IMAGE PROBLEMS VOCALS OFF CENTER

I had this problem for years and in more than one house and with several speakers. I had assumed I had a hearing problem in my right ear (image shifted left). Long story short - it was because of the speaker placements interaction with the rooms acoustic's and the placement of the listening position. I moved my listening chair and speakers into a nearfield listening arrangement - speakers are 8' apart (center to center) and listening position is 9' from speakers.

Don't rule out the possibility that your set up could be the cause.

Good question. Don't know the 'scientific' answer.

I have traditionally set up my speakers (of all types) a minimum of 9ft apart and a listening distance of 10 feet, toeing in the speakers to minimize 1st reflection points from the side walls. Sort of got into a rut on this set up and compensated for room induced image shift by moving my listening position a few inches to the right and angling my chair so it pointed between the center and the right speaker.

On a boring, rainy, day I started moving the speakers about and brought them in to about 8ft apart (on speaker centers) and ultimately moved the listening position up to 9 ft. The speakers were pointed straight ahead as opposed to being toed in. Two things occurred. 1) The center image became very sharply focused center image, and I mean very sharply, it wasn't chopped liver before! 2)Apparent depth of image increased substantially, and both improvements came at no loss of stage width.

I called that 'nearfield' as that's about as close as you would want to sit to 4ft high floorstanders with 5 drivers and it seemed to take much of the room effect out of the mid/upper frequencies. I'm still working on it.....

Have you tried moving your speakers slightly closer together yet? A perfect triangle may just not be the right angle for them. A bit closer together may get you a better focussed center image. Try it, its free.

I'd try moving each speaker inward about 6 inches(total 1'). If there is no change, move'em back. If its better but not perfect try moving them closer an inch at a time. If it works then start moving the further apart again, inch at a time, until you lose the center focus, then move the closer ay an inch and you probably will have as good a central image as you're going to get.

Another thing to try, cross the axis of the speakers in front of the listening position. You will not only reduce side wall reflections but you will also change the 1st and second reflection points of your speakers.

If thru all of this nothing changes, move your listening chair sideways a few inches and forget about the perfect triangle. :-)

Yeh, check your tubes. A weak tube on the right side of your amp or pre-amp (whatever) could cause your problem.

I just had a comedy of sorts. I found my sound stage compressed as hell. I blamed the CD quality, etc and was dumbfounded by the change (because I hadn't analyized my system yet). Short version - I put in new tubes in my pre-amp - everything back to normal. This is the first time I've ever had tubes fail uniformly in both channels.