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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! found I-O's speakers miswired

I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Jambotron Details in the tech reference section, but.. I found out that the poor sound quality coming out of my IO (during the tutorial) was due to the internal speakers bieng wired out-of-phase! I swapped the + and - of ONE (not both) of the speaker connectors, and had VASTLY improved sound quality. The problem manifests itself as the sound being "not quite right" in stereo listening....Kind of makes you want to turn your head to hear better...I really heard it during the 'bells' intro in the factory home screen, before the tutorial. 04-09-2000 23:01:46

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Datoyminaytah You should be able to notice this by turning the unit left to right while sound is playing, or by moving your head left to right in front of it. The sound will phase in and out and may appear louder in one ear or the other alternately. People, test yours let us know if this has anything to do with certain manufacturing dates. 04-10-2000 03:59:18

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) foobar I noticed this too, but I figured it was just my unit. My God, don't tell me they designed it that way. 04-10-2000 07:51:52

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) jbaitis Interesting... mine had a phase problem too... I didn't think they had made this sort of this mistake, so I discredited it for the crappy speakers ; ) I just took one of the little white plastic connectors that connects to the mobo and pulled really hard on the wires and plastic covering to dislodge the metal contacts, switched their places, and popped the connector back onto the mobo. sounds much better! anyhow, my bios date is 10-01-99 or so (earlier model). I ordered it 2 days after the /. posting : ) 04-10-2000 13:39:19

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Tackhead As for phasing, I'm confused - my IO has one speaker mounted "upside down" relative to the other. This would indicate that pin 1 on the speaker connector refers to the same side (+ve or -ve) of the speaker. This would imply that the error behind the phasing is on the mobo, not the speakers. Maybe I have tin ears, but I was unable to tell the difference either way, and I tried the usual tricks of moving my head around while it was playing music. How did the people reporting "phased" IOs have their speakers mounted? Or have I (more than likely) completely missed the point? 04-10-2000 19:21:33

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Jambotron Mr. Tack, I have the same inverse-sided mounting as pertaining to the speakers as yourself. This is to say that one is mounted "wires up" (the left one) and the other (right) is mounted "wires down". Nevertheless, the phasing issue is an electrical wiring one, and yes, as you noted, probably is a fault in the motherboard itself. We can remedy the problem, regardless of its' location, by flippng the polarity on ONLY ONE of the speakers. (swap + and -, or red and black, wires, in the little white connector). Try listening intently with the old and new wirings, and see if you can't make it out...I will be monitoring... 04-10-2000 21:42:12

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Jambotron And no, you haven't missed the point. Try listening from a normal distance from the screen, and perhaps with only one ear toward the machine, move side to side...The sound will seem to null itself (die) out somewhat near the center if your phasing is opposed, but will be a smooth even volume from side to side if the phasing is correct. 04-10-2000 21:46:17

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Tackhead Hmm, mebbe part of the problem is I'm using some MP3s to "test" it. Would the effects be more pronounced with something simpler like a sine wave or square wave? (Good point on listening with only one ear towards the unit - that's probably my mistake...) 04-11-2000 00:51:47

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) Fred M. Phasing is electrical and mechanical. Phase, as related to speakers, means that a positive signal moves the cone/dome/ribbon/electrostatic panel/etc. towards you and that a negative one moves it away from you. If you take two drivers and face them both towards you, they are mechanically in phase. If you turn one of them the opposite direction, they are mechanically 180 degrees out of phase. Hooking up the one you turned around backwards (+ to - and - to +) will put them back in phase. Use a mono, low-frequency signal to listen for out of phase speakers. A stereo signal has, by definition, different sounds coming out of the two speakers and it makes it much harder to determine if something is in phase. You want a simply mono signal, preferably a low-frequency sine wave (not very low with 3/4" speakers, though!). As was suggested, listen with one ear. Move past the unit slowly maintaining a distance of about a foot. If the sound gets quieter in the middle, your speakers are out of phase. I am not saying whether the i-opener speakers are in phase or not, but just wanted to clarify some points. Regards, Fred M. 04-11-2000 05:21:38

Speakers out of phase up to V4 - then they were corrected - how to tell if yours is OK (modified 0 times) Dadr Profile I've worked with several I-Openers. I have a V1, V3, and V4. The V1 and V3 definately had speakers out of phase. On these I-Openers the speakers both have red and black leads, and if you look carefully, the R speaker (viewed from the back on the left but stamped on the retaining bracket as R) has red on pin 1 on the connector and black on pin 2. This is true of all I-Openers AFAIK. The L speaker, however also has a red on pin 1 and black on pin 2 on I-Openers before V4. This looks like things are OK, but they're not, and while it doesn't matter which speaker you swap pins on - I typically exchange the pins on the L speaker. One final point for pre-V4 I-Openers is that - while the speakers are mounted upside-down with respect to each other - they are wired alike - red leads inside and black leads outside. On the V4 I-Opener (and I suppose later models as well) this is no longer the case. The L speaker is alike, but the R speaker has black and WHITE leads, not black and RED. The speaker itself is wired differently. The black lead is no longer toward the outside - but rather toward the inside. The white lead is toward the outside. This speaker is then connected with the white to pin 1 and black to pin 2. The upshot is that the speakers were wired out of phase on V1-V3, but fixed sometime from V3 to V4. I hypothesize that you can tell if your I-Opener is wired out of phase by checking the color of the leads on the L speaker. If they are black and red - change them so that black goes to pin 1 and red goes to pin 2. If they are black and white - I'm sorry but this is as good as it gets! 12-22-2001 20:48:38

RE:I-O Internal Speakers Out-Of-Phase!!! (modified 0 times) 02U2 Profile Wow, Fred M. that's a blast from the past... Nice guy really. Just could not quite fit in. Geez, been almost 20 months on this BBS.... I remember the out of phase issue being discussed somewhere else on this BBS as a Cheap way to do 3D effect? 12-22-2001 22:41:17

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