I've become obsessed that my right speaker is louder than my left speaker.

[abdo123]

The blue one looks loader. Have you looked at the phase, in particular t0?

Is there a guide you can link me to look at t0 ?

 

[Mnyb]

Is the room very assymetrical ? furniture reflective areas . Microphones are not ears (and brain ) L&R side migth just sound diffrent to a human listener even if you managed to dail in the EQ . Listen in mono and also at one speaker at the time

Some speakers take better to EQ than others , afaik speakers with good even dispersion is friendly to EQ above the transition frequency (shröder) so depending on speakers EQ for flat at one position might not solve it ? here ends my practical experience the other posters here have some really good advice.

You might have to tune your EQ by ear one speaker at the time with mono content ? would that help overcoming the psychoacoustics involved

 

[cursive]

This is the current measurments of my speakers and they're pretty identical. I don't know what magic tricks you have up your sleeves but please share them because my experience has been completely the opposite (no effect on speaker balance after individual EQ).

May I ask what you used to take your measurements, which mic and software? In my honest opinion your after eq measurement looks great. Those are pretty damn closely matched across the board. I think most of us would be lucky to end up with such closely matched left and right unless we had a dedicated listening room.

Are you saying that despite these measurements, you still hear an imbalance?

 

[abdo123]

Are you saying that despite these measurements, you still hear an imbalance?

Yes i still hear an imbalance, my bass response is still far from perfect (but when both speakers are playing they kinda support each other, and bass is mostly mono in most tracks).

Also i was lucky that my speakers don't deviate a lot from minimum phase in their current position and from the listening position.

 

[abdo123]

May I ask what you used to take your measurements, which mic and software? In my honest opinion your after eq measurement looks great.

I used REW to do the measurments and generate the filters, i would load the filters (quite easy with convolution or Equalizer APO), measure again, and do more adjustment. kind of in a cycle.

I used UMIK-1 for mic.

 

[abdo123]

Starting from a very asymetrical configuration, the room as well as the left and right speaker that deviate from each other with differences up to 1.5 dB, I have once experimented a correction that completely centered the phantom image.
It was a separate left / right FIR correction generated by DRC according to a target curve calculated by Jean-Luc Ohl.

Here is a set of graphs provided by Ohl according to my measurements. I have removed the URL because the site is still in beta.

View attachment 108876

In the top left graph (C1), we can see that the left and right frequency responses (blue and red), measured from the listening position, are very different.
The FIR correction (minimum phase, 1024 taps) tried to correct this, aiming at the C8 curve (bottom right). I don't have a measurement of the result, which is not as accurate as the predicted curve, but the effect on the left / right balance was impressive !

I also learned some interesting things with these measurements and corrections. The bottom left prediction (C7) for separate left / right correction show that equalizing separately the left and right speaker below 200 Hz is useless. They must be equalized together.

Here, another setup (the same, but with my own parametric eq already applied before the measurement) show a very important problem between 90 and 108 Hz :

View attachment 108885

We can see that correcting both speakers at the same time (the above graphs are measurements of such a correction) doesn't work either because they are out of phase in this frequency range ! It can be heard from the listening position (although I rather had the impression that low frequencies were playing in one of my ears only), and if a recording has some drums panned on the left and right side, they sound way too loud.

The best solution was to eq the left and right channels together, except around 100 Hz, where the null was left uncorrected.

Wow this is a really comprehensive approach to EQ. phase correction over the entire audible range + amplititude correction might just be the thing to fix this issue universally.

I would be really greatful if you would point me out to a guide that explain this method in detail.

I'm planning to buy the MiniDSP 2X4 HD which should get me 2048 taps per channel for FIR filters.

 

[SDC]

I have similar problem.
Even when my room and speaker placements are symmetric the center is little to the right. Umik, delay, diraclive, audiolense, physical center tried all none of them fixed the problem.
(I tried mono on pyhsical center, sound comes from empty space between C and R, it's really weird)

I just removed the physical center and moved my chair left till it felt right...

Personally, sound feels more right this way than when I touched balance and delay

 

[andreasmaaan]

(I tried mono on pyhsical center, sound comes from empty space between C and R, it's really weird)

What you would need to do would be to process the signal into mid and side channels, and then send the mid channel to C and the side channels only to L and R. Unfortunately this is not an easy thing to do without DSP.

Just sending a mono channel to C doesn't work because the sound from R will (for content panned to the centre) still be arriving earlier and louder than sound from L.

 

[JoachimStrobel]

Is there a guide you can link me to look at t0 ?

There a couple of thread in the REW forum, one is:
https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/rew-alignment-tool-guides-or-manual.6814/

I do not how your REW setup is. If you have not done so yet, the it might be a good idea to measure the complete system with REW. You can record the REW sweeps as wav files and play them via a streamer or else while REW waits for the trigger signal to start syncing. So you could check the chain from the DAC upwards.

 

[abdo123]

There a couple of thread in the REW forum, one is:
https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/rew-alignment-tool-guides-or-manual.6814/

I do not how your REW setup is. If you have not done so yet, the it might be a good idea to measure the complete system with REW. You can record the REW sweeps as wav files and play them via a streamer or else while REW waits for the trigger signal to start syncing. So you could check the chain from the DAC upwards.

Yeah i do exactly what you said, but with the MiniDSP i will probably just use that as a USB DAC.

 

[ahofer]

If you listen to a lot of Classical orchestral music, you should be aware that of the usual orchestra seating arrangement that puts violins on the left and tympani and "louder" or more dynamic instruments on the right. This can give the impression the the Right speaker is louder. This should go away if you downmix stereo to mono.

True. But I think how it is miked can make a difference. If the mikes are close (as they typically are in concert hall suspended setups), the violins are oriented in such a way that a lot of their directional (and reflected) sound ends up in the right channel. I hear it a lot in quartets as well as symphonic music.

 

[jae]

1. Your right speaker is actually louder
2. The right channel of your amp/dac has a greater signal output
3. General hearing loss in left ear
4. Right ear more sensitive
5. Right ear canal resonant frequencies are broader or closer to energy of the music you are listening to
6. The right channel peaks on what you're listening to is actually louder and you're hearing it as intended
7. You're imagining it

 

[daftcombo]

It could be I'm deafer in one ear I guess

I've used the balance control for my amp and am doing that for a few days after which I will centre it and see if any theoretical training effect is in play. If that doesn't work I'll go for the 180

It could also be that one of your ears is dirtier than the other and needs cleaning, whereas your partner's are pristine. No joke, it happened to me.
The 180° advise should help you finding out.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

A few things, I have/had the same problem ... Questions:

• How symmetrical is the room, geometrically? Openings on both sides are equal? Furnishing?
• 2-Channel or MCH?

In MCH, the surround and , if present, Atmos channels play an important role in the perceived positions of sound sources. You should look into this. even after the automatic set-up that most AVR provide; you may need to trim the level and distances... In MCH distance is important... a speaker that is "seen" by the AVR as closer will have its output slightly delayed by a few milliseconds, conversely if it is perceived to be farther, then its output timing and perhaps, level could be slightly superior to the channel on the other side. I had this issue and only painstaking and manual trim of those parameters brought the sound to my satisfaction.
This will take some time .. 2, 3 feet, 0.5 dB make a difference.

Peace!

 

[dominikz]

It could also be that one of your ears is dirtier than the other and needs cleaning, whereas your partner's are pristine. No joke, it happened to me.
The 180° advise should help you finding out.

Had the same thing happen to me. To be honest I was quite surprised that it could make such a difference. My right ear apparently had more cerumen buildup than the left which resulted in left shift of phantom image. After ear irrigation phantom image is dead center.

 

[threni]

I've become obsessed that my right speaker is louder than my left speaker.

I've asked other people and they say it's not louder. I've swapped over connectors and that doesn't change anything.
I don't have measuring mics but tried measuring SPL from pink noise using my phone at a measured distance from each speaker in turn and it shows no consistent difference.

I sit closer to the right one during the day and I think that has altered my perception to the point where when I then sit equidistantly from them, it still seems louder. Is that possible/likely?

To rule out your ears it would seem simplest to listen to a mono source over headphones and see if one's louder.

 

[Nozza]

Checking it out now, it really seems mostly human voices. I end up looking at the right speaker and hearing them come from that side more. Also on some higher frequency elements like hihats etc.

The speakers are not remotely ideally placed. They're on swivel brackets at head height, close to the wall and in the corners - so literally incorrect in every way. But I have little choice as it's a tiny cabin-office with shelving and desk placement that can't be changed.

I swapped the speaker cables over and still same effect/illusion so not the source or amp. So if it exists it must be speakers, ears or room acoustic I guess.

There are some good ideas for eliminating some of these in this thread so hopefully I'll narrow it down

 

[Zek]

I swapped the speaker cables over and still same effect/illusion

Did you swapped the speakers?
If still the same effect, than room acoustic are problem.

 

[ernestcarl]

I ‘m actually honest, I would really use some tips because i have literally been fiddling with this for months.

The measurements i showed were after EQ.


The image center for me is in between the actual center and the left speaker.

I want to try corrections in the time domain but i have no experience in that.

I suggest using as much spatial averaging as possible, preferably vector averaging too (with acoustic time reference) to see the effects of phase imbalance as well.

The culprit is the immediate side wall on the right side, since my right speaker is literally located in the middle of the hallway.

Maybe adding some more treatment along that blank space on the wall would help further? -- I haven't really experimented with it yet.

Fortunately, that small amount of dip*s in the response is very much benign to my own ears so I have left it as-is.

 

[thewas]

I also learned some interesting things with these measurements and corrections. The bottom left prediction (C7) for separate left / right correction show that equalizing separately the left and right speaker below 200 Hz is useless. They must be equalized together.

Just because the sum doesn't look nice? On the other hand when you correct them as a sum the individual L and R responses don't look good, so in my (also asymmetric) room I chose between both options by ear and correcting L and R individually in the bass sounds much more balanced.
Our ears and brain are much more complex and don't perceive the same as a mic steady state measurement, that's why I also would never be absolute in statements but would recommend everyone to test for himself.