I'm either going crazy or I have problems.

[bryan_kilco]

Last night I'm fiddling around with my first "mix" in what feels like 2 years.

Little ways in and I notice my right studio monitor seems noticeably quiet compared to the left. Check connections and settings on rear of speaker as well as DAW and my Profire's onboard mixer. Everything checks out fine. Then I think it's just my ears screwing with me, and quite possibly my 99% untreated room. But I've pulled up many songs and mixes in this same room before and everything seemed fine.

Now, if I pan my Master 50% over to the right, things start to sound even. This just seems insane to me.

I also noticed the said quiet speaker would randomly make some sort of noise....almost like ground noise but not quite. Hard to describe and fairly soft.

I was going insane trying to figure this out. Monitors are Equator D5's and I'm sure my warranty is up now that it's been almost 2 years.

The one thing that I can think of is that the speaker that is seeming quieter has an XLR extension hooked up to it, as the cables that came with the monitors were only maybe 4 ft, I had to compensate to reach the rack where my interface lives. Maybe I should troubleshoot that today.

Could my right ear just be THAT much worse than my left? Could something as simple as a stack of combo amps/speaker cabs about 3 ft away from the right monitor deaden the sound from that side more than the opposite side, which is only a rack?

 

[dominus_malas]

Swap the monitors (left for right).

 

[cfh11]

probably a bad connection somewhere. or another thing to check (that happened to me) is if there are any room compensation switches on the back to add/subtract treble or bass. i had a similar issue and it turns out the left speaker had the treble switched to -3db

 

[bryan_kilco]

Going to swap speakers today. And checked the room compensation knob as well as sensitivity and they are both set the same on both speakers.

After a bit of research, this seems to be an issue with quite a few of these monitors. It just bugs me that I've never seemed to notice it until last night which makes me think the speaker may be the culprit.

 

[KHE]

my right ear is a little less sensitive than the left. i hear the stereo-image shifted always slightly on the left side. but i got used to it.... but dont tell my clients

 

[bryan_kilco]

my right ear is a little less sensitive than the left. i hear the stereo-image shifted always slightly on the left side. but i got used to it.... but dont tell my clients

This is what I'm afraid of. It won't kill me as I only mix as a hobby.

Even when I set the Master to MONO, it still feels like I got definite loudness shifted to the left side. I'm going to get at this as soon as my roommate gets up.

 

[greyskull]

sounds like one pin is gone on a cable.

 

[LeSedna]

Have you tried swapping them like mentioned ? It would take 2mn and would determine if the d5s are faulty or if the source of the problem is elsewhere.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Swapped them and everything seemed fine. Swapped back again and still seems ok. I think I just had a serious case of ear fatigue last night and it probably didn't help that I was drinking a few beers and toking a few hits while trying to mix.

Also I realized that the one impulse I was running on the right guitar was a bit more dark and quiet compared to "spreshigh" which was running left. How do you guys normally make sure your guitars are nicely balanced while running 2 different IR's? Just use your ears and watch the meter carefully? Let everything at unity? I hate having to move either one of my guitar faders away from 0.

 

[dominus_malas]

Mix at conversation level. Only turn it up once in a while.

 

[dsgseven7]

the right monitor is quieter? and this is just in your mix? I guess there is a bus or a track in your daw which is supposed to be "stereo" set in mono (stereo to mono conversion add a +3dB boost if I remember correctly and left output is usually affected to mono) it happen when you put a 'mono' plugin in a stereo track/bus.

 

[bryan_kilco]

the right monitor is quieter? and this is just in your mix? I guess there is a bus or a track in your daw which is supposed to be "stereo" set in mono (stereo to mono conversion add a +3dB boost if I remember correctly and left output is usually affected to mono) it happen when you put a 'mono' plugin in a stereo track/bus.

I thought that was the original problem, but no. I think unplugging and re-plugging in the power and TRS cables is what did it. Or it was my imagination the entire time or fatigue.

 

[Kohugaly]

What I tend to do I regularly swap stereo on a master during mixing. It compensates both inconsistency in hardware and ears. When mixing our last album my headphones broke (my roommate sat at them) so I repaired them with a tape and they didn't fit the ears so good as before. After that one of the mixes ended up brighter on the left side, so I started to swap stereo regularly to compensate the inconsistency.

Also, this made me notice that my ears are differently sensitive to certain frequencies even when using different headphones/monitors. What I mean, I don't hear the stereo image shifted, but I tend to notice high-mid spikes with my left ear easier than the right one, for example. It also made me notice, that I tend to pan certain types of instruments left and others right based on "where I think they sound better" and it all sounds slightly different (gives me different impression) when I swap the stereo. Certainly made me EQ in mono and reconsider my panning choices.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Alright, so I opened the same session I worked on a few days ago when I created this thread. Low and behold - lopsided mix again.

This is frustrating and I'm really starting to think it's a monitor going bad. I literally have to pan my master 50% right for it to sound about normal.

If I turn off the right monitor and unplug the TRS and power cables and plug them back in, it fixes the problem for some reason.

EDIT: Emailed Equator and they responded quickly and want me to send it in for evaluation.