I don't hear any channel louder than the other with mine. Did you try another speakers/headphones/cords to eliminate possibility its them, not the card itself?

This is my card, I never experienced any audio difference... maybe it's the cabling? did you try the mixer application? Remember to set the microphone level to 0, it helps the output quality (not just this SW-60XG, all of them) There is also the posibility that it seems this way because of the midi file playing instruments at left/right channels with different volume...? A good test would be to put a (known and good) constant sound source on the line-in of the card and monitor the levels of line-out . Each stereo channel is supposed to have independent volume, maybe try a source with a cable that is modified to mix both L+R channels to one, effectively having the same "mono" sound with both channels.
Unless you are hearing some bad sound on one channel with static and distortion, then it is another story... (like the classic amiga caps problem...) but I don't see how such a fault could develop over transit 😕

As for SysEx you can use what I posted here, never tried with the SW-60XG but I don't see the reason it won't work: DOS/win utilities to get the most out of MIDI hardware? (the resets archive)

Hi bristlehog and Keropi (you, also here 😁),

I connected the device to headphones and to a stereo amplifier the same results (directly to the board as well as through SB AWE64). I tried a few games including DOOM I & II, Monkey Island I & II. Yesterday I installed the card on windows 95, I will check there also with headphones and on the stereo amplifier (by the way after installing the device, the device is not visible as a sound and game device on the device manager - Stranger is that the AWE MIDI support is physically disabled by jumper and I changed with CTCU the DMA and IRQ disabling also the AWE32 MIDI port but I have to use AWE32 MIDI device to hear sound from the SW60XG - or what I think is SW60XG - After work I will physically remove the board I check if I can still play midi on windows 95).
PS. No, there's no sound distortion.

Thanks for your answer and I will keep you informed.
Cheers,
diskers

strange! I really didn't notice any level difference all that time... does your amp has any VU meters? I would do the mono sound -> stereo trick (so that both channels get the same sound signal) and see the VU meters... or maybe connect the card to a nearby pc with Audacity, press record and watch the virtual meters...
The SW-60XG does not appear as a device, as far as I remember it appears as a MPU device and you select it for output. Haven't really bothered with windows with this card, I used it in my 386/486 DOS builds.
A quick way to check if it's OK is to just have the speakers connected to the SW60, there is no internal sound bypass, if you get sound then it's the one making it
Also don't forget the mixer app, lower to 0 all microphone/tad/input sources you don't use, it will affect quality. The SW60s are not the most quiet cards, their onboard mixer is mediocre :\

Hi Keropi,
Ok I made a wave file of the efcon /test command (yamaha sw60xg setup/config program) I will send it to you to your mail if you give me your address. You will clearly see the weak input from one channel). I will try to make some other test. Tested also on my old tape recorder with a vu meter and the same effect. And as I said before the difference is really audible on headphones directly connected to the Yamaha.
Here's the image of the view meter and the two channels output with Audacity:

no need for any wave via email, I'm gonna pm you on amibay , I had no idea or noticed the difference... but I never used any headphones , just normal speakers... we will work this out 😊

SW60XG gets detected by Win98SE as 'MPU-401 compatible device' (or something alike, I am unsure since I have a russian version of Win98SE).

I have to use AWE32 MIDI device to hear sound from the SW60XG - or what I think is SW60XG - After work I will physically remove the board I check if I can still play midi on windows 95)

I don't think it is possible to use one MIDI device to hear MIDI output from other MIDI device (unless the aforementioned devices are routed to each other with MIDI cables). Are you really sure about it? Maybe what you hear is just AWE64 output? Remove your AWE64 card to eliminate possibility of messing things up.

in case someone is wondering about the original problem (lower volume output from the left channel) , diskers discovered that a smd cap broke off... never realized this all these years but with a good replacement job the card will be as good as new 😀

I have an SW60XG with the same issue. I hear noisy static from the card as soon as power is applied.
I found that cap C3 on the edge of the card opposite the metal bracket is missing.

Can anyone tell me what sort of cap I should replace it with?

wow , it could there be a case that all sw60's suffer from bad(?) soldering?
I am sure diskers will answer you DK 😀

http://geryon.ru/sw60xg.jpg

For me it (C3) looks just like its neighbour C138.

ah, now I see what kind of cap it is... it's next to the crystal, measure C4 and C3 should be the same

I borrowed a multi meter that reads capacitance and desoldered the C4 cap.

I think its a 10pF cap. Thing is, the meter defaults to nF and even with nothing attached to the probes it reads about 0.020 - 0.030 nF. When I measure the cap it goes up to 0.040 - 0.050 nF

I measured a couple of other caps that I know the values for and it seems to read them OK, so I'm hoping that 10pF is correct.