Balance control vs. Speaker placement

I struggled with this for many months. It's bad enough that so many mastering engineers either seem to have worse hearing in one ear or a bad channel in their system, but to have to live with a non-symetrical listening environment is the pits. It sounds like you haven't tried acoustical treatments, which I highly recommend - check out some of the other threads. I believe that the balance control is frowned on if it adds an additional component to the signal path when it is off center. If this isn't the case, by all means use it (if the treatments don't work 100 percent). My purist preamp doesn't even have a balance control, so in the end, I actually replaced the gain resisters to get that last bit of shift.

I would suggest that you measure the speaker and room response of each channel independently. See if there are certain frequencies that are being attenuated by the room in one channel more so than the other. As previously mentioned an opening or other asymetrical occurance in the room can throw off the balance. Once you find what the frequencies are being affected you can make some modifications in terms of accoustical treatments to the other side to balance things out. If you are lucky, the frequencies affected are on the high side (say 1k and up), and then some absorbing material (sonex, RPG, or ownes corning panels) may be all you need. If the problem is lower, it's still a solvable problem, but likely more complex.

My system slightly favors the right. After alot of experimenting, I realized that the reasons are that my hearing is not as good in my left ear and that I have drapes on the left wall and not the right. (My slight hearing loss is primarily in the midrange area. This is due to years of loud car stereos.)

The system imbalance was most noticeable for me when the vocal did not sound like it was directly in the center. Trying to adjust the system with the balance control can make the vocal sound like its coming from the center but it throws everything else off to the left because the hearing loss and room anomalies are not the same at all frequencies. Therefore, adjusting the balance was not a good option. Two main reasons: 1) alot of low bass loss , and 2) loss of low level detail in the right channel. I did find that I could minimize this problem by getting the speakers optimally placed in the room. However, I always take great care to keep each speaker the same distance from my head and I use a laser to make sure both speakers are toed in at the same angle. In other words, my recommendation is not to move one speaker but to find the perfect place for the pair. Experiment alot by changing the distance between the speakers, distance of speakers from the rear wall and side walls, etc. Also, room treatments and room rearrangements can be helpful. and i babble on...........

I had a very similar situation only my system favored the right side. This occurred whether I switched cables, components, or even swapped the L/R speakers. Someone on A'gon suggested I check the output of each speaker as sometimes manufacturing variances can produce slight differences. With this in mind I ran a channel balance check with my pre/pro and sure enough the right speaker was about 2dB louder than the left. Once I corrected for this with the pre/pro everything snapped into focus. I have no explanation why the right was still favored when I swapped L/R speakers--it makes no sense but neither does losing one sock every time I do my laundry--some things we may never understand.

I since have been using stereo preamps instead of the pre/pro for serious listening and have found the balance control to be an extremely valuable tool. Not only because it allows me to correct for the above, but also because I realized that many recordings are very different in how they are balanced, and while the singer may be in the center for one recording they may be off to the left or right in another. I've become addicted to being able to center these recordings rather than contorting my neck/head to suit each recording engineer. These are not huge adjustments so I don't find they dramatically impact the balance of the rest of the recording, and I find I enjoy listening to music more with the balance "optimized" for each recording(and even moreso when the balance control can be adjusted using the remote--very helpful).

Sorry for digressing, but it seemed related. Best of luck.

Tim

Oh, one more thing. I for one would not vary the distance of the speakers to adjust the channel balance. My guess is although you may achieve better balance you probably introduce several other negatives to the sonic picture by doing this. This is just a gut thing and I have no scientific or engineering rationale to back it up, so take it for what it's worth. Personally I'd much rather fix the problem with room treatments or a balance control. Again, best of luck.

Tim