitors introduce phase shifts and this is the reason for phase reversals.

http://www.diyaudioandvideo.com/FAQ/Crossover/

There are many pages detailing cross over design.

Mike

Ok, well they "look" like electrolytics at first glance, but they are crimped at both ends, and have the rubber at both ends instead of just the positive. both 50V.

They are cheap. But the price was right. I got a much better deal this week from a pair of "magnum opus" towers at 3 bucks each.

They most likely are non polarized electrolytics. Internally they are sort of two polarized electrolytics back to back.

"Quad"-- {Look, you now have 4 speakers, right? }

Crossover networks do cause phase shifts, and some of the better speakers place individual drivers in certain places within the cabinet, or have certain shapes to deal with this.

But, there is another angle as well. In cone speakers, the "motor" is the voice coil. But, if you look at the voice coil of a woofer, it's inches behind the voice coil of a tweeter on the mounting board. So if both drivers reproduce the same note, one sound wave is physically starting behind the other.

Sound waves are high pressure/low pressure waves. So with 2 drivers reproducing the same note, you can actually have partial cancellation, as not only are the "motors" one in front of the other, you also have a different distance to your ear from the 2 drivers, the woofer almost always closer to the floor. This helps exaggerate the difference in distance.

When "talkie" movies were still new, a 2 way speaker system was introduced to improve clarity. It's first installation had a problem, though. There was an echo. Actually, the engineers realized {after some headscratching} that the voice coil for the tweeter was way behind the voice coil of the woofer, and the echo was actually a delay in the sound arriving from the tweeter. The tweeter in use had a large metal horn, so it's voice coil was significantly behind the woofer's in the vertical plane of the mounting board.

Back to your speakers. I am sure the midranges are reversed in polarity to avoid the cancellation by having different drivers reproducing the same sound or note at the same time. It could be mid/high frequency drivers fighting each other. By your description, the woofer is getting basically all of the music, and just the mid and high drivers have crossovers to block or allow specific frequency ranges. Since the woofer is larger, it will not be able to make significant high frequency output levels. However, feeding the woofer these notes does cause a certain level of distortion, but with today's compressed digital sound, you may never notice. Only with very good source material and very clean amplification will this flaw become noticeable.

Oh, 'fore I forget- The "liquid cooled"- Normally, the voice coil has a tiny air gap between it and the round magnet pole. With liquid cooling, that air gap is filled with a magnetic fluid. The fluid is supposed to remove heat more efficiently than air does from the voice coils, so if you play music at higher levels for a long time, the speakers can handle it.

Enjoy them!
John S.

Are the pots just a straight rheostat, or a T or L pad, The L pads look like normal
pots but have 2 resistance elements, Ts have 3. 'These are shelving controls.'

If you reverse the squawkers it spreads the 'localization' mid band but the woofers
still drive the lows.

Is it a sealed box? How big are the woofer magnets?

"Normalize" the polarity if you want. But the designers may have been on to something. Like softening the crossover range with phase cancellation of the frequencies both drivers reproduced in the absence of a choked whoofer (sic).

Some of the old Bozak speakers had their mid range speakers wired out of phase with the woofer and tweeter. The designers must have had a reason for doing that, so I don't change the wiring when I replace the cross over caps. Harry

Those are "white van" speakers.

Hook them up and play a mono signal through both speakers. If the sound cones from both sides then they are out of phase. If the sound comes from the center they are in phase.
Simple.

White van speakers for sure. The magnets in the woofers are tiny little things covered by a big ol dust button for looks.
The pots are just a volume control. One for the tweeter in each speaker, and one for each mid. The pots "feel" wirewound. Magnets stamped Taiwan.
Ported cabinets (I never really liked those, and I usually plug them up with something). I'll leave the out of phase mids hooked up the way the factory did it. Bought them to have on each side of the TV in the bedroom, as I never was much on the whole single subwoofer, and little satellite speakers setup. I'm still happy with 30 bucks for the pair, but a lot happier with the couple days prior purchase of the "magnum opus" speaker pair for 6 bucks total!