Imaging Question

Sep 10, 2020 at 9:25 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 10

vaduz488

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I've been an audio enthusiast most of my life and I have a question on imaging maybe you can help me with. Do any of you ever notice the voice on recordings being ever so slightly to the right of center? (1 to 2 degrees) I would estimate 80% of recordings I listen to whether it be streaming on headphones or 2 channel stereo through speakers has just an ever so slight center voice image to the right. I thought it might be my hearing but when I flipped my headphones around, the center voice then imaged to the left. Just curious whether any of you have experienced this. The rest of the instruments image fine.
 
Sep 10, 2020 at 10:41 PM Post #2 of 10
I've been an audio enthusiast most of my life and I have a question on imaging maybe you can help me with. Do any of you ever notice the voice on recordings being ever so slightly to the right of center? (1 to 2 degrees) I would estimate 80% of recordings I listen to whether it be streaming on headphones or 2 channel stereo through speakers has just an ever so slight center voice image to the right. I thought it might be my hearing but when I flipped my headphones around, the center voice then imaged to the left. Just curious whether any of you have experienced this. The rest of the instruments image fine.

Could be the track itself was recorded this way? Have u tried other earphones or headphones with it?
 
Sep 10, 2020 at 11:03 PM Post #3 of 10
Don't rule out your hearing either, and possibly get that checked if it's not a hardware or recording issue. I say this because I have low-frequency hearing loss in my right ear, which makes many bass instruments sound left of center! (The key to recognizing this is that the imbalance is there across more than one pair of headphones..)
 
Sep 11, 2020 at 1:59 AM Post #4 of 10
Don't rule out your hearing either, and possibly get that checked if it's not a hardware or recording issue. I say this because I have low-frequency hearing loss in my right ear, which makes many bass instruments sound left of center! (The key to recognizing this is that the imbalance is there across more than one pair of headphones..)

They swapped channels and it followed, though.

As for me, OP? No idea. I don't trust my ears that much. ;)
 
Sep 11, 2020 at 11:10 AM Post #7 of 10
Sounds like you have a bad resistor or capacitor somewhere that’s causing a channel imbalance. 😈
 
Sep 11, 2020 at 1:54 PM Post #8 of 10
As a test, you might be able to swap channels using a program like Audacity? That would eliminate your hearing and any gear as possibilities.

Also, I seem to remember somebody once telling me that older recordings favored one channel over the other, which works for speakers but not as well for headphones. I don't remember much more than that, nor even if it's true.
There are some recording/production engineers in the Sound Science forum, so you might ask there. If you do, tread lightly, as some of those user can be a bit abrasive if they think you're just goading them.
 
Sep 11, 2020 at 3:54 PM Post #9 of 10
I've been an audio enthusiast most of my life and I have a question on imaging maybe you can help me with. Do any of you ever notice the voice on recordings being ever so slightly to the right of center? (1 to 2 degrees) I would estimate 80% of recordings I listen to whether it be streaming on headphones or 2 channel stereo through speakers has just an ever so slight center voice image to the right. I thought it might be my hearing but when I flipped my headphones around, the center voice then imaged to the left. Just curious whether any of you have experienced this. The rest of the instruments image fine.
Can be a lot of things. First it's very frequent to find slightly off center panning on a track for a bunch of reasons. So you should start by listening to something in mono and figure out if that feels spot on center, or not. If it is then most likely the tracks are just made that way and you happen to be a little to sensitive about it.

Then if it's not full center, you turn your headphone around and see if that changes the direction of the imbalance.
If the sound remains on the same side, it's something about you. Some asymmetry on your face/ears(we all have some amount of that, the question is just to figure out if it causes a significantly audible change). Or maybe you just spend most of your day looking slightly on one side(more typical than we think). Whatever the cause, the end result is that your brain expects that asymmetry and compensates for it so that what you hear aligns with where you see the sound source. When you listen with your headphone and bypass the physical cause for the imbalance, you end up with your brain still applying the compensation and now thinking there is an imbalance in the other direction. not much to do about it beside adding that imbalnce on the headphone playback to put things like they usually are(as in, without headphones).
If the cause is a habit of looking sideways, it's possible that instead of just a gain imbalance, what you need is to add a tiny delay on one side. I remember someone in a similar situation reaching such conclusion after many experiments.

On the other hand, if the sound changes side when you turn around the headphone, then the imbalance is on your rig. Could be the headphone, in winch case the imbalance could even be only at some frequencies instead of a global imbalance(that is in fact the case for almost all headphones, we typically don't notice or pay attention, but it's there. all you can do is try to measure and compensate that imbalance(Sonarworks offers to help with that for $$$), or simply to get a headphone with a better matching.
It could also be your amplifier, maybe some consistent imbalance, maybe something that only becomes significant at some position on the volume knob(depends on the type of volume control). DACs usually have very closely matched channels so I wouldn't worry about it before confirming that it's not any of the other possibilities.
 
Sep 11, 2020 at 7:40 PM Post #10 of 10
Can be a lot of things. First it's very frequent to find slightly off center panning on a track for a bunch of reasons. So you should start by listening to something in mono and figure out if that feels spot on center, or not. If it is then most likely the tracks are just made that way and you happen to be a little to sensitive about it.

Then if it's not full center, you turn your headphone around and see if that changes the direction of the imbalance.
If the sound remains on the same side, it's something about you. Some asymmetry on your face/ears(we all have some amount of that, the question is just to figure out if it causes a significantly audible change). Or maybe you just spend most of your day looking slightly on one side(more typical than we think). Whatever the cause, the end result is that your brain expects that asymmetry and compensates for it so that what you hear aligns with where you see the sound source. When you listen with your headphone and bypass the physical cause for the imbalance, you end up with your brain still applying the compensation and now thinking there is an imbalance in the other direction. not much to do about it beside adding that imbalnce on the headphone playback to put things like they usually are(as in, without headphones).
If the cause is a habit of looking sideways, it's possible that instead of just a gain imbalance, what you need is to add a tiny delay on one side. I remember someone in a similar situation reaching such conclusion after many experiments.

On the other hand, if the sound changes side when you turn around the headphone, then the imbalance is on your rig. Could be the headphone, in winch case the imbalance could even be only at some frequencies instead of a global imbalance(that is in fact the case for almost all headphones, we typically don't notice or pay attention, but it's there. all you can do is try to measure and compensate that imbalance(Sonarworks offers to help with that for $$$), or simply to get a headphone with a better matching.
It could also be your amplifier, maybe some consistent imbalance, maybe something that only becomes significant at some position on the volume knob(depends on the type of volume control). DACs usually have very closely matched channels so I wouldn't worry about it before confirming that it's not any of the other possibilities.
Thanks so much for your feedback!
 

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