One speaker louder than the other

[Jameson]

I have been debating about this for the past month, whether one channel is louder than the other. It seems to me that the left channel has more prominent vocals and higher frequencies. To see where the issue is I’ve done the following:

• Swapped speaker cables on the Kaiju and on the Stereomour so the entirety of the left channel was on the right and vice versa.
• Removed the Stereomour from the chain and driven everything with the Kaiju (the problem isn’t with the Steremour)
• Used the BeePre to power the Mainline (no imbalance with the Mainline, which means the problem isn’t with the BeePre unless it’s on one output and not the other)

In my mind, that leaves a few possible causes for the imbalance that I need to test:

• The RCA output of the BeePre has an imbalance the balanced output does not. I don’t think this is super likely, and this is easy enough to test by switching cables
• The Kaiju has an imbalance. This is possible, but given that it’s the vocals, mids and highs I notice more, I think I would have suspected the imbalance to be with the Stereomour. Also I swapped the speaker cables and didn’t notice a difference. To test this, I plan to use iTunes on the Mac Pro driving my DAC to control the volume and run straight from the DAC to the Kaiju.
• One speaker has a miswire or some other issue. I also don’t think this is the case given that everything sounds great but the image is just slightly left of center. I plan to test this by swapping the speakers, but I’m not looking forward to it.
• Most likely in my mind is the funky room shape. The left side has an angled ceiling on the left and rear of the cabinet, whereas the right side has an angled ceiling to the rear, a straight wall the the right, and then it opens up into a much larger room. If the other tests don’t provide answers, I’ll assume this is the problem and try to rectify with the Sumiko placement method.

Any possibilities I’m missing? Anything else I should consider or test?

[kgoss]

One time I had the image shifted slightly off center and it took me a long time to figure it out. Turned out I had the + and - speaker wires swapped on one speaker. So the speakers were out of phase with each other. Drove me crazy trying to find the problem. So if your Stereomour II and Kaiju amps sound the same and the problem is the midrange you might want to check the internal Jaeger wiring to make sure you have correct phase on all the drivers. Good luck!

[Jameson]

Interesting! I’ll check that as well. Thank you!

[Paul Birkeland]

I had this happen with my Jagers once and it was a loose connection in one of the speaker cable jumpers (a loose connection between a banana and the speaker wire itself).

[Jameson]

I am so baffled. I think there are two things happening: I think one speaker is slightly louder than other in some parts of the range, and I think the problem is exacerbated by weird acoustics in the room. I swapped the speakers and the sound is pulling ever so slightly to the right now, but generally more centered.

[Jameson]

I moved a couple things around and I think I found the perfect spot. Now nothing, including me, can ever move. It’s a shame I’ll miss the birth of my first child.