How to tell if amp channel is dying?

[Intamin]

So for the longest time my left speaker has sounded louder than my right. I tried to equalize it with the balance on my preamp, and never noticed it when I was watching movies using my receiver since audyssy corrected for it. Well, I noticed it when watching movies and when playing ps3. So I swapped the speaker cables, and instantly my right speaker was now louder than my left. So is this an issue my "right" channel on my amp you think, or a defective cable? I'd like a good starting point to fix this. Thanks!

Just swamped in a new set of cables, same issue as before.

[Big Daddy]

Even if there are no defective receiver/pre-pro and wires, it is not unusual for the front speakers to have different outputs. The main reason is because of speaker/room interaction. You need to run a test.

Get brand new wires that are not defective and connect the left channel wire to the right speaker and the right channel wire to the left speaker. If the same side is still louder, it is a room problem. If the other side becomes louder, then it is your receiver.

[Intamin]

Ok, just swapped in new speaker cables and interconnects. Left side was still louder, so I moved the left speaker wire to the right channel and the right to the left, and then right channel became the louder one. So I tried using my cdp with my pre-amp to amp, and the same issue occured, where the left starts of loud, I swap speaker cable, and the right becomes loud, leading me to believe it's an issue with my amp.

EDIT: After lots of listening tests with my preamp, the left channel isn't much louder than the right channel. Using the balance function of the preamp took care of that issue. I than ran audyssy again, and once recalibrated that got them sounding equal again. I guess after loaning out my speakers I didn't have them dialed in like I used to which was causing me to notice the issue and made me think it was something with the amp since I could tell a difference in channel volume, but after some eq'ing I got it fixed for now.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy

Even if there are no defective receiver/pre-pro and wires, it is not unusual for the front speakers to have different outputs. The main reason is because of speaker/room interaction. You need to run a test.

Get brand new wires that are not defective and connect the left channel wire to the right speaker and the right channel wire to the left speaker. If the same side is still louder, it is a room problem. If the other side becomes louder, then it is your receiver.

What Big Daddy said I've done this test myself. You will be surprised how your speakers interact with even the furniture in your room - let alone the boundaries ect. If you bring one new piece of furniture in your room that sits between you and your speakers or to the side walls - thats reason enough to run your equalization program again (Audyessy,MCACC, YPAO or whatever you have ).