Question about valve gear?

[heathen]

Hey everyone, I bought a Pendulum es8 limiter a while ago from a good bloke who frequents this site. Anyway yesterday I was mixing a song and hit the solo button on a mono drum loop and noticed on the very high snare peaks (very mean bighty hip hop snare) the L/R levels were slightly different. The rms levels were the same each side. This only seemed to happen on the bighty high mids. I thought it was a cable , but it was'nt as all my other (solid state) outboard gear are perfect L/R.
It was'nt a lot only say 0.3 db discrepency at the most on the highest peaks. I'm wondering is if this is usual with good quality valve gear, or variable mu limiters? Or should I think about a service/ recalibration and/or some new valves.
It sounds fine to me but it may not be perfect under test. I re-calibrate the levels everytime I run a stereo signal through it, the test tones are always L/R perfect match, so it seems to be dynamic material which is the cause, the rms levels are always spot on though, it is just the highest peaks. Is this due to the crosstalk between the 2 channels in valve gear?
It needs a new VU light anyway. Are any engineers here familiar with servicing the Pendulum units?

Thanks
Heath

[rob]

crikey....0.3dB...not sure i'd even worry about it. If your "rms" levels are spot on, but the peak levels differ then i wonder if it is a slight variation in the amount of limiting that is taking place between left and right.

At the end of the day, there may well be an adjustment to get it right on the money, but i'd almost guarantee that by the time it takes to make a cup of coffee it would drift by a few fractions of a dB. I can measure levels to 1/100 of a dB and could drive myself crazy try to get a lot of gear to stabilise within 1/10th of dB.

You'll be unlikely to hear 0.3dB difference on a transient peak....

[Howard Jones]

Hi Heath,

Are you saying that you can hear 0.3dB? Or just see it in the meters?

Howard

[heathen]

Just the peak meter in my software monitoring was showing the discrepency, there is no difference between L/R I can hear and the rms levels are fine. Was just wondering if this is inherant in valve gear with high peaks at certain freqs. Should be ok I guess, though I really would like to get the vu light fixed. I thought it may be difficult to keep tubes perfectly calibrated, over the entire bandwidth and dynamic range of music.
Cheers Rob I won't drive myself nuts over it, ahh I feel better now. I'd love to get some new pots in the thing as well, as they are so damn fiddley, even a slight touch will put them out, but geez does it sound good, great units.
Thanks for your replies.

Heath