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No preamp 'Balance' control?

Are preamps made without a Balance control? If so, can you live without control of balance (happily)? Depending on the recording, I make slight balance adjustments to lock everything in balance. Is this some sort of purist approach (if so, why not use a seperate volume control for each channel), or what's up with no balance control?
In advance, thanks!
louisl
bondmanp
1,465 posts
 
schubert - If your SS pre has a tape monitor output or some sort of home theater pass through, you can route your source components through the SS pre and then into the tube pre, adjusting the balance in the SS and volume in the tube pre.  Hopefully, both are quiet enough that the elevated noise floor won't be an issue, or, at least, less of an issue than your current situation.
schubert
4,867 posts
 
Thanks bondmanp, I'll give that a try . My SS pre is still very good though .
wolf_garcia
4,650 posts
 
So to sum up, most people CAN'T move a little to the left? Right? No?
bondmanp
1,465 posts
 

@wolf_garcia - Well, IMHO, there is more to it than that.  When you move your seat, it changes more than just the relative loudness of the speakers.  Each position in the room will have its own room response, so if you have dialed your system in for one spot, moving out of that spot has costs, like a change in bass response, or reflections in higher frequencies. 


And, I am not ashamed to admit that I sometimes listen to random tracks on my server.  Should I move my chair for every new track?  Is that a better solution than tapping the balance control on my remote?  I am not looking for an abdominal workout, wolf, but rather to relax and enjoy the music (directly centered) in front of me.

wolf_garcia
4,650 posts
 
Moving an inch or so to the left or right doesn’t change my room response as I don’t live in an oil drum. Also, I don’t actually move around from my carefully calculated listening spot as even without a balance control nothing seems out of balance to any degree that I find an issue with. If my current preamp had a balance control, or my previous one did, I might have used ’em (as, after all, I’m a professional Knob Turner), but somehow I don’t find the need…mixing engineers balance things for me when they mix things (and they might have been told by the producer that everything should be coming out of the right speaker because they’re ARTISTS after all), and I don’t want to insult their skills by re-balancing anything as that could anger them…however, I do re-master their stuff from time to time with my EQ gizmo and can only hope they don’t find out since the last thing I need is angry engineers heaping scorn on me.
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