Reduce intensity of 3D sound spatialization?

Hey guys,

I've been playing around with 3D sound in the game engine, and think it's very cool.  However, the spatialization effect sometimes feels a bit stuffy, and I'd like to reduce the intensity of panning changes, so that when something is left or right it's noticeable, but doesn't sound so much like a hard pan.  At a distance, it can be disorienting to hear the sound pan so much with relatively small changes in head rotation.  The same goes for smaller indoor environments; it's a bit uncomfortable cause in the real world sounds are constantly being reflected into both ears.
AFIK there isn't currently any direct way to lower the intensity of the effect.  I've played around with layering 2 copies of the same sound, one flat(louder/softer with distance but always centered) and one 3D to try to avoid stuffiness, but then the problem becomes flamming/phasing.  If I could get the two sounds to be  started within 1 ms of each other it would be fine, but I'm not sure how good the result would be.  
I guess it would be easiest to just manually clamp the left and right channels with a script, but I haven't seen anything in the sound actuator documentation that says you can change volume separately.  <b>Does anybody know how to access L/R audio data from the sound actuator?  </b>

thanks

to me do the same (i not sure if is my audio system that is a bit old)
this solve the problem

file
user preferences
system
audio
SDL <<<
mono <<<