feature request - Absolute Polarity Toggle

[IrvingWashington]

First - I love this product.....was waiting and waiting for the Blackberry Playbook version. Installed it last night. THANKYOU!!

THE FEATURE REQUEST : I have been comparing the audio quality of NMP"s output with other very high end sources feeding my Sennheiser & Sony headphones -typically with a headphone amp driving the phones. For some files (I only use high rez FLAC) your player sounds "not as clean / transparent as my current best FLAC player" I am very familiar with the pitfalls of comparison listening (subtle EQ variations, output impedance of driver amp vs. imput impedance of load, etc) .....and I have spend many years doing research of the audibility of absolute polarity of acoustic signal to ears (using full range electrostatics) .....so ......after much testing - I am starting to believe that what I am actually hearing re the "not as clean/transparent" thing is simply the 180 signal inversion between the 2 FLAC Player sources I am listening to. I have proven to myself that I can reliably detect a "preferred polarity" for most vocals and many instruments, given a clean recording with little digital mixing and tweeking - ie mic to ADC to music file is a fairly simple path.

So - Can you add a toggle button to the GUI (like the Crossfeed button) that toggles the polarity of the 2 analog output channels by 180 degrees. This would be done in digital domain I realize. A User who cares would toggle it back and forth a few times in the first few bars fo the track and then leave it in the preferred state.

Thanks again for the Playbook version - love that Crossfeed.

[dmitrykos]

Thank you very much for the proposal. Adding polarity change toggle is possible and DSP effect for it is very easy for the CPU. Will put it in dev. to-do.

This strange although that you are hearing polarity inversion/change between several players...

[IrvingWashington]

Thank you for fast reply. I am happy to hear that request will go to dev. list.

Hearing polarity can be very easy OR very hard. Speaker (or headphone) must be single driver (electrostatics in speaker, or single diaphram in headphone) that does not mash up the phase of signal when transferring to the air. Then if you have human voice or non-symetric instruments (such as saxaphone, not piano or most strings), recorded with single micphrone and little processing - you can hear very easily IFF you have toggle switch to flip between - and + at same gain. Typical effects described are "closer vs farther away" and "cleaner, sounds right". I have a custom 6 channel line-level unity gain inverter box for home system. It feeds the line signals to all the mono block amps for speakers. An IR remote can toggle all 6 channels with one click. About 40% of my recordings have a "preferred" polarity.....especially for female vocal.

Thank you again.

[dmitrykos]

This functionality is now in 1.63.0. The access to activate it: Neutron UI -> Settings -> Audio Hardware -> option PHASE INV. It changes state when DONE is pressed. Alternative way to Audio Hardware is to long-press Preamp button in Controls screen.

[TYA]

After carefully check, track by track, I can feel effective of phase reverse.
It is not easy, and not all of tracks can be feel the different.
I think with a earphone less than 300$ , it's not responsitive