Left and right and headphones??

[madmac]

Hey all,

Lately because I'm in a apartment, and like my music rather loud (Not hurting loud...but nice loud), I have started to listen to a lot of music via headphones and I am confused and uncertain about left and right. Is there such thing as a left handed drummer, whereby the usual location and positioning of the drums is backward?. 9/10 times, a drum roll will go from the right speaker (Where the high hat and snare drum is located) and finish with the big low drum on the left and finally the big left cymbal , but some cd's I listen to go the other way, which just sounds wrong to me!!. It makes me question my wiring when I hear this phenomenon!!.

Has anyone else noticed this??

[kcsun]

if it happens on some, and not on others it is NOT your wiring

kc

[madmac]

if it happens on some, and not on others it is NOT your wiring

kc

Agreed......it's odd though. I'm going to put in a pink noise test CD to verify though!. :W

[Kevin P]

A lot of times the pan position of drums is determined when the recording is mixed and/or mastered and not by the actual layout of the drum kit.

And then that's assuming there are real drums in use in the first place.

[madmac]

A lot of times the pan position of drums is determined when the recording is mixed and/or mastered and not by the actual layout of the drum kit.

And then that's assuming there are real drums in use in the first place.

I listen to mostly jazz so trust me, the drums are real!!. I play drums and the snare drum is typically on the right from a recording perspective. But, if I was a lefty....that might be different.....I dunno!!!

[Ovation]

Phil Collins and Don Henley are both left-handed drummers whose kit is setup "backwards". I don't know of any jazz drummers who do this, but I'm sure there must be some.

As for panning the sounds, a mixer can place them anywhere but I suspect if it just a direct "live take" with no post-mixing (apart from level setting), you might experience a "backwards" sound.

[iiaudio]

Some drummers and engineers prefer a "drummer's perspective" over an "audience perspective".

[madmac]

Well ok then. Looks like there is no industry standard in 'soundstage' set up then.........That kinda' explains what I'm hearing. I seem to notice this problem more with headphones then speakers.

Never happens with movies though. Car always travels from one side to the other in symmetry with the speakers/ headphones.

[madmac]

Yes...it appears that some engineers like to record from the back of the drums perspective or as mentioned, they play a left handed drum kit and it's just recorded the way they play them.

[madmac]

Another thing I've noticed is that EVERYTHING sounds good in headphones and properly balanced whereby when I listen to stuff via speakers, some music sounds better than others. I suppose that's because headphones are not room acoustic dependent?

[madmac]

What's up with my Oppo Dvd player verses my Marantz CD player volume wise?. The Oppo makes my headphone amp clip and I have to turn the volume down to half and then put into high gain mode to get clear sound. The Marantz CD is played at normal gain and at almost full volume via the CD player (I can adjust the analog output volume on both units). It's just that the Oppo puts out so much more volume than the Marantz via it's analog out's!!. I find that weird no??.

[Hdale85]

Just different level outputs, just like car head units that have 1v, 3v, 5v pre-outs the same can happen on home gear. Different companies do different levels of gain and output on the pre-amp (equivelent) circuit.