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Obvious Epiphany

I don't have golden ears and am relatively inexperienced when it comes to being an audiophile. Things like pace, rhythm and timing, jitter and other such things are pretty meaningless to me (and I'm fine with that). But my one audiophile super power is speaker position as it relates to sound stage. I actually think it is less of a super power and more of a sensitivity....or deficiency....that is probably based on the fact that the hearing in my left ear is worse than my right and both of them are 60 years old.

In any case, for a number of years it has seemed to me that most music seems to be weighted to the right channel, particularly vocals. I have three systems; one is relatively high end, the other is semi high end and the third is mid-fi at best. All three seem right channel heavy depending on the song (there are notable exceptions between songs, some of which seem left channel predominant). I chalked this up to the difference in my hearing. And that is probably the case.

I experiment a lot with minor changes in speaker position within the confines of my room parameters. This mostly involves degrees of toe-in, distance between speakers and distance from listening position (which is pretty room limited with my main system). But, in all these experiments, all of which render subtle differences, I always kept my listening position equidistant from the two speakers. In other words at the point of an isosceles triangle. I don't know why.

In any case I was recently listening to my midfi system, which ironically has the best room situation of the three and the right channel predominance was getting on my nerves and I just slid my listening position to the left about two feet or so. Bingo. Sound stage centered up nicely. The songs that I know to have more of a left channel predominance stayed about the same and were not more heavily left weighted.

I know this sounds like a 'duh' moment. But for those with imperfect ears, imperfect rooms or imperfect systems this might be worth a try if your sound stage is skewed to one side or the other. I guess the take home message is to try everything. Even if the classic speaker position diagrams say otherwise.

(I have less leeway with listening position with my main system but moving further less has made a big difference there as well.)

 

n80
n80 OP
2,107 posts
 

I don’t have much leeway for moving the speakers of my main system much at all.

Somewhat the same situation in my other so-so system. Just easier to move the listening position.

I have used balance on the NAD integrated in my mid-fi system. I use my so-so system with a Sonos amp and it has balance control through the app. Not sure of the pros and cons of that.

My main system is relatively old. Proceed (Levinson) amp, Audio Research tube preamp with no balance control. No loudness option.

Which brings me to a mini-rant. It seems like doing away with balance control and loudness was a mistake based on some sort of misguided vanity. In my opinion no system is good enough to overcome every room issue (or listener issue) on its own and very few systems are great at low volume without a loudness option. Shoot, a good system should give you a range of loudness algorithms to choose from.

soix
8,844 posts
 

Man, as I said before life is too short to deal with stuff like this, so again I’d recommend another preamp that has a transparent balance control — some things are just worth paying for, like pure enjoyment and sanity. I know the Atmasphere MP3 and Linear Tube Audio MicroZOTL offer well-implemented balance controls, but I’m sure there are several others. Best of luck.

mazian's avatar
mazian
362 posts
 

I've found that the right side bias is often the recording itself and not a hearing imbalance. Many times when playing a new recording I've leapt from my chair and grabbed the Stereophile test CD thinking I have a problem with my left side speaker only to happily find out all is well with the world and all I have to do is use the balance control. Those designers who thought a balance control on an amp or preamp was not desirable were doing a disservice to the audio world.

james633
919 posts
 

Good post.

 

Another thing that comes to mind is having non symmetrical toe in (less toe on the “good” ear) could also help. Also if the speakers are equidistant from the side walls thick (7” bass trap type panels) at first reflections points will help balanced the room acoustically. Simple fix would be a pre amp with a balanced.

n80 OP
2,107 posts
 

@soix Agree in principle but buying new equipment is not really my bag and currently this simple solution is doing the job.

@mazian Totally agree that a lot of recordings are right channel heavy. Not sure why but this is often obvious despite any hearing issues.

@james633 Prior to this just changing toe in and not my listening position did have an effect but not as much as moving my listening position. So far with this change in listening position I have left the toe-in as I typically have it which was both speakers angled so they are dead on facing me. So when I move my position to the left the right speaker is effectively less toed in so that may come into play.

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