Originally Posted by jnorman ➡️

lemmy, the positioning of one speaker in a corner will absolutely have a noticeable effect on balance. since the power of sound is largely concentrated in the low frequencies, the speaker in the corner will seem louder - remember that if a speaker is placed out in the middle of a room and off the floor, it will radiate as a sphere. placing it on the floor or against a wall will cut that sphere in half. moving it into a corner will cut the radiant wave in half again - each time in that process you will be adding about +3dB of low frequency output to what you are hearing.

and you are correct that it generally only affects low frequencies, so you should do a little test. get a sample of a mid-level frequency tone, maybe 1000 hz, and run it through both speakers. switch the playback from stereo to mono back and forth a few times. listening to the playback in mono will tell you whether the LR levels are balanced (it should seem to come from exactly the middle). if the system sounds balanced at 1000 hz, your speakers are probably fine. trying to correct the low freq imbalance problem by altering the overall volume of one side will result in other kinds of freq balance problems. so, to correct your placement problem (assuming you dont really have a better choice to place them in the room), you should use the "room" EQ control on the back of the monitors to either slightly boost the low freq on the speaker that is not in a corner, or slightly reduce the low freqs on the speaker that is in the corner. then use 3-4 test tones at perhaps 4khz, 1khz, 300 hz, and 90-100 hz one at a time thorugh the speakers - listen to each tone carefully in mono and stereo to ensure you have correct balance from L-R for the entire frequency range. if you still hear slight imbalances, use the room (low), mid, and high freq EQ onctrols on the rear of the monitors to get it just right.

good luck.