Left/right headphone balance

[petersaj]

Hi - I'd like to dynamically control the balance between a left and right headphone.

It seems like something like this may be possible with the Position property on CreateSource, but I always get sound coming out of both headphones.

Is there another way to change the left/right headphone balance?

This is related to this old question: https://github.com/orgs/bonsai-rx/discussions/1816

[banchan86]

Hi @petersaj There might be several methods to achieve what you are looking for, depending on what sounds you are playing.

1. There is a simple method that involves manipulating the waveform. For instance, if you have a waveform from Bonsai.Dsp.FunctionGenerator, you can duplicate the waveform for two channels, independently scale them with different values for ConvertScale, then Concat them for playback.

If you want to go down the CreateSource route, there are also two ways to do it.

2. One way is to position a single CreateSource "speaker" using the OpenAL cartesian coordinate system, but it might be a bit tricky figuring out the coordinates for both the listener and speaker, which is probably what the previous poster faced. You can put in fractional units for the X position, which will lead to a left or right-dominant speaker position.

3. It might also be simpler to set up two CreateSource "speakers" on both sides and change the gain of each independently.

Workflow attached with these methods I played around with:

#2525 adjust_stereo_volume.zip

Notes: For reference, I copied the setup from https://groups.google.com/g/bonsai-users/c/0_S_ImisKe0/m/PogcWX0tCQAJ, which has more details on OpenAL sources.

[petersaj]

Thanks for the fast reply! We went with the first option, which worked great