[jaycalgary]

I am still thinking I have an imbalance between left and right channels. Seems there is more volume on the right side. Would many recording like rock etc favor the right side that this would happen or do I definitely have faulty equipment somewhere in the chain?

 

[Head Injury]

Does your player (either software or hardware) have a peak meter or something similar? You can use that to find out which side is supposed to be louder, and compare to your current situation. Or, if you have a crappy compressed modern song made to be 100% loud the whole way through, you can try to play that. It won't be significantly louder on either side.

 

[Br777]

get foobar, enable the peak meter or vu meter, and play a sine wave, pink noise or, pretty much anything and you should be able to tell pretty quickly
you can find sine waves and pink noise in the "how to equalize your headphones" thread

 

[jaycalgary]

Thanks I tried the sine wave sweep seemed close enough. I think it may be just a hearing imbalance. I cleaned wax out of ears but takes a long time for the water in there to go away.

 

[pyramid6]

It's well documented that people have a more dominant ear. Could be that.

 

[Bostonears]

The easiest way to tell if the imbalance is in your headphones/audio system vs. your own hearing is simply to turn the headphones around, i.e. put left cup on right ear and vice versa. Depending on the earcushions of your phones, it may or may not be easy to listen this way, but you should at least be able to tell if the imbalance stayed on the same side or switched sides.

I thought I was having an imbalance with my Shure IEMs the other day. Turned out it was gobs of wax in one ear.

 

[Agro]

i want to check mine as well, so i just run the sine wave and use the foobar peakmeter? And if the bars are even all the way through, my source is fine?

 

[pwnRhasta]

I came across channel imbalance this morning. I was like, why is it louder of the left side? And while troubleshooting this problem, i came to the conclusion that... I wore them backwards!! LOL

 

[Agro]

When i put my winamp to mono on my computer, the sound is clearly uneven, but when i do the same on my netbook, it seems perfectly even.
Can the unevenness in mono be due to the source? Or is it psychological?
Thanks!

 

[bcwang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agro /img/forum/go_quote.gif When i put my winamp to mono on my computer, the sound is clearly uneven, but when i do the same on my netbook, it seems perfectly even. Can the unevenness in mono be due to the source? Or is it psychological? Thanks!

I think it can be. A very good source can project a very focused voice, while an ok one seems more diffuse. In a song where the singer is slightly off center, the low quality source is hard to really tell if it's not centered, while on the good source, it was clearly off center.

It bothered me for a while (thought my ears or headphone was off balance) until I figured out it was the song that had the singer off center. When I listened to some other stuff, it was smack in the middle.

 

[Agro]

But technically with mono, both channels should be even right? I think my onboard soundcard is messed up, i'll find out monday when my soundcard comes in.
I was just wondering if the source can mess up the balance of a mono track, or if the unevenness can only be from the headphones.
Thanks!

 

[bcwang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agro /img/forum/go_quote.gif But technically with mono, both channels should be even right? I think my onboard soundcard is messed up, i'll find out monday when my soundcard comes in. I was just wondering if the source can mess up the balance of a mono track, or if the unevenness can only be from the headphones. Thanks!

Well if the source is messed up (one channel damaged), it can cause unbalanced sound coming from mono. Since your other computer sounds right, then this one is probably messed up and not your headphone.