I'm kind of hoping Doug (tanstaafl) is floating around to read this (assuming he's had enough time to get that radio station ticking over like a well oiled clock).

I am unsure as to whether my speakers are in phase. I am running just a two channel installation for the moment until I get my second amp organised. I just replaced my original amp last week and I am now finding that whilst I now have better overall sound quality (notably due to using a compact subwoofer in free air as recommended by tanstaafl - good tip, young sir!), I am getting a very dead, boomy sound. Using a phase check track, I am unable to tell whether the speakers are correctly phased or not. I only get the feeling that something is not right - the stereo image does not seem to give very good seperation. What I lack is a track containing a constant-frequency tone (say, middle C) that pans from extreme L to extreme R with a pause in the centred image position.

I thought I had been very careful to ensure all the cabling is marked for phase and that it is all correctly matched on both speaker sets and crossovers, but I am now not so sure.

Is there any obvious characteristic I should be noticing in an anti-phase setup up that tells me that it is wrongly phased?

My next steps will be:

1) Re-trace all the wiring and check the phase markings, correcting where neccessary
2) If the sound is the same, reverse one pair of speaker cables and check the sound quality again to see if it is better or worse.

Anyone got any tips?

Additionally, I am going over to a 2-amplifier, 4 channel setup this weekend; how do you ensure correct phase relationships with 4 channels?

Over to you....