LAME encoding, sound coming more from the left

[Chengbin]

I am using HDConvertToX to convert my videos (using use directshowsource as decoder). I use LAME, V5, q0 -h. The sound is strange. The voices are normal. It is played on both channels. But when you have music, the sound suddenly is dominant on the left channel (there is faint sound from the right). I know it is not lame's problem and not HDConvertToX's problem (I encoded it on a different computer and it is normal). So it means my ffdshow is messed up. I uninstalled it and installed ffdshow tryouts beta 7, same thing.

What is happening?

BTW: What does ffdshow use to decode WAV? That's the only point in the chain that I can think of that can mess it up. Since LAME requires WAV as a source, I listened to the WAV generated for LAME, and it sounds fine.

[foxyshadis]

Open ffdshow audio options, turn the mixer on, set it to 2 channel, and make sure that the mixer advanced settings are all set to the defaults. Then, if it's still wrong, listen to the demuxed mp3 in winamp - maybe it is lame after all. In HDC's audio options you can check to normalize it, plus there are some tweaks in advanced options - any of those could be messing it up if there's a bug in the current version.

[Chengbin]

Setting mixer to 2 channels worked. But I have a 5.1 setup. Will this affect it?

[Midzuki]

Setting mixer to 2 channels worked. But I have a 5.1 setup. Will this affect it?

Depends also on how the drivers currently-used for your sound card deal with a 2-channel stream "inside" a 6-speaker configuration.

[Chengbin]

I mean I have a 5.1 channel setup. Does the mixer mix a 6 channel audio stream to 2 channel to my speakers?

[foxyshadis]

In that case, again in the ffdshow mixer switch to 5.1 and test. If that works, the mixer just needed to be set back to defaults. If not, look in your audio drivers to see if there's any odd presets that change the balance for 5.1 input.

And just in case, you should check your speakers' balance knob. You might have left it out of whack! Though if changing to 2 ch fixed it, it doesn't sound like it.