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

[restorer-john]

Step 1: Balance the system level electrically at the speaker terminals.
Step 2: Physically swap the speakers around from left to right.
Step 3: Listen, then turn around 180 degrees and see if the image position changes. If it does, it's the room acoustics or your ears. Seriously, most people just assume their hearing response to all frequencies is balanced. It isn't.

 

[Absolute]

Checked your hearing yet?

Try this with headphones; https://hearingtest.online/

 

[ernestcarl]

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).

I remembered seeing you post your mdat files for left and right speakers before. Found it, but they're from last year so obviously different -- but I think the results are illustrative why one should also view the vector average results from multiple points rather than just a simplified SPL magnitude rms average.

edit: since the timing was off for the right, I now changed the vector visualized here using the center mic position only applying a bit of offset so the right matches the left.

The wavelet spectrogram view esp. shows clearly the Left speaker is more dominant than the right speaker.

The measurements are not that identical, no -- quite far from it. Probably best to start with fixing/mitigating room acoustics issues first.

 

[abdo123]

I remembered seeing you post your mdat files for left and right speakers before. Found it, but they're from last year so obviously different -- but I think the results are illustrative why one should also view the vector average results from multiple points rather than just a simplified SPL magnitude rms average.

The wavelet spectrogram view esp. shows clearly the Left speaker is more dominant than the right speaker.

The measurements are not that identical, no -- quite far from it. Probably best to start with fixing/mitigating room acoustics issues first.

I was under the impression that it’s because of the reflections of the backwall (since the sofa is placed by the backwall). As mentioned earlier before, when i push my head forward (away from the backwall), the imaging is very much improved.

Also measurements off-center will obviously show one speaker louder than the other, I see the point of having an average but just not a spatial one (To balance the two channels).


Also i just wanted to show that traditional EQ does not help for imaging problems. And that a more comprehensive approach is necessary.

I’m very welcome to any tips you can provide in my particular situation.

 

[ernestcarl]

I was under the impression that it’s because of the reflections of the backwall (since the sofa is placed by the backwall). As mentioned earlier before, when i push my head forward (away from the backwall), the imaging is very much improved.

Not sure what your exact layout and listening position is -- speakers in relation to boundaries and you... so a diagram will help.

Reflections & boundaries will have an effect not only in where you sit, but it's also important to look at the distance of boundaries in relation to your speakers.

I agree that getting further away from the backwall is important.

Also measurements off-center will obviously show one speaker louder than the other, I see the point of having an average but just not a spatial one (To balance the two channels).

BTW, I've only noticed now that you used Left as your acoustic reference for the Right speaker -- should have used the same speaker or same right channel in this case so the information of the phase is pretty much wrong and messed up. Disregard the right measurement. It's incorrect for that channel.

Also i just wanted to show that traditional EQ does not help for imaging problems. And that a more comprehensive approach is necessary.

I guess if you want a more comprehensive approach, that means looking at all the data... which means taking a peak at other measurement views too -- e.g. RT60, phase & impulse, directivity behaviour of speaker etc.

One would need a lot more information than simple left & right FR magnitude traces to really say with confidence that both truly measure the same. In a normal living room setup? Almost never.

p.s. Agree that EQ has its limits. "Imaging" is greatly affected by layout positioning and room acoustics, as well as the speaker's directivity pattern and interaction with the room.

 

[ernestcarl]

Edited the images posted as it was incorrect. But essentially we see the same issue with far more reflections on the left side making it sound more dominant.

 

[respice finem]

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

1-2 dB difference between the ears is normal, but the brain learns to compensate for it, so if you keep noticing it, it might be a "blocked ear" (cerumen obturans). The probably simplest subjective test would be listening to a mono recording, the objective test would involve this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoscope. There is also a possibility of a failed driver. My old B&W CDM7s have had the "dried ferrofluid" issue, the left channel tweeter was gone before the right channel one.

 

[andreasmaaan]

1-2 dB difference between the ears is normal, but the brain learns to compensate for it, so if you keep noticing it, it might be a "blocked ear" (cerumen obturans).

The brain certainly learns to compensate for significant interaural HRTF differences in localising true sound sources, but I'm sceptical of the idea that it learns to compensate for such interaural HRTF differences in localising phantom images.

At the very least, two separate learning processes would need to take place. And I'm not sure how stereo sound reproduction could provide the necessary feedback for such learning to occur.

 

[respice finem]

To a degree, it does, especially if the hearing impairment occurred early in childhood. For instance, children with postinflammatory one-sided hearing impairment can compensate for about 6dB difference, if I remember my ENT lectures well Later in life, it becomes more difficult. How much one can or can't compensate will always be individual. That said, the single most common physiological factor in such imbalance will be one-sided cerumen obturans (based on my own experience). Fun fact: Many patients with both ears "blocked" will not report bad hearing at all, they gradually get used to the "dull" sound. "The ears listen, but the brain hears" (or it doesn't).
https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-us/1032

 

[andreasmaaan]

To a degree, it does, especially if the hearing impairment occurred early in childhood. For instance, children with postinflammatory one-sided hearing impairment can compensate for about 6dB difference, if I remember my ENT lectures well Later in life, it becomes more difficult.

Haha, I agree with what you're saying about learning to compensate for interaural hearing imbalances to localise sound coming from a true source.

What I'm arguing is that, when the image that is to be localised is a phantom image, the learning that you're talking about goes out the window, because it has allowed the individual to adapt to be able to localise true sources (i.e. sources coming from a single location in space), not phantom "sources" in which there are actually two true sources at differing azimuths.

And the second argument I tried to make was that, because stereo (or multichannel) sound reproduction does not provide the kind of feedback necessary for learning to occur with regard to phantom sources (as opposed to true sound sources, which may provide feedback e.g. by being visible or able to be touched), I see no way that such learning could occur - even if the individual has learnt perfectly well to localise true sound sources.

Does that make sense?

 

[respice finem]

It makes perfect sense, however a) one doesn't listen only to his/her system, and compensation learned "in nature" may (if not 1:1) function with a "phantom source" too, at least after some time to adapt. "True sources" are not "true mono" either in many cases, the sound of the source gets reflected from any surface it hits. How much of it will be noticed and/or compensated for, no one can tell exactly. The other "cue provided" may be, as it would be with my system, when the space between the speakers is filled out by a big screen, one automatically tends to locate dialogs, where the speaker's mouth is. It even works with old TV sets with a mono speaker on one side. Our senses are lying to us more often than not. I can remember an old example for this, from times of cinema without a soundtrack: The movie was showing a dripping water tap over a metal sink. The most viewers could swear they can hear the drops falling.
Anyway, (@TO) it would be interesting to learn what it was actually.

 

[andreasmaaan]

It makes perfect sense, however a) one doesn't listen only to his/her system, and compensation learned "in nature" may (if not 1:1) function with a "phantom source" too, at least after some time to adapt. How much so, no one can tell exactly. The other "cue provided" may be, as it would be with my system, when the space between the speakers is filled out by a big screen, one automatically tends to locate dialogs, where the speaker's mouth is. It even works with old TV sets with a mono speaker on one side. Our senses are lying to us more often than not. I can remember an old example for this, from times of cinema without a soundtrack: The movie was showing a dripping water tap over a metal sink. The most viewers could swear they can hear the drops falling.

Agree with you completely regarding visual cues tending to override auditory cues with respect to image localisation (and IIRC there's been significant research done demonstrating this).

I also agree that we're mostly speculating here So there won't be a definitive answer. Still, I find it very hard to imagine how the learning involved in localising true sources (for a person with an interaural hearing imbalance) could function to aide in localising phantom sources, firstly because HRTFs just differ so greatly as azimuth varies, and secondly because interaural crosstalk adds yet another confounding variable.

Also, if I could pick you up on one point, it's the idea that it might be possible to "adapt" to phantom images. I can't see how such adaptation could occur without any feedback mechanism. Did you have a possible mechanism in mind? I could imagine training such localisation with visual cues (e.g. by panning a sound between stereo speakers while an image pans across a screen between them - though I'm not sure how effective that would be without significant exposure from a young age), but I can't imagine how it could occur in the course of normal listening to stereo recordings.

Finally, I didn't quite understand what you meant by "one doesn't listen only to his/her system". Do you mean that a person may listen to a variety of stereo systems, not just their own?

 

[respice finem]

Of course we're speculating, there is no universal "wiring diagram" for humans and there never will be, I'm afraid. I'm not a neurologist, so what I'm saying is based on my practice and own experience. To your question, what "one doesn't listen only to..." means, quite simply: We are listening most of the day to a variety of sound sources, many if not most of them "chaotic" natural sources, and (unwittingly) compensate for "errors". If one would just listen to another stereo system, the chance to "locate" the error would be higher, because it would be seriously bad luck to come across two systems with the same issue. Back to the example of the "cerumen obturans" patient: Subjectively no problems, objectively one ear blocked by earwax completely, probably for weeks. After rinsing, the previously blocked side will sound louder/brighter, but just for a few hours. Seemingly, the brain decides "that way is the right way", just as it previously had adjusted for the blockage (which again took days to weeks to build up). Stereo hearing with two speakers is a bit of a mess anyway, in most setups/rooms, but the above refers to hearing physical sources. Another factor is "sound awareness", people who have impaired vision tend to hear more (or more accurately) than those with perfect vision, another compensation mechanism. Again, my own example: I could never work in an environment with "muzak" or even radio running all day, others don't even notice it during their work day, they get to ignore it like a bad smell. It's all as fascinating as it is still largely "uncharted territory".

 

[vavan]

The other "cue provided" may be, as it would be with my system, when the space between the speakers is filled out by a big screen, one automatically tends to locate dialogs, where the speaker's mouth is

fwiw my center channel is lying close to the floor under tv and projected onto MLP and I thought I had no problems localizing dialogs where character on the screen is. That is until I installed FH speakers and started using dialog lift AVR feature

 

[pras1011]

I am having the same problem where the sound is right of centre. I then listen through earphones and everything is dead centre.

I then switch the left and right xlr around on the amp and it's nearly perfect.

Thoughts?

 

[RayDunzl]

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

One way would be to move one speaker a little closer or more distant.

Changing the distance, even just a little, should shift the image toward the closer speaker.

 

[restorer-john]

am having the same problem where the sound is right of centre. I then listen through earphones and everything is dead centre.

I then switch the left and right xlr around on the amp and it's nearly perfect.

Thoughts?

Your amplifier, your source and possibly the acoustics of the room make the sound right sided. By swapping the inputs to the power amp around, you are somewhat cancelling the two source imbalances, but are still left with a little, plus the room.

 

[pras1011]

I have a few power amps and same thing happens. It could be my ears!

 

[Raitsa]

I used one of these:

 

[reydelanada]

I had this problem. Sometimes my right speaker volume was reduced, just a little, but that caused the scene to move a bit to the left. It was just a few "centimeters" but really made me mad. Not always, not continuosly... Changed tubes, cables... I even thought it was the power cable of my active cx as it was loosy and once I check it and fix it, volume was again ok on the right speaker... but then after a while, again... so I realized when I checked the power cable, I touched all of the XRL cables with my arm, and start checking them one by one... And then I saw that one of them was doing weird things when touched or moved... They are active XLR cables as they have one analogue filter.
One of the three cable was "unsolded" from the board. That was causing the volume loss... weird... In my case that was the signal for the low input of the speaker right (I biamp).

Repair it myself and problem solved... But it really took me a few months of head scratching and madness LoL.