[Hi-Five]

Quote:

......  With headphones, the stereo image gets exaggerated because the right ear cannot hear the left speaker and vice versa

Cheers

 
+1, and AFAIK many engineers will mix the vocal slightly off center to tame peaks and limit compression needs.  It's quite hard to get the snare and vocal to live peacefully in the same space (dead center), so these are often mixed off center and away from each other.  It is much more identifiable using headphones than speakers IMO, but it can be annoying.  Crossfeed circuits will often tame this behavior and produce a more "realistic" headspace.
 
Hope that helps,
Hi-Five

 

[jaddie]

Quote:

 
+1, and AFAIK many engineers will mix the vocal slightly off center to tame peaks and limit compression needs.  It's quite hard to get the snare and vocal to live peacefully in the same space (dead center), so these are often mixed off center and away from each other.  It is much more identifiable using headphones than speakers IMO, but it can be annoying.  Crossfeed circuits will often tame this behavior and produce a more "realistic" headspace.
 
Hope that helps,
Hi-Five

Sorry, that makes no sense.  Just panning vocals doesn't change anything about peak levels or compression needs.  Snares and vocals may not coexist in the same pan location well, but you wouldn't pan the vocal to fix it, you'd pan the snare.  Also, a vocal and snare, even if panned in the same location don't occupy the same space spectrally or temporally anyway, so it's not an issue of peaks, rather it's an issue of balance.
 
I still very much question that vocals are mixed off center deliberately except in rare cases.  Accidentally, perhaps, but there's a huge artistic reason to keep them perfectly centered.
 
Still waiting for a specific example...

 

[Hi-Five]

Quote:

Sorry, that makes no sense.  Just panning vocals doesn't change anything about peak levels or compression needs.  Snares and vocals may not coexist in the same pan location well, but you wouldn't pan the vocal to fix it, you'd pan the snare.  Also, a vocal and snare, even if panned in the same location don't occupy the same space spectrally or temporally anyway, so it's not an issue of peaks, rather it's an issue of balance.
 
I still very much question that vocals are mixed off center deliberately except in rare cases.  Accidentally, perhaps, but there's a huge artistic reason to keep them perfectly centered.
 
Still waiting for a specific example...

 
I should have been more clear.  You are correct, panning doesn't affect your source track but when I mentioned peaks and compression needs, I meant that a well panned stem mix will help a lot when you are processing sub-groups and doing final mix.  And I'm not talking much panning here, like a couple percent L/R vocal opposite snare.  For the sake of argument they will still be perceived at the center, just leaving a tiny bit of room for each track to breathe in the stem mix.
 
Hi-Five

 

[bigshot]

I always kept vocals in the center and shifted everything else.

 

[jaddie]

Quote:

 
I should have been more clear.  You are correct, panning doesn't affect your source track but when I mentioned peaks and compression needs, I meant that a well panned stem mix will help a lot when you are processing sub-groups and doing final mix.  And I'm not talking much panning here, like a couple percent L/R vocal opposite snare.  For the sake of argument they will still be perceived at the center, just leaving a tiny bit of room for each track to breathe in the stem mix.
 
Hi-Five

Yeah, still not making sense.  A "couple percent" is a fraction of a dB...like less than .25dB.  And, it would depend entirely on the processor type, detector type, time constants, and slope, threshold, lots of stuff.  But a quarter dB isn't going to change anything in and of itself.

 

[Vendetta]

Thank you everyone for your help.
 
Mono it is centered. I guess most mastering likes to put the vocals slightly left. Eric Clapton's unplugged he is on the right side.
 
Another thing I noticed is that IEMs don't seal as well in my left ear as my right.

 

[audiotwo]

A bunch of the Beatles albums have vocals panned hard to one direction. You can hear it even on speakers.

 

[ab initio]

I really like the Bauer stereo-to-binaural crossfeed DSP plugin. I use it both with winamp and foobar. It makes the stereo imaging much more realistic when using headphones (and certainly less fatiguing!)
 
Cheers

 

[jaddie]

Quote:

A bunch of the Beatles albums have vocals panned hard to one direction. You can hear it even on speakers.

That's a completely different issue.  Those so-called "stereo" recordings were really the two-track masters that were meant (always) to be mixed to mono.  A stereo version was demanded, that's all they had to work with.
 
If there's any interest, I personally recommend this book for the details on that and other fascinating accounts of recording the Beatles:
http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-ebook/dp/B000OVLIQU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375197243&sr=8-1&keywords=here+there+and+everywhere
 
And all of that is completely unrelated to the OP's issue.