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I'm not sure if this topic was discuss here before. Never really did a search, but I figured it's an important topic to discuss. When I'm listening to my system it seems that the phantom image of the singer is most of the time in between the centre and the left speaker. I did a search on other forums and it seems that there are quite a number of folks that experience this. Although, some claim that they fix the problem by changing some things on their equipment and some have explained that this is the way things were recorded and its perfectly normal. I've tried a mono recording and the image is dead on centre, which is suppose be. It drove me crazy for the longest time thinking that there was something wrong with my system. Any of you experience the same thing?
Follow Ups:
This unbalanced presentation can be quickly and easily remedied by just turning the balance knob a little to the right. For some reason this seems to be anathema to the audiophile community, yet many vintage and very good sounding amps have a balance knob.
What gives? I get it is you have a modern preamp/integrated/receiver that is lacking this feature but if you have a balance knob, why wouldn't you use it?
Because using the balance knob is masking a setup/gear problem? I have a balance knob, I use it mostly to diagnose "issues", if it's not centered in normal use I go into convulsions. Or something like that... Seriously, you're asking people *here* why they don't run with an off-center balance control? You are far too balanced my friend.
or, let 'em est cake.
"let 'em est cake."
That's what I always say.
;)
Haha. I guess I am. But I look at it this way; if my 19 dollar thrift amp needs to either turn the balance knob a tiny bit to center the image and sound good, or a time and/or money consuming repair, guess what I am doing?? Aren't we easentially doing the same thing by moving speakers around?
However... If it requires more than, assuming 12 o clock for no adjustment, 11 or 1 then even I start to get disconcerted. More than just a little nudge either way is, at least to me, a problem that requires fixing. I don't think that makes any sense either but my audiophile gene, though stunted, stilll excretes some "phoolery"
It's about the music baby!
Depends on the balance control. I use mine when I am off center, sitting at my desk, in the corner.
MY CJ CT5's balance is resistor controlled, so not evil. The balance control on the Tara Labs Passage preamp does some weird things, does not function like any other balance control I have used, so seems evil.
I also use the CT5's balance control on the rare LP or CD, that seems to be recorded favoring one side. Or if the dog beats me to the sweet spot, so I am off center by a foot or two. He's a big dog.
In my opinion balance controls get a bad rap do to the quality of those controls often used on cheap equipment, removing those type usually improves sound quality.
That's my opinion, anyway.
Depends on the balance control. I use mine when I am off center, sitting at my desk, in the corner.
I have the same situation in my home office and the balance control is pretty much always set to favor the left speaker, which is further away.
I completely understand the audiophile-nuerosis with balance controls as it never leaves dead center in my main system. But in my office, music would not be as enjoyable without it.
I would never buy an integrated or pre-amp without one.
Dean.
reelsmith's axiom: Its going to be used equipment when I sell it, so it may as well be used equipment when I buy it.
I am in a room right now where the balance control is very off-center, mainly because I'm sitting at a desk and I'm much closer to one speaker than another. Fitting the stereo/speakers in was much more "important", period, than good setup. Likewise for the bedroom system, aesthetics trump my ideals.
I do realize balance controls have a real-world purpose. But it really would bother me off-center in the main system, I wasn't kidding about that. The balance and stereo/mono preamp controls are very useful basic diagnostic tools for any level questions.
Well to be perfectly frank, if my main system were to need the balance to be off center independent of any room or speaker placement issues I would probably also be bothered.
But the balance is there to help setup in conditions that are less than ideal which IMO is over 90% of most setups. It can easily and quickly improve the sound that would take all sorts of rigmarole and equipment (room treatments, etc.) to remedy. So why not just use it?
That's what I do! But then again, we are in this hobby because we like the hunt. And part of that is the hunt for perfect sound without any crutches!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't just relax and turn the balance knob 2 degrees once in a while... :)
If your system is set up correctly, a mono recording should come from the center between your speakers. If it doesn't then you probably need to figure out a better layout of your system or use a different room.
Another reason why one might want a balance control would be when playing a recording that is out of balanced. This is extremely rare. Usually if the recording is out of balance it has worse problems and may not be worth listening.
I had a problem with balance in my present room because of a closet and a wall that stuck out because of it. I fixed this by hanging two layers of a heavy blanket on the offending wall.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I spent quite a bit of time moving things around as what Frihed89 suggested... It's seems like I have solved the problem. So far it's almost dead on centre now.. But it's amazing what difference you get when you move your head a bit to one side.. But sitting on the sweet spot gives me a dead on imaging. Lesson learned.. Setting up horn speakers that are very revealing has to be done with measuring tapes and other tools that would help place them at the correct spot. I moved things around before but never had this issue.. All I did was eye ball things.. I guess I got lucky then. With my different preamp and turntable it seems like the whole system is less tolerant now to errors. In any case THANK YOU for all the suggestions and help.
Nt
I have this issue personally, but it's due to a mild conductive hearing loss in my right ear..... Had it since childhood.
Have you checked the the cartridge azimuth? It could easily cause this.
Beatnik's stuff http://web.me.com/jnr1/Site/Beatniks_Pictures.html
You want to move the image? Move the speakers. The problem you are experiencing probably as something to do with boundary reinforcement. In a perfect world, you would have a perfectly symmetrical room, with the same type of walls on each side and common back wall. Each speaker would be the same distance from the side and back wall...and you would sit in the middle. Moving one speaker in any direction will shift the image; changing the toe-in (angle from the back wall is < 90 deg) will have the same effect. An imperfect room will behave as if you had moved 1 speaker relative to the other in a perfect room.
In an imperfect room (and in a perfect room, for that matter), one simply adjusts the position of the speakers and toe-in until the image is where you want it.
To make speakers disappear, pull them well away from all walls, so there is very little reinforcement and work from there.
One last thing, if you have stand-mounted speakers (small 2-ways), and you put them on/in a bookshelf in a different position, you'll get the same effect.
Another last thing, if you have right and left volume controls, the problem can often be fixed by adjusting one speaker volume.
Get hold of Chesky Sampler and Audiophile Test Compact Disc Vol 1 ( Chesky JD37) if you can . Track 10 is very useful as it contains a spoken placement of several stereo positions ( e.g. centre, 2 feet away from microphone; midway between centre and right etc). If your set up mirrors these positions then you can be sure that your stereo is correct and there need be no concern about recording "errors" which place the central image to one side.
I see that you mention that your speakers are the same distance from the front wall ( I think you mean front when you say back i.e the wall you look at when listening). But what if the wall isn't exactly parallel to your listening position? It may be symmetrical but few rooms are built with walls perfectly square to each other. Measure instead from your listening position to the same point on each speaker. I will bet that you will find that, given your problem, you are actually sitting closer to one than the other. Quite small errors of only a few mm can cause stereo anomalies. I have been there!
One other factor that can cause shifts in stereo is a reflection from an object in the room e.g a glass fronted cabinet against a side wall.
Could be overtones, from failing caps in the main PSU.
Yamamoto A08S... I'm sure the amp is good. Well 90% sure.
But if ghe switches the stereo mono switch to mono and it fine then the amp is probably fine and it the TT , cart, phono section or line stage.
ET
> ...the phantom image of the singer is most of the time in between the centre and the left speaker.>
I use only two speakers for stereo and the vocal is pretty much always centered right in the middle.
My room is symmetrical and my speakers are both the same distance, within 1/16", from the back and side walls.
It's a 2 channel system.. But I haven't really measured the speaker distance that close... Maybe I should..
Well, I have Maggies, and it is pretty easy to move the *usually centred for the lead vocalist* voice to whatever side I want. By adjusting toe-in, that should work for any speaker type, as well as balance/channel level adjustment of course. I consider dead center as locked in, Maggies are a bit "sensitive" to this toe-in adjustment.I honestly do not notice that *most* lead vocalists are off-center, maybe it's the type of music I listen to; you could be sure I'd be investigating the gear if I noticed off-center. I think I do have one of the LPs you mentioned, guess I could load 'er up...
Edit: forget it, I must be reading responses in the wrong order, seems more like a hardware thing from your tests...
Edits: 05/30/16
cite some recordings where you experience this. You can easily find some where the vocals are panned one way or another.
Is your speaker arrangement in the room symmetrical? Often, channel variations are due to room effects as opposed to the recorded content.
Symmetrical? I would say yes. Not all recordings are off centered but most are. Now...I'm strictly vinyl and never really tried it on a CD. But regardless, there were discussions in other forums abut this and everybody has different opinions. One that made sense was a comment by this fellow. His comment right below.
I am surprised that no sound engineers have chimed in on this. If you use a high resolution stereo frequency spectrum analyzer and check out the left/right wave forms, you will notice ALL vocals are either left of centre or right of centre. I actually both hear and see that for the music in my collection the vocals are mostly off set to the right. Anyway, the reasoning for this is not to separate the vocals from other instruments, it is to preserve sonic fidelity of the singer's voice. If the singer was dead centre the sound would be mono and sound flat. If the vocals are dead centre but artificially expanded it becomes unnatural sounding. This isn't speculation but fact; It was taught to me in school in an electro/acousto music course I took back in the day.
Edits: 05/30/16
I am surprised that no sound engineers have chimed in on this.
Perhaps because, like me, there's no substance to your observation. Would you care to cite a couple of recordings where you experience this to see of others share that phenomena in their systems?
For the most part, I don't.
The discussion I found about this.. The discussion was mostly on headphones ...but also noticeable on a 2 channel..
http://www.head-fi.org/t/501948/stereo-imaging-vocals-towards-left-side
First of all, the thread wasn't here as you originally opined.
Second of all, I couldn't find any specific recordings mentioned either.
Simply Red picture book--Come to my Aid
Jericho -same album both tracks slightly left
Peter Gabriel- shock the monkey ---slightly to the right.
Marvin Gaye Lets get it on- Come get to this--slightly left
Tom Waits Asylum Years- Romeo is Bleeding- slightly left
don't have any of those albums so I cannot confirm your experience.
Perhaps others can.
As for "slightly left", I'm not aware of many concerts I've attended where the vocalist is standing dead center stage.
Do you have any minimally miked acoustical recordings that suggest the same problem?
"minimally miked acoustical recordings" kindly explain this please.
The vast majority of recordings are done using dozens of microphones closely miked to the instruments. A recording engineer then mixes the many "mono" tracks together adding some spice (EQ and reverb) and pans the various instruments across the virtual stage as they see fit. Imagine taking a dozen pictures up close of all the instruments (and individual parts of an instrument like individual drums) and voices in a recording as slides. Then hold them up to the light stacked together looking through all of them simultaneously. That's a multi-tracked recording.
Minally miked recordings, on the other hand, are like a GAF viewer using two stereo images. See the natural perspective and depth? They use two or three mikes (with perhaps a couple in the rear [Telarc]) and let imaging fall what it does naturally based upon the position of artists on the stage. Those are the ones that are spookily real.
Vocals are almost always dead center. Since mono works fine for you then look at anti skate, cartridge output (they can vary over time) phono stage and line stage especially if they are tube. Can you get them back to center with the balance control adjustment?
ET
I don't have a balance control on my pre.
Does the anomaly switch to the other channel?
I'm a minimalist myself in terms of preamps and eschew the many doodads you find on some, but I find that individual level control is essential.
That was the first thing I did.. and yes..it did switch to the other channel. That means the speakers are balance no?
Asuming it's a tube preamp per your system profile?
I had a similar problem, and transposing the tubes flipped the symptom. Replaced the weak tube and all was good. But I am not familiar with your Preamp. I only had two tubes to worry about. And having a tube tester helped.
And yes, setting to mono would give the result you are getting.
Jonesy
"I know just enough to get into trouble. But not enough to get out of it."
That means electronics are likely at fault. Did you change the cables from the TT, phono stage or preamp? Maybe the phono stage is built in yo the pre buy going to momo and them being equalmans the power amp is not the issue.
ET
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