If your system doesn’t preserve phase coherence, it doesn’t matter how expensive it is—music won’t sound real.
Phase coherence means all the frequencies in a signal arrive at your ears in time-aligned harmony. When it’s right, transients are crisp, imaging is pinpoint, and the illusion of live music just clicks. When it’s off, you get a soundstage that feels smeared, disconnected, or flat—like instruments floating in space without solid anchors.
This is one of the big reasons Chris Brunhaver, our loudspeaker designer at PS Audio, spends countless hours obsessing over driver behavior and crossover design. It’s not just about hitting a frequency target or shaping a smooth curve—it’s about managing phase through the crossover region so that what comes out of each driver blends seamlessly into one coherent wavefront. That’s harder than it sounds, and it’s why most speakers don’t quite "lock in."
Getting the drivers themselves to behave is the first hurdle. Each has its own natural delays and mechanical quirks. Then you’ve got to cross them over at the right point, with the right slopes and topology, while keeping the phase shift under control. And even then, physical alignment matters—driver spacing, baffle geometry, even your ear height at the listening position.
But when it all works—as it does in the Aspen series—the result is startling. The speakers disappear. Instruments are precisely placed. The timing feels natural. The sound doesn’t just hang between the speakers—it breathes in real space.
Phase coherence isn’t some abstract ideal. It’s the foundation of believable reproduction. Without it, music sounds like hi-fi.
With it, it sounds like life.
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