PERMANENT reversed audio channels problem?

[MIETAS]

Power is not responsible for swapping audio channels.

I know that many motherboard driver bugs cause reversed audio channels, but that's not power related.

There might be a big dominoe-effect or rube goldberg thing going on, where some bug is triggered from a happenstance of power issue (e.g. initialization issue), in a "one-in-a-million" type thing. Without proof -- I would suggest following other avenues of troubleshooting elsewhere as this thread is almost certainly just noise that may lead more people to unnecessarily worry.

I have renamed the thread title to remove the bait & redirect the discourse to more probable legitimacy. Thanks.

I'm not sure how can I troubleshoot this further since I tried literally 5 different mobos from different manufacturers, different cpu from different generations and many peripherals. Also this simply works in another place. I don't want to confuse anyone and cause worry, just wanted to share my story (rhyme not intended).

[delve]

so what happened, when you returned back to the "bad" place, were the channels inverted again?

[Chief Blur Buster]

There's also brute force methods to just solve the problem...
Some headphones are miswired and/or ill-fitting headphone plugs (can't push all the way in for one reason or another), so there are other situations where channels are swapped.

Sometimes it's a situation where it goes mono (both L/R is touching the same contact), and the headphone on-headphone electronics may now be trying to decode Dolby Stereo analog phase information in the mono analog audio, in the situation of a missing L/R separation. Often there's some leftover unused phase-encoded Dolby Stereo in an accidental mono audio connection.

If your headphones has built-in Dolby Stereo decoding, maybe test some "dumber" headphones that has no built-in old-school Dolby Stereo decoder (or a way to turn off that decoder) -- and try very clean headphone plugs + very clean headphone jacks, so you don't accidentally get stereo analog mis-decoding from a accidentally-mono connection. A dirty house that has lots of smoking going on, can cause a lot of issues with dirty contacts that will create weird audio glitches too. I'm wondering if your situation is where your headphone is accidentally decoding analog Dolby (in the wrong L/R phase) as a false autodetect in a shorted L/R situation, instead of digital Dolby (for a correct non-shorted non-mono L/R connection).

Additionally, there are utilities to intentionally reverse audio channels -- have you tried these software utilities?

Try doing it via direct digital L/R swap, and also try doing it virtually (via analog Dolby Stereo encoding in a monoaural connection), and see what happens.

Alternatively, what about a headphone adaptor dongle that physically swaps the L/R channels? Brute technique, but it is another simple solution.

[Thatweirdinputlag]

That is pretty interesting to know, and unfortunate for you to be in this situation! I don't think I've ever read anything about this in any of the forums..

I can say, from my experience, that the sound quality that comes from the PC does seem dull, lifeless and overall not on par with whatever quality input device you're using. For example, I have a Shure SM7B that was previously hooked to an Audient ID4 MKII with an in-line pre-amp Audiotriton fethead. The Mic costs about $400, the audio interface costs about $200 and the Cloudlifter is about $150. With all that, everything I record literally sounds like a garbage $10 mic hooked to an old recorder! Interestingly, if I bypass the audio loop and use live monitoring instead "which is an option that you have on any audio interface that will just take the signal from the Mic and send it directly back to the headsets" then the sound of my voice is just normal, rich, clear as it could be and most importantly it is reflective of how a $750 audio setup should sound like.

I contacted Audient numerous times and tried to explain to them that I have a problem with their audio interface, and that i was suspecting something was wrong with the analog to digital conversion unit that is messing with the quality of the recording or sound. And they said it never really happens and that it was weird! So I assumed they just did not want to acknowledge the problem, so I just went ahead and dumped $250 on a different Audio Interface "GOXLR Mini" and a different preamp "Cloudlifter CL1" just to make sure, thinking that it would solve my issue only to find out that the same problem persists! Which was fantastic quality in live monitoring, and garbage sound coming from the PC.

All in all, I would not be surprised that you're effected but in some other way. Welcome aboard my man

[Unreazz]

I had smiliar experiences onces when i played one of my favourite online games. You have there the option that you can play death themes when you get killed by someone. That theme sounded so differently, not correct and somehow corrupted.

When i started the game with a VPN connection, where the game played perfectly how to used to be, the theme sounded like perfect again, crystal clear like i had it in my memories back then, when everything was normal.

[wadge]

Power is not directly responsible for swapping audio channels.

I know that many motherboard driver bugs cause reversed audio channels, but that's not power related.

However:

-- There might be a big dominoe-effect or rube goldberg thing going on, where some bug is triggered from a happenstance of power issue (e.g. initialization issue), in a "one-in-a-million" type thing. Without proof -- I would suggest following other avenues of troubleshooting.

-- If you're using analog Dolby Stereo (old fashioned pre-digital Dolby), the audio phase of L/R is responsible for generating L/R separation. A shift in phase of the channels can technically create an audio reversal. Power problems might cause phase shifts. There are also situations where power adds some noise to audio, that gets confused as reversed audio channels. Use Dolby Digital instead or other digital methods of L/R instead of analog methods of L/R that is phase-dependent.

To avoid this, use digital means where possible. Switch motherboards, use a USB sound card (they're now just tiny USB dongle with a headphone output, or simply a headphone with USB plugs; that's a tiny soundcard chip built into the USB plug).

Those can also solve the problem --
avoid that problematic motherboard headphone jack if you can!

You CAN use a USB headphone, or a USB soundcard dongle ("headphone plug to USB adaptor") to solve your problem. Cheap, fixes your problem without a motherboard swap, often improves your sound quality over crappy 5-year-old motherboard sound, and you get to call it a day. In year 2021, these USB adaptors are literally a $250 SoundBlaster card miniaturized into a $10 dongle.

...Also, buy a high rated micropoll-capable PCI USB card. Never share your USB chip between an 1KHz-8Khz mouse/keyboard and a soundcard dongle if your motherboard has only one USB chip for all the motherboard USB ports...

You did say you tried a sound card already, so your problem is possibly something else -- testing a completely different computer (or even a console) may be what the doctor orders. It might even be an issue specific to certain games too, where some games are known to glitch by swapping audio channels.

I have renamed the thread title to remove the bait & redirect the discourse to a wider net of technical & scientific legitimacy. Thanks.

Believe it or not few weeks ago i bought a simple usb dac, this one : https://www.amazon.fr/Sabrent-adaptateu ... HJ1ZQ&th=1

And my issue went away for at least 3 games (no more pre-firing, perfect hitreg etc..) but then i had to go eat, once i came back and re launch a game the issue went back...

Is there something deterioring the signal, cycles ? i don't know at this point

I discovered something else, when i'm playing with the sound of my pc monitor (and disable audio in bios) everything feel more smooth but the problem is that i can't here any foot steps that are crucial in fps

Here is a thread i found from a guy who also noticed this issue : https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads ... e.3472962/

[Chief Blur Buster]

And my issue went away for at least 3 games (no more pre-firing, perfect hitreg etc..) but then i had to go eat, once i came back and re launch a game the issue went back...

Is there something deterioring the signal, cycles ? i don't know at this point

If it’s a real issue — then 99%+ sure that something software is mis-initializing somehow. Like, if the computer went to sleep, and things reinitialized incorrectly (e.g. Dolby ProLogic screwup).

A complete shutdown and restart may do the trick, or perhaps simply inserting the USB dongle after a cold reboot (with dongle unplugged).

It’s probably an initialization sequence — things that must be powered in a certain order — for bug-free initialization of audio. A sleep mode can screw up (put an initialization sequence out of order) and possibly trigger a bug that swaps the channels.