[krismusic]

Sorry to keep on about this but it is really spoiling my enjoyment.
I am getting the sense that the right channel dominates.
The same happens with all my headphones to lesser or greater extent.
I don't know if engineers do favour the right? Or if my hearing is faulty.
I have tried using the balance control of my iPhone 5s but even moving the slider slightly seems to rob the music of its energy, I don't know if anyone else has noticed this.
Any thoughts much appreciated.

 

[ClieOS]

Find yourself an audiologist and have your hearing check? Won't be surprised if your hearing isn't balanced as most people don't have equal hearing on both ears. It is just that the use of headphone makes it much easier to notice.

 

[krismusic]

Find yourself an audiologist and have your hearing check? Won't be surprised if your hearing isn't balanced as most people don't have equal hearing on both ears. It is just that the use of headphone makes it much easier to notice.

Good idea Cleos. I will do that. Do others on here have the same problem and just ignore it?

 

[SilverEars]

Hey kris, try the frequency sweep on Youtube with different headphones.  That should give you an idea if it's your hearing.  Make sure your amp is farily balanced, I know my O2 has a unbalanced pot that will make one side louder for sensitive iems.  I've been looking into this also, and unfortunatly I have to conclude my hearing isn't balanced at certain frequencies.  Also, I believe if you hear sweep sound going left and right and back, which will happen at high fruencies, it's probably channel imbalanced headphone suffer.  I've noticed with with all my headphones including the mightly HD800.
 
There is a lot I've realized from doing sweeps.  For one, I am very sensitive at the certain treble frequencies, and it might be causing my enjoyment to suffer(or enhance for other phones) for certain headphones.
 
 

 

[krismusic]

That's really helpful Silver ears. I'll give it a listen. There are probably other tests on YouTube. I'll check it out.

 

[castleofargh]

you should go see an audiologist. for a cheap price, you get to know exactly what's happening instead of getting anxious from doubts(and it could be wax or a small rash on one hear).
 
in fact very few people have perfect balance at all frequencies, usually the lack of attention and the brain compensating like mad, let people unaware of the fact. the most affected are soldiers and hunters as the gunshots are always on the same side. but simply the difference in shape of both hear can be enough to change the sound a good deal even with no damage at all.
 
 
I don't know about the balance control of the iphone, but I suspect that the volume gets lower when activated(if only by the fact that you're lowering one side) so that would translate in "hearing" a sound of lesser quality (following the famous "louder is better" psycho acoustic effect).  also if you're hearing imbalance is only for the top trebles, then maybe you find the iphone's balancing wrong because you correct high freqs and then notice the rest getting imbalanced?
if it's really a problem for you(go see the audiologist!!!), I can't say for an iphone EQ app, but at least on a computer you can get left and right EQ separated, so you could do a much better job  compensating just for what you need where you need it, instead of just a balancing slider.
you send tones in one ear, try to EQ flat, do it for the other ear. repeat process a lot of times to be sure your result is about right => see if left and right have big differences => use left and right variation to EQ just for you. problem solved at least for a few years.
the weak point here is that when you'll change headphones, they will probably have some matter of imbalance themselves(several DB are not uncommon at all), so a setting for one headphone might not be perfect on the next one
 
did I mention that you should go see an audiologist first?

 

[krismusic]

Castleofargh. Next day off. I'll tell them you sent me! thanks for the input.

 

[bigshot]

It's interesting I have a narrow spike between 7 and 8kHz where the frequencies pan left then right then center again. Youtube probably isn't the best place to put a test for high frequencies because I believe they use AAC192 which starts rolling off around 12kHz.

 

[SilverEars]

  It's interesting I have a narrow spike between 7 and 8kHz where the frequencies pan left then right then center again. Youtube probably isn't the best place to put a test for high frequencies because I believe they use AAC192 which starts rolling off around 12kHz.

I was reading some comments and all the 15 year olds are saying they hear further than that.  

 

[bigshot]

People can claim what they want to claim, but if you check the actual output of the youtube video, you'll find the AAC audio track starts rolling down at 12 and is pretty much gone by 17. That's just how AAC works at lower bit rates. Bump it up to 320 and you might get up to 19 or 20kHz.
 
This video sweeps faster above 10kHz and stops very soon after that. I can hear a little ways beyond 10, but it's hard to stop it in time when it goes that fast.

 

[ClieOS]

Try this instead: http://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_sinesweep20-20k.php

 

[castleofargh]

  People can claim what they want to claim, but if you check the actual output of the youtube video, you'll find the AAC audio track starts rolling down at 12 and is pretty much gone by 17. That's just how AAC works at lower bit rates. Bump it up to 320 and you might get up to 19 or 20kHz.
 
This video sweeps faster above 10kHz and stops very soon after that. I can hear a little ways beyond 10, but it's hard to stop it in time when it goes that fast.

I think the codec depends on the resolution of the video on utube.

 

[bigshot]

Interesting. They've updated their codecs since Google took over. Mono is AAC 128, which should get up to around 16-17kHz. Hidef movies get a little more with 384 stereo. That should get up almost to 20kHz.
 
But that particular video was uploaded three years ago at 380p, so it probably has 128 or 192 AAC, which tops out around 14kHz.