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Help with imaging

Hope you guys can help me with an extremely annoying problem I'm having. I'm very happy with my Soliloquy 5.3s but seem to have a hard time with vocals or instruments that should be centered...they seem to want to exist to the right of center. I can somewhat correct this by toeing in the right speaker more than the left(I tend to toe speakers in toward the listening spot), but this seems more like a bandaid than a real fix and doesn't fully correct the problem. Moving the right speaker back doesn't seem to help either. Here's the wierd part. When I switch the speakers I still get the same result. I would have expected the center image to shift to the left, but it still skews to the right. I've recently had other speakers in my system and don't have this problem, so I don't think it's the electronics. Also, this happens regardless of what room the speakers are in, so it doesn't appear to be just a room thing, and I've tried different cables as well to no avail.

This is driving me nuts, so I hope you guys have some thoughts or insights and your help is GREATLY appreciated.

Tim
soix
subaruguru
1,369 posts
 
I have slight off-center imaging due to room asymmentry, even though I listen in the nearfield, and resort quite successfully to a balance-control tweak to pull the image a bit. As the thread-head states he tried the system in a different ROOM with the same asymmetrical results, I guess we have to assume the problem is electrical. Maybe the pre or amp outputs are unbalanced? 1/2 dB would be enough to pull the image, correct? A leaky old cap in my old NAD amp resulted in such an imbalance. 1/2 dB difference in sensitivity is pretty common with speakers, but that's already been ruled out, eh? Well, good luck, and let us know what it turns out to be!
soix OP
8,683 posts
 
testing
soix OP
8,683 posts
 
Finally. I've been trying to post this for the past week but the system wasn't taking my responses--very frustrating.

Just wanted to let you know my problem is solved. After reading your posts I went back and re-checked my individual speaker levels more closely and the right speaker was indeed a bit louder than the left. After adjusting the channel levels the center image snapped in placed and has remained locked there ever since. The problem appears to lie in the speakers(looks like about a 3db difference between the speakers, which I'm pissed at Soliloquy about--that seems a little much to me), but I still don't understand why the situation didn't reverse when I switched the speakers. At this point I don't care because I'm just enjoying being able to relax and listen to music again without having to constantly change speaker positioning or having to scootch across the couch to get correct imaging.

I want to give a sincere thanks to all of you who pitched in with your thoughts. I probably would have found the problem eventually, but you guys helped point the way sooner and I can't tell you what a relief it has been. Happy listening.

Tim
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