Help with imaging

I think it's most likely a room thing, even though you say it doesn't happen with other speakers and happens in other rooms. Perhaps the Soliliquy's have a radiation pattern that is susceptible to whatever the room problem is, and perhaps the other room you tried happens to have similar characteristics.

The most likely culprit is a reflection or diffraction to the side of the right speaker. Imagine you put a mirror up against the wall to the right of the speaker, located so that as you look at the mirror you see the tweeter. The mirror is at the first sidewall reflection point. Pay particular attention to absorbing or diffusing the sound at that point.

Another possibility is a diffracting surface between the speakers, like a widescreen TV or something.

Are there any diffracting discontinuities to the right of the right speaker? Like the edge of a bookshelf, or a table, or a door frame? If so, try covering the feature up with a towel and see if that helps. Also, is there a doorway or other "hole" behind the right speaker? That would also tend to pull the image in that direction. In that case, the fix requires a bit more experimentation.

You might make sure that there are no screw heads sticking up around the tweeters, just to eliminate that possibility. A screw head is small, but close to the tweeter it actually interacts with a sizeable portion of the tweeter's output.

One final question - do the sibilants - the "sssss" sounds - seem to come from the same point in space as the rest of the vocalist's voice? If the sibilants are off to one side, that will pull the image over. Possible causes are a high frequency imbalance, which you seem to have eliminated, and/or reflection or diffraction of the highs. If the two speakers sound the same (placed side-by-side with a mono source, switching back and forth) then it's most likely a room thing.

Good luck!

Guys, the dude says he's tried other speakers -- w/out the problem. Logically then, it shouldn't be room related...

Acssavings, have you tried any of this out? I'd be intereseted in results.
Cheers!

I have slight off-center imaging due to room asymmentry, even though I listen in the nearfield, and resort quite successfully to a balance-control tweak to pull the image a bit. As the thread-head states he tried the system in a different ROOM with the same asymmetrical results, I guess we have to assume the problem is electrical. Maybe the pre or amp outputs are unbalanced? 1/2 dB would be enough to pull the image, correct? A leaky old cap in my old NAD amp resulted in such an imbalance. 1/2 dB difference in sensitivity is pretty common with speakers, but that's already been ruled out, eh? Well, good luck, and let us know what it turns out to be!

testing

Finally. I've been trying to post this for the past week but the system wasn't taking my responses--very frustrating.

Just wanted to let you know my problem is solved. After reading your posts I went back and re-checked my individual speaker levels more closely and the right speaker was indeed a bit louder than the left. After adjusting the channel levels the center image snapped in placed and has remained locked there ever since. The problem appears to lie in the speakers(looks like about a 3db difference between the speakers, which I'm pissed at Soliloquy about--that seems a little much to me), but I still don't understand why the situation didn't reverse when I switched the speakers. At this point I don't care because I'm just enjoying being able to relax and listen to music again without having to constantly change speaker positioning or having to scootch across the couch to get correct imaging.

I want to give a sincere thanks to all of you who pitched in with your thoughts. I probably would have found the problem eventually, but you guys helped point the way sooner and I can't tell you what a relief it has been. Happy listening.

Tim