IMAGE PROBLEMS VOCALS OFF CENTER

I had the same problem recently and it was driving me crazy. As it turns out, the problem was the 6SN7 tubes in my preamp. I replaced them and that cured the problem immediately.

"I am now pretty certain that it is indeed a volume issue."

You may be correct but your experiment is flawed.

Most volume controls (potentiometers) have poor channel balance at very low volumes, but have a perfectly acceptable channel balance in the normal listening range. Just because channels are out of balance at low volumes does not mean that they will be out of balance at higher volumes.

Did you try any of the other suggestions ?

Newbee,

Isn't the near-field listening position for speakers 8' OC just under 7', i.e. sqrt of 64-16?

db

VOLTAGE! Well, my problem similar stemed from I have MONO blocks originally, and found left was more prominent than right, a portion of this was listening position, but guess what I found later? That one amp was getting a different voltage than the other, the bias was then imbalanced to the 2 different channels, even with the same power cords, and this happened more when I plugged both amps into the same circuit with common ground than plugging them into 2 totally different circuits, I guess the draw on the same circuit caused part of this, or that the PReamp running was also off from its voltage, I don't really know, but it could be electrical in your voltage drop.. You did not really say what you run, but if its tubes, or Dual mono stereo, or Mono blocks it could be this simple.. But room acoustics and Hallways closer to one speaker than the other have caused this in my experience as well. Good luck

Good question. Don't know the 'scientific' answer.

I have traditionally set up my speakers (of all types) a minimum of 9ft apart and a listening distance of 10 feet, toeing in the speakers to minimize 1st reflection points from the side walls. Sort of got into a rut on this set up and compensated for room induced image shift by moving my listening position a few inches to the right and angling my chair so it pointed between the center and the right speaker.

On a boring, rainy, day I started moving the speakers about and brought them in to about 8ft apart (on speaker centers) and ultimately moved the listening position up to 9 ft. The speakers were pointed straight ahead as opposed to being toed in. Two things occurred. 1) The center image became very sharply focused center image, and I mean very sharply, it wasn't chopped liver before! 2)Apparent depth of image increased substantially, and both improvements came at no loss of stage width.

I called that 'nearfield' as that's about as close as you would want to sit to 4ft high floorstanders with 5 drivers and it seemed to take much of the room effect out of the mid/upper frequencies. I'm still working on it.....