Stall inception in a high-speed centrifugal compressor has been examined. The main objective was to find stall precursor and to develop a reliable stall warning method. Eight equally spaced fast-response pressure transducers in the inducer detected the spatial structure of small amplitude perturbations, via spatial Fourier transform, as stall is approached. Near the stall inception point, the phase of spatial courier coefficients increased linearly with the speed of impeller relation for several impeller revolutions at all test speeds, and the spectrum at impeller frequency increased as stall is approached. These are the clear evidences that the impeller frequency participates in the stalling process.