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Accurate and boring or colored and fun

JSmith

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By the way. Nice picture of those goodies.
It's the female rap group named Salt N' Pepper.
However, I was with friends sometime around the age of 20 at a decent restaurant in Italy, Verona. After we were served our food, my friend asked for ketchup. I can say that was not appreciated by the staff.
LoL, yeah that's a no no. :p



JSmith
 

USER

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Imagine if people were hardheaded enough about enjoying a heavy green tint on their televisions to say that those set to professional standards were boring. Do what you want and enjoy what you want, but get a decent TV and simply use the settings and don't overcompensate and use pejorative language to dismiss quality engineering.
 

JSmith

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Imagine if people were hardheaded enough about enjoying a heavy green tint on their televisions to say that those set to professional standards were boring.
Unfortunately there are heaps of people that choose "dynamic" settings on their TV's or don't have the aspect ratio correct, gamma settings wrong... really annoys me. First thing I want to do is grab the remote and fix it. All my panels are properly calibrated... as I want to watch things as they're intended to be watched, as much as possible.

But yes, I grasp your point and agree with it... to an extent.



JSmith
 

Grumpish

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Imagine if people were hardheaded enough about enjoying a heavy green tint on their televisions to say that those set to professional standards were boring. Do what you want and enjoy what you want, but get a decent TV and simply use the settings and don't overcompensate and use pejorative language to dismiss quality engineering.

The problem with the purist it has to be neutral approach is that it ignores one very important factor - we are all different. Your neutral is my shrill (it was in my case for many years), my dynamic is your brash - balancing this out with equipment that is not neutral is just as valid an approach as using DSP in a neutral system. The colour settings on a TV example - defective colour vison in men is very common, why should someone watch a TV with a colour balance that looks wrong to them simply because it is correct?
 

Purité Audio

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The problem with the purist it has to be neutral approach is that it ignores one very important factor - we are all different. Your neutral is my shrill (it was in my case for many years), my dynamic is your brash - balancing this out with equipment that is not neutral is just as valid an approach as using DSP in a neutral system. The colour settings on a TV example - defective colour vison in men is very common, why should someone watch a TV with a colour balance that looks wrong to them simply because it is correct?
Why on earth did you endure a ‘shrill’ system for any years?
Keith
 

Koeitje

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Accurate is fun.
 

Grumpish

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Why on earth did you endure a ‘shrill’ system for any years?
Keith

I didn't - I auditioned plenty of speakers that were supposedly (or measured) flat, but usually either stuck with what I had or got something that other people thought were a bit lacking at the top end.
 

Purité Audio

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Really only engineers strive for a horizontally flat response, domestic listeners prefer a slightly downward tilted response , is more bass slightly less treble.
Keith
 

Frgirard

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It's a myth. The b&k target curve has been a fashion in studio.
The flat response at listening position will give a dull sound.
Ns10, auratone are not flat speakers.
 

ThoFi

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Interesting discussions.
I also do not understand the goal of flat FR of speakers because the room acoustics influences several dBs. (deviation at FR is much lower)
To me flat FR of speakers is marketing.
Harbeth use this very clever…
 

Purité Audio

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A horizontally flat curve in a domestic situation can sound a bit thin/trebly.
Speakers should have a flat Fr when measured anechoic-ally, once placed into a room the bass is reinforced to some degree and the treble diminished.
Keith
 

Jim Matthews

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Here is what a sound engineer I have had some contact with said:

I have worked in the studio and as a sound engineer all my life

My studio monitors are straight, flat and piss off dull but damn accurate!
At home I want to cuddle with a little voodoo-flum and cuddly sound "


He likes old tube amps and vintage speakers, among other things.

I've lived with, and enjoyed both approaches.

My current rig leans heavily on streaming as a source and keeps the signal digital right up to the moment of amplification - inside the active speaker.

I use the factory EQ - no additional adjustments.

I couldn't be happier with the sound and don't miss the fuss of tubes.
 

Frgirard

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A horizontally flat curve in a domestic situation can sound a bit thin/trebly.
Speakers should have a flat Fr when measured anechoic-ally, once placed into a room the bass is reinforced to some degree and the treble diminished.
Keith
The equal contour loudness curve demonstrates why a flat curve at the listening position is wrong.
 

ThoFi

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A very good off-axis FR is more important than a totally flat FR?
What do you think…
 

Mart68

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Interesting discussions.
I also do not understand the goal of flat FR of speakers because the room acoustics influences several dBs. (deviation at FR is much lower)
To me flat FR of speakers is marketing.
Harbeth use this very clever…

Because a speaker that measures flat anechoically when placed in a normal room will have elevated LF due to room gain and attenuated HF due to attenuation and will therefore sound natural and 'even' to the listener due to the FR response of our hearing.

With a speaker that does not have an anechoically flat FR performance in room will be unpredictable and is very likely to sound poor (uneven FR) compared to the speaker that measures flat anechoically.

Okay you can possibly fix that with DSP but you're starting from a sub-optimal base-line when there's no need to.

The Harbeth speakers that were measured here a while back did not have flat anechoic FR, although they were a long way from being the worst ever.
 

tomtoo

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That's what I said. He starts with "flattest possible" and changes it to "not flattest possible". Why not start with "not flattest possible"? Could be that the room correction makes the direct sound flatter, by coincidence. If you're focussed on how the FR ends up, why worry about how it starts?

Couse its much harder and sometimes even not possible. Big FR deviations mostly show bad speaker design. To know if you can fix bad FR with EQ is not easy. Its much more easy to get a good speaker design to your preference with EQ than a bad.
 

egellings

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Tube amps do not have to be distortion factories. Competently designed push-pull ones can have distortions low enough that the average listener would be hard pressed to tell the difference between that kind of an amplifier and a competent S.S. one. Of course, once that's achieved, then why tubes? Amplifier as pet is why.
 

blse59

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I'm thinking about what type of solution I should get. Thank you for the tips and advice I received in the thread, even though I can not really, yet, concretize what I am looking for.

https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...he-buck-combination-amplifier-speakers.26465/

What about nowadays with the old (prejudice?) That exact speakers, those with a straight frequency curve, low distortion are dull to listen to? Thinking of studio monitors in the first place. Why would they be dull? Isn't a colorless sound the best, in the long run, if you do not want to get tired of listening? I myself have never heard any well-constructed monitors so I can not comment.

Here is what a sound engineer I have had some contact with said:

I have worked in the studio and as a sound engineer all my life

My studio monitors are straight, flat and piss off dull but damn accurate!
At home I want to cuddle with a little voodoo-flum and cuddly sound "


He likes old tube amps and vintage speakers, among other things.

I can understand him per se. He wants a different sound in his spare time. But for the rest of us who are not professional sound technicians. When we get home after work . We have not at our job listened to and analyzed music all day, so maybe that is exactly the preference? Curious about your attitude and your sound ideals.

Edit.
Isn't it easier to have a solution that does not color the sound and when, if you want a colored sound, you plug in an EQ?
I suspect that a colored sound may at first seem attractive (for example, an elevated "disco" bass) but that you get tired of it in the long run.
Get the gear that is as accurate as you could desire or afford, then color/distort it to your hearts content afterwards. You can always distort technically perfect gear but you can't do the reverse. This applies to things such as headphones, speakers, monitors/televisions, microphones, camera lenses, etc.
 
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