# Quick question on left/right LED equalizer level lights



## wolfestone (Jul 30, 2013)

Hi all, I wasn't able to find an answer to this on a car forum, so figured I'd try here.

I have an older Blaupunkt radio/cassette (Reno SQR 46) which is connected via DIN to a Blaupunkt BEA-80 equalizer.

This equalizer has two stacks of 5 LED's on the side, which are level indicators (my terminology might be off) for the left and the right channels. The right channel always seems to go higher than the left, according to the indicator lights. The balance is set to center on the head unit, and the eq doesn't have a balance control.

I tried running an identical test tone through the left and right channels, and got the same result (right seemed to go a little higher).

I was wondering if this is likely to be normal operation, or if really both eq bars should rise and fall the exact same amount if they are receiving the same input.

Here's a video (not mine) of the same equalizer (different head unit) and it does seem to be doing the same thing, but that's with normal music playing not test tones. PORSCHE BLAUPUNKT TORONTO SQR 48 WITH BEA 80 AMPLIFIER EQ - YouTube

If anyone has a couple of minutes to give me their opinion on this please I would really appreciate it.


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## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

Hi wolfestone, and welcome to the forums.

It is possible the level meters are not calibrated well and are reading incorrectly. It is also possible that the left and right channels in the equalizer have different gains. It likely the capacitors in that unit have deteriorated over time causing one of these above problems, or something else.

If you want to see what is going on, try applying a test tone to both the left and right channels at the same time, and measure the outputs with a voltmeter. This should give you a really good indication if one channel is coming out of the eq hotter than the other channel.


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## wolfestone (Jul 30, 2013)

Thank you very much.

This is probably a stupid question, but when you say measure the output voltage - should I be connecting the voltmeter to the speaker outputs or the outputs to the LED's?


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## Justin Zazzi (May 28, 2012)

No stupid questions here, just stupid answers.

For measuring the voltage, I had the audio output of the eq in mind. Positive and negative leads of the meter to the positive and negative leads of the left channel, and then separately to the right channel.


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