I just rebuilt my rig because I thought an old line mixer I had buried in my Dark Trinity box was failing. The reason? I couldn’t get the pan to perfectly center across each channel.
I was plugging in a Moog Minitaur into L/Mono and measuring on my OT, my Mackie Mixer and my RME fireface and the left channel was anywhere between .1 and .5 db hotter.
I got a Rolls Zone Wolf and the issue remains (though less). I tried various cables, various instruments and then finally plugging a couple of synths directly into the Mackie and RME.
Turns out each channel is slightly different on everything!
Is this normal? Did I spend too much time ITB to expect perfect, dead-center panorama?
It was driving me crazy…now I think I’ve been crazy all along.
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Oh, this drives me crazy too. Just wiggling a cable can sometimes ‘fix it’, though I (seriously) think it has something to do with the weather, climate, atmosphere, power, aliens…
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I have the same problem when using my A4mk1. One channel is hotter than the other and nothing seems to fix it. Then all of a sudden the problem is gone. Could be the weather yes 
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I just need to live and let pan-a-little-hotter-to-the-left…
I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out and a bit of money but in the end, I’m still happy. The old Rane mixer I had was sloppily modded to allow the aux sends to work without main volume (basically converted into a chop-shop zone mixer). Having a new mixer in there gives me a lot of piece of mind. All new cables too. Going to reassemble tonight and get back to making tunes.
Same thing happens with my Focusrite interfaces. It seems common across gear and brands.
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Yes, seems to happen to me a lot. I want to say it’s just one piece of gear, my interface, my software, but the truth is, it ALWAYS happens. 
Seems to happen most with my Focusrite (as slicetwo mentioned above) but even going through a mixer first, or running a stereo synth (with a non-panned patch) into my Bluebox tends to still have a slight bias to one side or the other. I’ve tried tons of combinations. By the time it gets somewhere that’s particularly measurable (meaning software) there’s always a bias.
I always adjust it out during mastering, but I really feel like I shouldn’t have to do that, and I don’t remember ever having to until maybe a few years back.
I used to run a Delta 1010 for a while way back when, then an Echo Audiofire, and I don’t remember having this issue. I also did interface testing at Adobe for a while for Audition, and I don’t remember having this issue with the gear there either. (RME, Focusrite, MOTU, etc. etc.)
So far I’ve noticed it with my own modular gear (designed and built by me) going straight into the interface, Hydrasynth, Elektron boxes, Rev2, and others.
I can tweak it on the inputs of my interface, but it still usually ends up in the mix somehow once I’m on the PC. I’ve even trimmed my outputs on my modular to counteract it before, but it seems to creep back in at some stage.
Oh well, I’ve learned to live with it. I haven’t let it go enough to just record and not tweak it back though. It messes with my brain to see one channel larger than the other, even if it’s not very (if at all) audible). 
The funny thing is that I’ve seen this in a lot of videos on YouTube of people recording, or making music. Either they don’t seem to care, or don’t even notice. So it’s fairly widespread I would think.
Happens to me a lot. My solution was to get a mixer with no concept of a stereo pair so I have to adjust gain and fader on each channel individually and by hand. The bias is totally still there, but now I have no expectation of it ever being even 
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thanks for all the responses. This definitely makes me feel better about it. @J3RK, I agree, seeing one slightly higher than the other seriously messes with my brain.
I actually stood in front of my monitors like a fool and ran snare hits out of my RYTM with closed eyes trying to detect which side was higher (swapped cables randomly). Couldn’t tell the difference at all. I’m just moving on and chalking it up to my perfectionist tendencies that I’m trying to beat into the ground.
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