IMO Whitestar is some of the worst sound in a modern day pinball machine. I have an LotR and it has Whitestar as well. My understanding is the sound is mono, not stereo. The only way to get stereo sound is to upgrade to PinSound but then you would indeed need to remix at least the music, something that I did with every file for LotR, sound quality of all files was poor.

Before I upgraded to PinSound I put in a potentiometer, which is just another name for volume control, it helped to control the noise, there is a thread on pinside that discusses this, search ‘Whitestar potentiometer’ and you will probably find it.

I have played Sopranos and it is a fun game and the sound didn’t really bother me but it wasn’t a game in my lineup, if so, I could imagine being more picky. Good luck.

I searched ‘Whitestar potentiometer’ with no luck, try ‘Whitestar sound issue’

You could probably replace that fluorescent bulb with an LED bulb for about $9, just need to remove the ballast that should just twist out, don’t exactly recall in whitestar but mine is now LED. Individual speaker testing is weird. My understanding of that background music setting is how it plays when call outs are going on as well. Good luck tweaking & enjoy your pin.

Oh, that background music setting MIGHT be dependent on another audio setting, check your manual for like an ‘Auto’ audio setting or something like that.

I just looked over the Sopranos manual, looks like you want that speaker setting to 1 for full volume, 15 is the lowest or off. Those frequency speaker tests appear to be for testing speaker polarity.