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Help with imaging

Hope you guys can help me with an extremely annoying problem I'm having. I'm very happy with my Soliloquy 5.3s but seem to have a hard time with vocals or instruments that should be centered...they seem to want to exist to the right of center. I can somewhat correct this by toeing in the right speaker more than the left(I tend to toe speakers in toward the listening spot), but this seems more like a bandaid than a real fix and doesn't fully correct the problem. Moving the right speaker back doesn't seem to help either. Here's the wierd part. When I switch the speakers I still get the same result. I would have expected the center image to shift to the left, but it still skews to the right. I've recently had other speakers in my system and don't have this problem, so I don't think it's the electronics. Also, this happens regardless of what room the speakers are in, so it doesn't appear to be just a room thing, and I've tried different cables as well to no avail.

This is driving me nuts, so I hope you guys have some thoughts or insights and your help is GREATLY appreciated.

Tim
soix
dekay's avatar
dekay
2,959 posts
 
Hase you tried switching the left and right IC's back and forth? Other than the room the imbalance may come from the electronics or the cables (maybe just a poor or dirty connection if you are lucky). It looks like you have already rules out that it is the fault of the speakers. I recently had an off center image after playing around with a bunch of cabling, when a friend dropped by. I had originally though that I may have damaged a micro wire digital IC that I use, which is very fragile, but discovered after merely removing all of the cables, cleaning the contacts and reinstalling everything again, the sound was back to normal and I did nothing else. Hopefully you solution will be as easy.
dekay's avatar
dekay
2,959 posts
 
PS: My center image was off even when I listened in the near field, so it was not a room problem.
ohlala
993 posts
 
If you have not already try switching(left/right) a pair of interconnect, and maybe speaker cable (with interconnect switched back to normal) in order to eliminate the question of an electronic phenomenon. If the sound is still leaning to the right and it is not too much trouble, try to make your room as symetrical as possible. I have also had this problem, and when I moved my computer monitor from one side of the desk to the other, the vocals settled in the middle. In any case, don't compare your 5.3's soundstaging with other speakers. Different speakers load rooms differently, and the other pair somehow may be more immune to your right side leaning. I have noticed this with my bookshelfs. They never had a problem with soundstaging, it was the floorstanders that required a little work. Good luck, I know that problem can get a little annoying.
wirehead
140 posts
 
Wywhcan has the easiest solution. If your speaker set up is symetrical but your room isn't then don't expect balanced sound in the listening spot. I've been toeing in and out for months and discovered if I toed the left channel speaker more, which has a sofa beside it and about ten feet of room to the side wall, then it sounds balanced with the right channel, which doesn't have as much room. I'd read somewhere that you should just experiment until it sounds right and don't worry about the aesthetics.
Regards,
jay_carlson
78 posts
 
I've got one other possible cause- it could be that your left ear needs to be cleaned. Jay
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