Do I have a "balance" problem?

I have the same problem, except my balance control has to go the 3 o'clock to lock in a center image. I had several other people listen to my system and they all preferred balance at dead center. I went to get my hearing checked hoping my right ear needed to be cleaned or something (which you should do too if you haven't already), but my ears checked out fine, which really left me scratching my head. (I also don't notice a balance problem when listening to headphones). This issue has remained through a myriad of equipment changes and in three different rooms. Pulling the right speaker forward helps somewhat, but it doesn't solve the problem and I don't like having that much of an asymmetrical speaker setup.

I noticed when I went to shows and some dealers the image was centered with the balance control set to the middle, and what I realized was that in a properly set up room the problem went away. You seem to have addressed first reflecions, but the rooms that worked for me had some sort of diffusion and/or absorption device(s) behind the system -- usually some sort of half-round tower right in the middle or something like that. I haven't tried this in my room yet but will soon. My guess is my ears are shaped slightly differently in some way, which changes their respective sensitivity to in-room reflections. If you take your hand and just change the shape of one ear slightly it's amazing how much sound changes. Anyway, that's my theory. Hope this helps and best of luck. Please let us know if you find a solution.

Also, many recordings have poor balance with the lead vocals and they are "left shifted." So make sure you're using a test CD with a true center image (e.g., the stereophile test CD series) when you're working on the problem.

I'd love to hear from some recording industry expert on why this is the case, as I don't know (maybe it's because the left channel is more important to drivers in vehicles?). I hear it a lot in my system and periodically have to go back to the test CD to reconfirm what I already knew, that the system is set up properly. When I'm listening I am periodically tempted to shift the balance by 1 or 2 db towards the right to "fix" the image center, but if I'm listening very carefully, I've found that this usually smears the image and hurts the sound quality. I've just slowly worked on giving up my obsession with having the vocals come out of the dead center...

Forgot to mention what Cal brought up. I find better and fuller sound with balance set to the middle as well. Big trade off to get a center image. Hoping the room treatment stuff snaps everything into focus.

Cal3713, I seriously thought it was just me this whole time! I too notice that vocals are ever so slightly shifted left of center in my system. Its a minor annoyance but it does take my attention away from enjoying the music.