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What position is your balance control set at and why?

For best balance and sound mine is set at 1-1:30. The right channel always seems lower. I have some hearing damage in my right ear from listening to car stereos in my youth. I’m 56. I do have ringing in my right ear but not the left. I have very bad sight out of my right eye which surprisingly make a difference in hearing. The left eye sees the left speaker most of the time and there must be some pyscho acoustic effect because if I close my eyes some of it goes away.  My clip light used to comes on and stays on maybe every 2-3 weeks and I would unplug everything and it would go away. Until I discovered if I stomp my foot hard it goes away! Funny like a plumber coming in and beating a pipe with a hammer and charging you $150!!!! The sound doesn’t change when that happens.  Go figure that. When I had a cable with a network box it would light up quite often. In the last 3 months I have changed out all cabling with Pangea interconnects and Canare 4S11 speaker cable. Is there some kind of low voltage issue with the right channel that would make the clip light come on even with any music playing???????
128x128blueranger
ebm
9,311 posts
 
I don't have one in my high resolution system oh well.
tomcarr
1,504 posts
 
In my dedicated room, I was constantly fiddling with the balance control because the soundstage never seemed balanced, until I placed acoustic panel treatments. Problem solved. Perfectly balanced soundstage, every album, every time (unless it was recorded poorly). Happy camper.
willland's avatar
willland
846 posts
 

At around 11:00 because my main listening position on my sofa is slightly off center to the right.

Bill

noromance's avatar
noromance
9,769 posts
 
So dig this: Quad ESL speakers, nearish field and a Croft preamp with separate volume pots. If ever there was a more sensitive rig to center image placement! 

michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio
1,019 posts
 

Hi Guys

Hopefully this is of some use. One thing to keep in mind about recordings is every studio has a slightly different absolute center. Some are dead on and others drift to the left or right in playback. There's a ton of reasons why this happens, mostly being mechanical settings within the equipment itself. Another very important fact is, if you have a system that throws a nice halo in your soundstage, more than likely you are experiencing more of the spatial content than the engineer did in the control room or mastering room or reference playback room. Don't be surprised when you have your system setup so it has a bigger soundstage that you hear drifts more easily. Having your favorite Flooring Standing acoustical tool, along with your systems balance control and speaker/chair placement are part of the method of balancing, but there are other tricks you can do to make adjustments. One of them is setting your system free to mingle with the fields in your environment. I get into more on TuneLand, but for a quicky, take the chassis top off of your components and listen to what happens. Next, snip the wire ties and unscrew the transformer. Your equipment is tightened down to make it through shipping. It's not part of the signal design. Once you loosen these things your system is going to open up a lot, and it will after some breakin start to balance itself out and give you a bigger picture of the actual signal. Once you free up your components you'll want to rethink what your system is sitting on and how can you better start tuning in your sound. If you have specifics you can always visit me on TuneLand, but give some of these a try and discover how good your system really is.


Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

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