Seems right hand side is louder, need helps


Dear Audiophiles,
Need helps from U guys! I have this problem comes on n off for about 1.5 year. I owned the spk Avalon Eidolon. My problem is everytime whenever I turned off the power, I need at least 2 or more days to recover the centre of the vocal, which I use the XLO Test CD, which can tells u left ,right,n centre, phase.
However just about 3weeks ago, I found the right hand side tends to give louded volume, this thing never change ,even I never turn off the power atall, also I cannot get the voice from the centre. This really boarded me alots. Where I test the power amp output curent, bothside have the same voltage, where one of the track in the CD has for both side equally.( Mono ).
This Maybe due to the placement of the SPK as I thought, however I tried many times, it just can't work out. I really hopes someone may helps out there at Audiogon. My problem is: The vocal keeps going to the right about 1foot from the centre.N I can feel the right hand side sounds louded, but when I went close to the spks abt few inches, it seems to me both side the same.It is really headache toi me. Will be very appreciate if someone would share the experience.Thanks! N Happy listening to u guys! ****** Cheers! ******
hifi
I suspect your room is the problem. May I suggest that you reverse the speakers, right to left and left to right and do the same for the rest of your system piece by piece working backwards. If you do not find that the system reverses it's volume imbalance, I think it's safe to assume it's the room or your ears and not the equipment. You might want to have your ears checked( many years ago I thought I needed a new TV, turned out I needed glasses!). If it's the room, you can change speaker placement, try room treatment, try digital room correction or any combination of the above. Good luck.
If you check that the voltage going into the left and right amplifier channels (or monoblocks) is matched within less than 0.1 volt, there is no point in reversing any of the components upstream. If you also have measured the amp outputs to the speakers and find those to be matched, then its either the room (most likely), the speakers (less likely), or just conceivably a problem with one of the speaker cables.

There are many things you can do to diagnose the source:
Regarding the room, if the room is not already well treated acoustically, try taping heavy sheets over all reflective surfaces, which will deaden the sound but leave you with only the direct reflections from the speakers, and check the center imaging as you do this. It's been a source of amazement to me how much effect reflections coming even from walls in adjacent rooms have on image formation. The ceiling and floor are equally important.
Regarding the speakers, you can measure the amplitude response of each speaker at a group of frequencies across the audio band. I would borrow a measurement setup for this (microphone + measurement equipment) rather than doing it by ear.
Also, you can just use the balance control on your preamp, if you have one, to offset the apparant gain difference. This is cheap EQ.

Best luck.
It is not abnormal for one of the drivers in a speaker to "settle in" or alter output and / or frequency response over time. As such, what may have started out as "matched pairs", etc.. of drivers no longer "match". This can result in changes in volume level, imaging, harmonic structure, prat, etc..

Unsound and Flex both offer good ideas. However, I would start off by simply pulling all of your cables ( ONE by ONE ) in the system and simply re-seating them. This is simple and may help solve your problem. This should be done on a somewhat regular basis as "crust" does develop on connections over a relatively short period of time.

If that does not work, i would try swapping speakers from left to right. Obviously, it would help to mark the positioning of both of these prior to shifting them around. If the problem is speaker based, you should hear the channel imbalance with the left side being louder now.

If the right channel remains louder, you either have something wrong upstream in the components or you are experiencing problems with how the room loads up. You would have to do some step by step "detective work" to find out if a component or cable was responsible for this. What you measure under a no load condition ( voltage levels measured at the outputs but with nothing connected to the device ) can be quite different than what takes place under loaded i.e. "connected" conditions. If all of this checks out, you know that the components and speakers are okay and it's time to look at room treatments.

If the problem did shift channels when moving the speakers, you would need to use a test disc with various test tones and an spl meter to see what was going on. Put the system into mono mode and then measure the driver on one speaker at a specific freq and then measure the other. Nearfield measurements taken on axis ( basically directly in front of each driver as close as is reasonably possible ) is the way to go here. Obviously, the placement of the SPL meter should remain as consistent as possible from driver to driver and side to side.

It would not be abnormal to see small variations from side to side due to less than professional testing conditions. However, a very noticeable difference would point to a driver or internal crossover related problem.

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas as to where to go. Let's hope that it is something simple. Sean
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