Hearing affecting soundstage


It's kind of suck that your hearing may be the biggest limitting factor to the percieved soundstage.

The high frequency response of my left ear is a lot better than that of my right ear, therefore the left soundstage is quite wider than the right side. This is most apparent with sound from the background of the soundstage such as a orchestra playing in the background.

Before, I always wondered why most of my CD's has mixing mainly on the left side until I found out about the flaw in my hearing.

Does anyone have the same problem?
andy2
The problem I have is not that the soundstage shifted one way or another. The center mix is still there. Vocal is still right at the center.

But with recordings that have a diffused background sound or a background orchestra, the back soundstage is partly truncated on the right side due to HF roll-off of my right ear. A good example would be Diana Krall "I've Got You Under My Skin" on When I look into your eyes CD. On this song, the left soundstage extends all the way past the left speaker on the opening. When I did an experiment by switching left-right channel cables so that the left-right soundstage now also switched, the right soundstage (which was left originally) is truncated to somewhere halfway between center and right speaker.

I don't think the balance control will help me. I may have to reduced the treble response of the left speaker by putting a series resistor on the tweeter.
Andy,

I have the same problem (intermittantly) due to my allergies. The hearing in my left ear comes & goes.
I did own a Rowland Consonance preamp that was the best pre I've ever seen for balance adjustment. You could push right or left balance, one channel would go up a click, at the same time the other would go down. The digital display showed exactly where you were at.
It was a breeze to use.....
I can't use headphones when the problem is extreme, it makes me wince!
Although my HF sensitivity is degraded (flying airplanes was my downfall) I don't have any problem with soundstage. Maybe that's because my old ears are equally bad.
As a result of 30+ years of playing drum kit and habitually monitoring from my right, I have a bit of high frequency roll off in my right ear. It can be really frustrating to say the least.

Tweaking the gain in the left channel a bit helps some, but spacial relationships are never what they used to be. The mix of most everything I listen to invariably feels slightly less dynamic and dull to the right. *sigh*