rgro wrote: > Yeah, I know what you're all thinking already, but..... > > More than a year ago I noted that there was a fairly obvious right > speaker dominance---I even measured a 2 -3 db spl difference. The short > story is that after checking all of the interconnects, speaker cables, > removing and replugging-in everything, cleaning contacts, etc. I figured > it must be room issues, and physically repositioned the speakers to pull > the center image back to the left. This meant unevening the r/h speaker > distance from my listening position both right/left and front/back. Not > an optimal solution, I felt, but it seemed to compensate enough. > > On an unrelated matter, I just had occasion to swap the USB cable (a > standard A/B cable) running from my server to my dac. I don't recall > where the original USB cable came from...something inexpensive and off > the shelf. While I suspect the brand is probably not relevant, the new > USB is a relatively modestly priced ($40) cable from a company called > Supra. After swapping the cable, I sat down to listen and make sure > that the music was still going to play and immediately noticed that the > center image was now pulled about 4 feet to the left! Huh....that's > strange, thought I, so I put the old cable back and image was back to > centered. Needless to say I reinstalled the Supra cable and went > through the process of repositioning my speakers to be equidistant from > my listening position, the image was perfectly centered, and then > remeasured the SPL levels...now equal from each speaker. > > Clearly the old USB cable was defective in some way....I have no idea > what defect may have caused this particular problem but, as nothing else > had changed in my system the obvious culprit was the USB cable. And, > no, I'm not going to make any gratuitous claims about how sound quality > has vastly improved, but at least the mystery of why the right speaker > was louder is solved.
Two words: Sighted Evaluation. The entire bidirectional network audio and other signals on a USB cable are passing through the same 2 sets electrically identical sets of conductors and contacts. A break or attenuation anyplace along it will affect both channels identically, including eliminating their existence if the fault is bad enough. Two other words: Zero possibility. This is in fact good evidence for the lack of reliability of sighted evlauations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ arnyk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=64365 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=103818 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
