My iBook leans to the right... or at least its speakers do...

[ChePibe]

I have a strange, strange problem that has plagued my iBook (12" G4 1.33) for as long as I've had it (a little more than a year now).

The speaker balance will randomly shift to the right speaker. Sometimes all the way, sometimes just a little bit, but it just seems to inevitably shift that way.

I have no idea what causes it. The only link I can think of is iTunes, but I'm not sure if iTunes is changing it somehow or if I only notice it when I have iTunes running.

Any idea what's causing this? I lean to the right a wee bit myself, but I somehow doubt the iBook is picking up on these vibes...

 

[gr8tfly]

I've had that happen, too. It hasn't happened recently, so I haven't been able to track it down. It did happen more than once, though.

 

[zflauaus]

I think it's a glitch in Tiger. It happens on my iBook too, so don't worry. It's note iTunes, it's just Tiger.

 

[panoz7]

Almost the same thing happens to me on my powerbook... for me the sound shifts to the left speaker only.

I haven't found the cause. For me it seems to be correlated to when I unplug my speakers. That may just be a coincidence though.

Could you do me a favor? Shift all of the sound to one speaker and see if you can hear the sound out of the other one. You shouldn't be able to, except for me it's not possible for me to shift the sound to the right speaker only; the sound still comes out of the left speaker. I can successfully shift the sound to the left speaker though. So strange. Perhaps these two issues are related?

 

[applemacdude]

System Preferences ---> Sound ---> Balance

 

[Xeem]

I have the same problem, but it can shift left or right. Like you, I also have a 12" 1.33 gHz iBook I got a bit over a year ago. I think it's sleep or battery related, as I'm on the go with my iBook quite a bit.

 

[gr8tfly]

System Preferences ---> Sound ---> Balance

Went through a few iterations of re-centering it, only to have it shift again. Hopefully, if/when it happens again, I can correlate it with some app.

 

[Xeem]

System Preferences ---> Sound ---> Balance

Or option-mute (or volume up or down) to get there a bit faster. Yes, it fixes it temporarily, but the problem is that I have to fix the balance almost every day at some point. Not a horrible issue, but very annoying.

 

[ChePibe]

Whew, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.

Interesting - you'd figure Apple could come out with some kind of simple fix to a problem like this. Surely, there must be something modifying that setting...

Anybody know of a fix?

 

[Bobdude161]

my right speaker is also lower than my left one, weird. I asked my doctor about it and he said it was normal.

 

[neonblue2]

Whew, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.

Interesting - you'd figure Apple could come out with some kind of simple fix to a problem like this. Surely, there must be something modifying that setting...

Anybody know of a fix?

10.4.8 (or was it 10.4.7) fixed this issue for my old PowerBook. I wonder why you're all still having problems.

 

[iMeowbot]

Anybody know of a fix?

http://www.whamb.com/balanced/

 

[ChePibe]

Thanks iMeowbot! Works like a charm!

Wish I'd found this months ago!