Yes, and there is the known relationship between in room and anechoic response. The in room should have a shallow downward tilt as frequency increases. This is the in room measure of an anechoicly flat speaker. ...
But that is a gozoutta, not a gozinta. The spectral tilt occurs because the off-axis response of the speaker is more directional at high frequencies, so high frequencies are not reflected by the room as much as low frequencies. It's what one expects in a normally reflective room from a speaker that is anechoically flat, not what one designs for.
This occurs with live music, too--the highest frequencies are most likely to be attenuated when reflected compared to the low frequencies.
And there is a very strong likelihood that it is a preference because it's what people are used to. Note that the preferred bass boost diminishes with experience in Toole's and Olive's work. It's still there, but not as much.
Another way to say it is that we may state that the speaker's job is to originate sound in a way similar to the source instruments, so that the room can affect it the same way it does for original instruments. But this is the wrong objective, because many of us want to hear the effect of the performance space in our non-performance space. If we listened to the instruments in an anechoic chamber, we'd hear what they sound like when truly flat. Take any ensemble and put it in the middle of a grassy field, and then listen. For most musicians, this is their worst nightmare.
I was listening to a recording of a world-class tuba player playing a Bach flute sonata, unaccompanied. (Piano accompaniment adds hard points that shake up the perceptions.) He was recorded in Powell Hall in St. Louis, with the microphones backed away enough to let the instrument's sound blend in the room (tuba players talk constantly about how it sounds "out front" versus "up close").
My wife came into the room and said--it sounds so much smoother on the recording than when you play. Well, duh. Setting aside the vast gulf between the skills of the performer and my own lack thereof, the reverberation of Powell Hall sounded to me like several seconds, while in my living room it's just a fraction of a second. We practice at home but can never hear (at home) how it sounds "out front".
So, I want some of the performance space to come through, and I want my own room to add as little as possible to it. Others may want their listening room to add more. I therefore rather prefer a bit less downward spectral tilt as what Toole's data suggests people prefer--that downward tilt, as Toole suggests, is naturally interpreted as room effects and filtered by our brains. Some might think my systems sounds bright. (Of course, my age-related hearing loss is a built-in low-pass filter).
I cannot imagine that these issues are unmeasurable.
Rick "not thinking the downward tilt is a target, per se" Denney
