ben_r_
500+ Head-Fier
Has anyone compared the E1 to the Emotiva XDA-2?
How do I know for certain that the T1's are favouring the left side? Is there a tool or measurement I can use?
I have recently acquired an E1 Muses edition and a pair of Beyerdynamic T1's. I am already going crazy with the issue of channel imbalance. Please bear with me.
I have read through the majority of pages on this thread. Especially the ones that mention the issue of channel imbalance.
I live in Europe and ordered the unit from Hong Kong through accessoryjack.com. Best deal I could find at that moment. I paid a VERY pretty penny for this piece of hardware. A little over 1000 dollars plus a hefty customs import tax for my country; And right off the box I have to deal with this? Ridiculous. How much do you have to pay before these issues are polished out by engineers? This is completely outrageous.
Off the box, the unit sounded great but it did take me a couple of days to actually believe my ears as I thought It was just the tracks I was listening to that were engineered with an emphasis on the left channel. But no: the issue is with the E1.
Right now I have my windows mixer set to 94% volume on the left channel. This is far from being a perfect solution, however, as it prevents me from taking advantage of bit perfect and to make matters worse the Beyerdynamic T1's actually exacerbate the problem! The issue is noticeable on my ATH M50's but not as severe as on the beyers. Could it be due to the Beyerdynamics having much better soundstage? It is entirely possible that the Beyers themselves have an issue with the right driver that is compounding the existing E1 channel imbalance.
Oh, right! And the channel imbalance is present through the entire range of BOTH the volume pots. I have a pair of Audioengine A5+'s connected through RCA and the left one is louder than the right one.
I don't know and honestly I am losing my mind a little bit worrying about this.
Can someone help? How do I find out if the T1's right driver is faulty? At the moment, the only equipment I can connect them to is the E1 because of their large jack (I don't have an adaptor but will get one if it is required to solve my predicament).
And what do i do about the E1 muses? I could care less about the gain switch and volume pot; and to be perfectly honest "bit perfect" is more of a hassle than a boon for me but the channel imbalance is a ridiculous issue which should not be present.
So with this in mid, I don't need or necessarily want to exchange it. It sounds great apart from this channel imbalance issue. If I can just iron out this issue by myself. But to do this and gain peace of mind I need to get a sense of how much to diminish the volume on the left side through software. Is there a piece of software which can measure that for me?
Excuse the long winded post.
And then there is still the issue of the A5+ speakers. The perceived channel imbalance on the speakers could be due to their positioning. I'll try to reverse the stereo signal through vlc tomorrow when i can crank them (not at this hour. of night though).
Why not hook it up to your computer's line input and measure the r/l volumes using rightmark audio analyzer? I did the same test with mine due to channel imbalance Ive read about and the pot is balanced fine above 9-10 o clock.
It is easiest to hook it up to your computer via usb.
Connect rca outputs using phono>3.5mm jack wire or headphone output using 6.3mm>3.5mm jack wire to your sound card's line input.
Rightmark will then use these connections as a real time monitoring "loop"