Srajan La Pergola just announced that Danish company “FMJ Audio” began to make an acoustic phase tester. An acoustic phase tester is absolutely mandatory thing for anyone who uses horns. If a person use horns and has no ways to objectively recognize acoustic phase then any conversation with that person is off the table.

Since 90s I use Gold-Line polarity detector combined with the track #23 of the Sheffield Lab’s “My Disk”

http://www.gold-line.com/apt2.htm

In the past Gold-Line sold the tester for $50 but recently they developed what I call “fucking attitude” and almost insist to sell you along with the phase tester their crappy TIF packages and absurd voice analyses software. Anyhow, I do not like last years nether their attitude, nor the service from Gold-Line and I stooped insist people to buy this phase tester from them.

Here is another player in the game:

http://www.phase-it.com/

I do not know what is the frequency respond of the thing and what is the sensitivity of the unit but if everything is made as it should be then with the price tag of $100 it is an absolutely mandatory devise to have.

http://gato-shop.com/en/phase-it-39/phase-it-99.html

For the folks who use compression drivers who have no physical access to the driver’s diaphragm there is no easer way to say what polarity the channel is connected (there are other ways to measure polarity of course but they are more complicated and troublesome). I know that 90% of Audio Morons ™ do not even care (!!!) about the phase of thier channels but there is a reason why I call them Morons. Over the years I do not really care where were the red or black building posts, what is the red or black speaker cable…. When I open my drivers to clean them it up (compression driver people unfortunately need to do it once in a while) I never care to mark plus and minus as I can always verify after all  ther acoustic polarity for a given channel.

It is hard to imagine how much time my phase tester saved to me and from what kind stupid of accidental mistakes it prevented me. It was one the best $50 that I ever invested in audio.  Please, if you are in malty-channel world then do yourself a favor and get an Acoustic Polarity Tester for the prices of 7 sandwidges… BTW, I did experience a few commercial loudspeakers with WRONG polarity of the connected drivers… So…