Speaker Wire Connections

[AngloScot]

Does it matter if the positive and negative wires are connected to a stereo with the wires in the  wrong way round? Because speakers still seem to work whether they are connected properly or the wrong way around somebody please explain this for me.

[peanut]

it may sound ok to you but they will in fact run backwards. in other words to produce sound they push out, in your case they will be pulling in.

[dodgyshirt]

Peanut, does that mean they have now become massive microphones???????????????

[AngloScot]

Ok thanks but which one is usually negative? the one with a stripe on it?

[peanut]

very funny dodgyshirt

[peanut]

i always make the white line positive. i suppose you can make it whatever you want but make sure you do it the same way every time.

[tomd]

Yes! Finally a question in my field. The stripe on speaker wire, often either white or just a raised bit of plastic, is conventionally used as the positive wire. The wire without any marking is the negative wire. If the wires are red and black then red is positive.

Speakers will produce sound whichever way they are wired round, as during normal operation they move forwards and pull backwards around a central equilibrium point.

If you were to connect all the speakers with inverted polarity (+ve to -ve and -ve to +ve) then they would all be pulling backwards and forwards together, and wouldn't sound much worse than if they were connected the right way round. However, if you connected one with the correct polarity and one speaker with inverted, then they would be out of phase with each other (one speaker cone moves forward while the other moves backward) and you get some heavy distortion of sound quality and the distribution of sound around the room, as the alternating acoustic waves work towards cancelling each other out at certain frequencies, which results in dramatically reduced bass and sound not carrying very far from the speakers.

Connecting them both the wrong way round will result in a slight loss of quality and performance (volume output at a certain level) as they're not wired as designed, but it'll be a lot better then having one the right way round and one the wrong way round.