Hello,

Love scratch live, no problems with that.

But I am suddenly having an issue with my ttm 56 mixer. I need this mixer working soon, so I hope someone can give me a suggestion that might help. I might have to fix it myself because I live far away (in Taiwan). There is a Rane distributer here, but if their survice is anything like what I got from Vestax in Taiwan, I would rather fix the thing myself.

Here is the issue:

It sounds pretty good when I switch to only left channel or only right channel, but when both are playing together, it sounds really muddy. This problem is the same on both channels.

I have checked it out a lot. This is not a problem with my home stereo, becuase the problem occurs where ever I go.

It is not a problem with the faders, I don't think, because I get the same result if I use mode 2 to pan back and forth with the upfaders, as if I use the pan faders up by the eq.

I am baffled.

Has anyone heard of a problem like this before?

Does anyone have any ideas about what might cause it or how best to fix it? Why would the sound crap out when both the left and right channels are played together?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

i had EXACTLY the same problem, it turned out to be only 1 channel on my amp, the cd channel worked fine but the aux had these exact same results. i guess the channel was knackerd. however i see you have tested it so it cant be you amp !

what kind of cables connectors are you using?
that will make the world of difference.
like, say you are using rca to stereo 1/4 jacks....not good.
you have to use rca to mono (tip and ring) connectors or rca to rca.

you might have damaged the output RCA's. try using the 1/4 inch jacks and if that fixes the problem your output RCA might have broken soldeir joints. It happens from time time with rough handling or sudden temperature changes.

It sounds like some place within the signal path you are sumung to mono. meaning youve got both right and left going through the same cable. and this is probably after the mixer. make sure that each conection is seperate (R,L) throughout the entire system. make sure you dont have any adapters causing the R and L to conect with each other.

do you have the same issue in the headphones?

Thanks to everyone who has offered a suggestion on this.

I have made some progress in isolating the problem...

That was a good point about the headphones, they seem ok (though I have always had a little bleed on the headphone fader, is there any way to fix that?). Thinking about the headphones made me think of the Auxiliary outs.

That is how I discovered that the aux outs sound fine!

Therefore, the problem must be in the master out part of the mixer. I have tested both the 1/4 outs and the rca outs before, but I was at a club and a bit rushed, so they may have given me stereo 1/4 inch leads, I am not sure.

At any rate, the problem is clearly in the master out section, and as a temporary fix, I can just use the auxiliary out as my main.

Someone else pointed out to me that this problem is most likely due to phase cancellation. Could this be related to summing to mono? or is there most likely another explaination of how this happens, I am not sure...

Does anyone have any idea what I should do to fix this?

yes this could be related to summing to mono.

real simple test would be just use RCA's to connect to your amp and compare the audio quality from when you are centered and when you are faded to one side or another. it should be a bit louder each time you just go to one side or another but a sum of the stereo channels in the middle. if it sounds decayed in the middle check how it sounds in your headphones. if it sounds good in the phones then check you output cables....if you know the cables are good...like if you just run a cd player directly to your amp using the same RCA's you're using going to your amp from your mixer and the CD player sounds good then it's the main output from your mixer.

hope this helps you single things out.

if you're using 1/4" make sure they are mono.

This is happening to me. Channel 2 sounds fine, but the channel 1 is really low. I changed the speakons around, and it reverses the effect, channel 1 sounds fine, and channel 2 is low. So, it's not my speakers(Carvin 832's) I've tried different speakon cables, and same thing. My headphones sound fine no matter what. When I messed around with the XLR cables, I think channel one on my new Crown XLS 602 is low. I am using a Denon x1500, and I have all high quality rca's in all jacks. I'm calling Crown on Monday, this sucks...

This turned out to be telling.

In the end, the problem that I was having appears to have been a spotty and tempermental amplifier (it was a Pioneer home stereo component).

I am afraid that my club test may have been stymied by incorrect adapters.

My ttm 56 sounds great when played through a different source!

Thanks to all of you who have offered helpful suggestions.