Is channel imbalance just a thing one has to live with?
Is channel imbalance just a thing one has to live with?
This is more of a general audio question, but still relevant I feel. I have had my HD 600 for about 5 years now and noticed channel imbalance sneaking in slowly. Now it is noticable, but not too bad just yet. I was hoping for more expensive headphones to not have these issues, but apparently I was wrong. Is this just something one has to get over, or is there some secret sauce to prevent this from happening?
I have now gone through some classic budget IEM recommendations as well and they have all had severe cases of channel imbalance in a very short timespan: Salnotes ZERO (about 3 months) Moondrop Chu (about 0.8 months) KZ ZSN Pro X (this one took 6 years to get channel imablance actually)
Will I just have to get new headphones now? I'm eyeing those Beyerdynamics everyone talks about (DT 770 pro).
EDIT: Also, I have found that it tends to be mostly the harsh frequencies which shift over to one side, so when adjusting the balance in some settings, it shifts all the other frequencies out of balance while fixing the 4000 - 8000 into the right position. Just something I observed.
I've had a fair amount of headphone experience but channel imbalance is very rare for me. The few times it has happened have been with IEMs that needed cleaning, or once where it happened suddenly and seemed like an actual hardware failure. Are you sure it's not a source issue? Are you sure it's not your hearing?
I habe already flipped the headphones so it's nit my hearing (I'm also pretty young so yeah). I will try another DAC at home today, so I'll update this comment once I do that.
Being young doesn't really matter as you can also damage your hearing if exposed to loud sounds, but I digress. Regarding channel imbalance. If your amplifier uses old school potentiometers channel balance is certainly a thing. So you indeed need to test that imbalance with other sources. Also I have been enjoying music since my teens and I'm now in my forties, imbalance with headphones was a pretty rare thing for me, as for IEMs besides the rare QC thing I never had that kind of problems. I know it's a long shot but you should test your amplifier section for DC offset...most amps filter it but one is never too cautious as it can ruin gear.