I found this comment on youtube by asperous helpful: If you are on a mac you can go under accessibility -> sound -> play stereo as mono. This will balance the sound.

Plug your headphones only halfway into the jack.

Yet another brilliant argument for still using the 3.5mm jack

Yeah, because people don't know how to mix audio plug your jack only half way in and risk it getting loose.

This is like if some guy was punching people on the street, instead of removing the guy you'd just tell people to duck.

It was a cross between sarcasm and a reference to a previous HN discussion on phones looking to phase out the 3.5mm

Yes, I am aware, but I'm very much in favor of removing the useless jack. I have already transitioned into using bluetooth earpuds and headphones with my mobile devices and laptops, and I will never go back to cables.

This is "hacker" news after all ...

One could make a case for this feature by claiming it is an accessibility feature for the non-bilateral deaf / hard of hearing community.

As a non-bilaterally deaf person, I agree. Although TBF, I think it should be an OS-level feature built into the sound settings, instead of asking everyone else to reinvent the wheel all the time.

I feed the URL into smplayer and force the audio to mono inside the program when it's unbalanced.

Alternatively:

      mpv --audio-channels=1  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5GVOFAYi8k

Thanks, this works great.