x-rgb mini framemeister right channel audio issue

[Ultronator]

I'm looking for some help here and hope I came to the right place. I recently bought an xrgb-mini framemeister and have been very impressed with its ability to properly scale up classic games to my 1080p HDTV over HDMI. More recently I bought the necessary JP-21 cables for SNES and Sega Genesis (Model 2) (both of which are US NTSC) to get proper RGB output from those consoles. I ordered the cables off of a highly rated seller on eBay (retro_console_accessories) and started using them with the JP-21 to RGB adapter that came with the framemeister. After a while I noticed that the right channel audio would randomly go silent and leave only the left channel audio playing. At first, I only noticed this happening on the Genesis, particularly when playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles because every other ring you get plays a sound out of the opposite audio channel from the previous. So for me, only every other ring was producing a sound. I thought I got a bad genesis cable, so I requested a replacement from the seller. No luck with the second one either. At this point, I tried some other things.

I made sure the JP-21 cable was plugged firmly into the JP-21 to RGB adapter (I noticed it wasn't pushed in all the way before). This didn't help. Also, I had the framemeister standing up vertically using the included stand and figured that due to the sensitivity of these types of cables, the cable dangling down might be the problem, so I laid the framemeister down horizontally and that seemed to fix the problem, or so I thought.

After playing more Genesis games and SNES games for hours on end, I started to notice that even with the new way I had things setup, the right channel audio would still go silent either randomly or strangely enough, based on the game playing a particularly loud sound. After this happens, I can fix it by jiggling the JP-21 to RGB cable or unplugging it and plugging it back in. The problem is this can happen every half hour or even every few minutes or not at all and every time it does, I need to stop playing and re-seat the cable to fix it. And yes, that's right, it does happen on the SNES as well. I just took a while to find a game where I would notice it. On The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, depending on which side of the screen you are on, the sound will play through the appropriate channel when you swing your sword to attack an enemy or use any other type of item that makes a sound. When in the middle or left side of the screen, it isn't an issue, but if I move all the way to the right side of the screen, I would sometimes notice that the right channel audio has stopped playing.

What I'm trying to figure out is if my xrgb-mini framemeister is defective and it's worth sending back (it does seem to come with a one-year warranty). Has anyone else encountered this problem? It seems to be rare based on how difficult it is to find anyone even mentioning having actual hardware problems with this device.

The other possibility I'm thinking is it's the JP-21 cables I am using. As far as I can tell, I bought them from the best, most highly rated seller on eBay, and he even sent me a replacement when I first had the problem, so I doubt it's 2 bad cables in a row, but I know there are other sellers to buy them from. I'm just not sure if it's worth spending more on other cables just to test this out. I would likely try the SCART versions of the cables on the second attempt (that the seller has built for use with US consoles), just to see if those don't cause the issue, but of course, then I would need to get the SCART to RGB adapter as well.

I suppose it's also possible that the JP-21 to RGB connector that came with the framemeister is bad.

So any suggestions or ideas to better understand my situation would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to try any suggestions. The last thing I want is to unnecessarily send back the xrgb-mini, wrongly claiming that it is defective. With such a highly rated device, I find it hard to believe that it has anything wrong with it, but I suppose there's always a chance of that with any advanced piece of hardware. I've kept the firmware up to date and I'm always hopeful the problem will go away with the next update, but that hasn't happened yet.

[blizzz]

I suppose it's also possible that the JP-21 to RGB connector that came with the framemeister is bad.

That would be my guess. You could try to open it up and check if there's a loose connection.