Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Off center sound stage? Is it my ears..the music..

Okey I don't know if this is a issue. I have setup my M22Ti for 3 weeks now. It always seems that the singer is a little off to the right. Is it my ears? Is it the music? Is it the stuff around my system? Is it the diffrent stands they are on? Or is it possible to have an off center soundstage due to improper build of drivers on the speakers? Is it my speaker wires. Does anyone have any suggestions in finding out whats going on?

Thanks for any info.

Saturn

It can be the result of everything you have suggested, although I doubt very much that it has anything to do with your wiring. Unless the environment around each speaker is dramatically different I would look to your electronics as the likely culprit. I once had a receiver that was biased to the right when everything was set flat. The only solution was the balance knob. Can you give us some examples of the music you are listening to? I am sure that someone in this forum will be able to listen and tell you how it sounds on their system.

Since you said "always" you've probably already checked this, but be sure that the sound is supposed to be exactly in the center, such as announcers and newscasters on radio stations. If it's unbalanced, the reason has to be that it's coming in slightly louder from the right. Furnishings different near the left? One speaker less efficient?(switch left and right speakers to see if balance shifts).As to your ears, turn around and listen with your back to the speakers. I'm not familiar with your Rotel, but whatever is causing the imbalance, can it be compensated simply with whatever volume or balance adjustments the Rotel provides?

Saturn,

I have the exact same problem, however my soundstage is a bit off to the left. I also have M22Ti's, on SBF20 stands. I have compared this with my M3's in another and my Grado headphones, and yes, the soundstage is definitely off to the left. I swapped the M22's and the difference was still there.

The reason for this discrepancy is the room they are in. There is an opening on the right, so more sound is escaping throught it rather than bouncing off a wall and back to the listening position. I have since put my left channel at -1 and my right channel at +1, and the sound is more centered, although not perfect. It will become perfect when I have a perfect listening room!

After hours of changing cables new and old, positions, flippin the speakers, toe in, toe out, radio tuning, music tuning I think the culprint could be my damn reciever and also one speaker maybe is .5-1dB higher than the other (I don't have a sound meter to prove it). I think the amp built into the integrated reciever powering the left speakers is kinda off or not as clean as the right. The reason for this is that when I do tone tests at the very lowest setting I find that going up just the tweeter on the left side gives this very very very very slight fluttering (I mean soo faint). This happens even if I change speakers..change wires..move the left speaker to an isolated place. Its definitely the front left amp sending the highs at a different level than the right. The right side does not have that issue. The test tone sounds clean on the right side with both speakers. One thing i noticed is that when I flipped the speakers right to the left side and left on the right side it seemed to sound a little more center.
The question is the speakers are under the 30 day warrantee. Is .5 -1 dB even a noticible technical issue? I know I can change my settings in my reciever but is the norm to band-aid a problem rather than fix it. (Being a programmer band-aid solutions always hunt you in the long run. A complete rebuild of the code is has more often desirable effects)
As with my Rotel RSX1065..is the hassle to exchange or wait to fix or lift the damn 50+ lbs receiver worth my time for a slightly skewed center....
With all the money you pay for this crap..you think that they would be much more precise.

ppphhhhfftttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



ps: after all that ... all this stuff still sound pretty good.

We have noticed that our old Onkyo TX-DS939 shifts the sound a little to one side too. We didn't notice it happening with the same speakers, cable, and placement on the Denon 1803, and Onkyo TX-SR500 we are trying out.

Michael

Hi all,

The center detent on receiver and preamp balance controls isn't always dead accurate. And you can certainly have slight differences in gain from the left and right-channel amps that will skew the center image slightly. The drivers on Axioms are QC'd within a fraction of a dB. I doubt it's the speakers (in all the cases I've run across, it's always been a difference in gain or a misaligned balance control). But if you did some careful measurements with test tones and a Radio Shack SPL meter --use the same amp channel for measuring each speaker so you don't have gain differences from the electronics-- and you still found differences, I'm sure Joe would send you out a replacement driver(s).

You also may find variations in the center detents of bass and treble controls. When they're set to the "flat" position, the measured frequency response is seldom perfectly flat, unless you can switch out or bypass the controls entirely, which is a desirable feature (you can sometimes find it on some receivers; it may be called "Stereo Direct" or the like. . .).

Regards,

Sorry to hear of your problem. My M22's are just about perfect when it comes to imaging. When I am sitting in the sweet spot they just can't be beat. I even ran the ultimate test and had my wife listen to a CD in steroe mode. She thought I was fooling around and had somehow turned on the center channel speaker. She actually had to walk up and put her ear on the center speaker to verify that the sound coming from the center was not the center channel, but in fact perfect imaging.

Keep trying. It's the little things that make the difference.

One thing I tried was switch my input from Digital Coax to Analog. And it seemed (or my brain playing with me)very slightly better with staging. One thing to note is that supposedly my reciever which is a Rotel RSX 1065 is supposedly great with clean power. But I am listening to my music via my DVD player which is a progressive scan Toshiba SD 3750. It is a lower end DVD player that plays pretty much all formats. Interconnects via diagital coax and analog are both good stuff. Do guys play your music CD via analog inputs? Or via digital coax and letting your receiver decode the signal?

OH MY GOD!!! I am such a big dummy. I moved the speakers away from the wall by almost 2 feet. and guess what ... the sound stage was more prominently there and it was more or less center. I had the speaker only 3 inches from the wall and it sounded no better than my 7 year old B&W 300 series. I did not know that this speakers worked well with at least 2-3 feet from the wall. And preferably noting between them. I kinda had a fish tank between the 2 speakers which could have absorbed some sound due to the dense water. I think my goldfish is a little happier that Jazz was not in stereo in the tank. I also think the Ti tweeter and alu driver had to break in also. Thank you all for your help.