does anyone enjoy flat sound from audio speakers?

[olieb]

So you can't define it?

I guess OP is deliberately fuzzy to stir up the pot. Nothing deep here.

 

[voodooless]

I guess OP is deliberately fuzzy to stir up the pot. Nothing deep here.

The OP never made a single coherent post... At this point, I'm not even sure it's deliberate anymore.

 

[olieb]

The OP never made a single coherent post... At this point, I'm not even sure it's deliberate anymore.

Haha, good point. I did not check any of his posts before.
I just reacted because others reacted, stupid idea. I need a coffee.

 

[Blockader]

seems like everyone doesn’t like flat sound

All speakers with flat sound differ in how they sound in a room due to their varying directivity; in other words, the reflections they produce in a room have different sound profiles. Aside from this, since the 1960s, participants in all blind tests have preferred flat on-axis sound over any other sound profile. However, as mentioned earlier, on-axis sound is not the only factor determining how speakers sound. There isn't once instance of blind testing experiment where the conclusion wasn't favoring flat on-axis sound.

 

[sigbergaudio]

I actually prefer a flat response. I have a button on my integrated amp. that allows me to run it direct for a perfectly flat frequency response.

That button makes your amplifier produce a flat response. That is not necessarily (and not likely) to be what you actually hear at the listening spot. The way speakers interact with rooms typically results in a gently downwards slope (less energy in the treble than in the bass).

I have no idea what the OP is referring to or means here, but I have met very few people who prefer flat (no slope) response in the listening position. This is debated in countless threads here already, and Erin in the video posted in this thread also explains it well.

 

[dominikz]

People often confuse the concept of flat in-room response (bad) and flat on-axis anechoic response (good).

The flat on-axis anechoic response (good) of loudspeakers with even directivity (good), as we know, results in downward-sloping in-room response (good).

That being said, it is not clear what the OP means by "flat". They might also mean 'flat' in the colloquial and usually negative sense (e.g. opposite of 'exciting' or 'fun'). Of course loudspeakers with flat on-axis anechoic response (good) and even directivity (good) don't sound 'flat' in this colloquial sense (bad) - they sound about as exciting / fun as the music you listen through them.

 

[JeremyFife]

I quite like all the wiggly bits ...

 

[patq2]

All speakers with flat sound differ in how they sound in a room due to their varying directivity; in other words, the reflections they produce in a room have different sound profiles. Aside from this, since the 1960s, participants in all blind tests have preferred flat on-axis sound over any other sound profile. However, as mentioned earlier, on-axis sound is not the only factor determining how speakers sound. There isn't once instance of blind testing experiment where the conclusion wasn't favoring flat on-axis sound.

I don’t believe that is true what I do believe to be true is all speakers with flat response sounds identical the reason the speakers sound different from each other is the sound isn’t flat

 

[patq2]

That button makes your amplifier produce a flat response. That is not necessarily (and not likely) to be what you actually hear at the listening spot. The way speakers interact with rooms typically results in a gently downwards slope (less energy in the treble than in the bass).

I have no idea what the OP is referring to or means here, but I have met very few people who prefer flat (no slope) response in the listening position. This is debated in countless threads here already, and Erin in the video posted in this thread also explains it well.

I don’t believe the room effects the speaker sound my room is very small with an quietkat bike in the center of my room that doesn’t effect my speakers at all

 

[Ivanovich]

I don’t believe the room effects the speaker sound my room is very small with an quietkat bike in the center of my room that doesn’t effect my speakers at all

Nope, the room (any room) acts like a filter, absorbing (carpet, furniture, curtains, etc.) and reflecting (walls) at various frequencies. Smaller the rooms tend to make resonances higher in frequency and closer to the ceiling height’s resonance frequency, which can concentrate the peaks and nulls in a narrower band.

 

[DVDdoug]

I don’t believe the room effects the speaker sound my room is very small

It does. If you were blindfolded you could tell if you are in a small or large room, and you could know something about the acoustics (hard or soft surfaces, etc.) just by having a conversation in the room (without considering speakers).

Especially at low frequencies, you get standing waves that create bumps & dips at different frequencies and different places in the room (depending on wavelength). In smaller rooms the standing wave problems extend higher-up in frequency (but still mostly in the bass range).

Only an anechoic chamber (or outdoors) doesn't reflect and affect sound.

And yes. Most people (audio pros and home-listeners) prefer speakers with flat on-axis frequency response. But some people do like to turn-up the bass and/or highs, and because of they way our ears work (Equal Loudness Curves), at low volumes it sounds more natural if you turn-up the bass.

 

[dominikz]

I don’t believe that is true what I do believe to be true is all speakers with flat response sounds identical the reason the speakers sound different from each other is the sound isn’t flat

This is not correct, and primarily so because you're not considering differences in sound dispersion - which many of the people contributing in this thread tried to explain. A loudspeaker radiates sound in all directions, not just on-axis, and its response is never "flat" in every direction. Even speakers that are 'flat' on-axis aren't always smooth off-axis (but good ones are).

In addition there is also no such thing as a 'perfectly flat' on-axis response with real loudspeakers - there's always some tolerance, and many times there's different LFX with different loudspeaker models. At louder SPLs differences in compression and distortion may come into play as well.
All of this can make two "flat" loudspeakers sound different to some extent.

I don’t believe the room effects the speaker sound

This is also not correct, and trivial to demonstrate.

First example: Loudspeakers played in a cathedral will sound different to the same loudspeakers played in a car. The reason is of course different proportions of direct sound, early reflections and reverberation in the two environments.
Second example: Loudspeakers placed at two very different places in the same room will have audible resonances (and dips) at different frequencies. This is because they will excite room modes to a different extent, and also because differences in distance to walls/ceiling/floow will cause different SBIR effects. Both very audible.

Lastly, In typical residential rooms early reflections from adjacent walls will influence the sound heard by the listener because they are typically not fully absorbed. This is why on-axis being flat isn't sufficient - some of the sound heard at the listening position is radiated by the loudspeaker off-axis and reflected of the adjacent hard surfaces.
In an good anechoic chamber, however, loudspeaker dispersion pattern wouldn't play much of a role because there only the direct sound would reach the listener.

All of these topics are covered at length in dr. Toole's amazing book "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms", which I can highly recommend.

 

[DVDdoug]

seems like everyone doesn’t like flat sound

The concept or philosophy of "high fidelity" is to faithfully (accurately) reproduce the recording as-intended. You should hear what the producers & engineers were hearing. That mostly means flat frequency response, low noise, and low distortion, and no "unusual" room reverb/reflections.

At lower volumes the Equal Loudness Characteristics of our hearing make it sound like we've turned-down the bass even more, so it sounds more natural if we boost the bass at lower volumes. And most of the time we aren't listening at "realistic volumes". And just turning it down means we aren't hearing it as it was heard in the studio and we aren't hearing all of the little details.

 

[sigbergaudio]

The concept or philosophy of "high fidelity" is to faithfully (accurately) reproduce the recording as-intended. You should hear what the producers & engineers were hearing.

I think this is romanticising it a bit. The producers or engineers or artists intent is a somewhat fleeting goal. And what they heard wasn't necessarily awesome since many still use inferior monitors (for instance lacking in bass). But many know those monitors initimately, so they "know" what it will (to a point) end up sounding like (how it will translate) despite that not necessarily being exactly what they hear.

 

[irvman]

It's confusing. I don't know what "flat" sound means. I have read that it is the sound produced by setting a preamp/receiver's bass and treble knobs at the 12o'clock position. I've also noticed that a lot of software equalizers have a"flat" preset so one can increase or decrease db levels at various frequencies, but where do you set your tone controls on your preamp/receiver in that case.

 

[waynel]

For music I prefer the sound when I room correct for flat below 500Hz. I understand that there is a lot of advice out there to use a room curve to boost low frequencies but every time I try even a modest boost, I find that I prefer the sound to be flat. Bear in mind that my system measures flat down to 8Hz in room.

 

[JeremyFife]

It's confusing. I don't know what "flat" sound means. I have read that it is the sound produced by setting a preamp/receiver's bass and treble knobs at the 12o'clock position. I've also noticed that a lot of software equalizers have a"flat" preset so one can increase or decrease db levels at various frequencies, but where do you set your tone controls on your preamp/receiver in that case.

It is a bit confusing, especially since we don't really mean "flat"
For electronics, the signal going IN should be the same as the signal OUT: for a DAC that signal will have been converted from digital to analogue and for an amplifier the output will be bigger (louder). The electronics should not have added anything that would look like a change in the frequency response i.e. peaks and dips in the original signal. Nothing to do with "flat" and more to do with not making changes.
For speakers, which is where this makes more sense, look at any of the speaker reviews here. The "ideal" speaker produces a nice flat gently downward sloping frequency response with no big dips or peaks.
There's no such thing as truly ideal though, and the behaviour of your speaker changes because of interactions with your room. You may also prefer to use your tone controls (or more sophisticated DSP) to e.g. increase the bass when you are listening at lower volumes.

I don't think this is the thread to learn much from though but it is entertaining!

 

[GXAlan]

One thing we haven’t discussed is the impact of listening distance. I listen at 5 m or so, and at least according to this, a speaker that was flat at 1m would be down 1.6 dB in the high frequencies at 5m just from atmospheric absorption. But there are people who may listen at 2m, at which point their experience will be slightly brighter. The low frequencies don’t change as much.

Air absorption attenuation with humidity and frequency

Air absorption with humidity and frequency. Learn how much the highs get lost first when throwing over long distances

www.doctorproaudio.com

Maybe this is the value of tilt for tonal control!

 

[sigbergaudio]

It's confusing. I don't know what "flat" sound means. I have read that it is the sound produced by setting a preamp/receiver's bass and treble knobs at the 12o'clock position. I've also noticed that a lot of software equalizers have a"flat" preset so one can increase or decrease db levels at various frequencies, but where do you set your tone controls on your preamp/receiver in that case.

Flat means that the energy level of the sound is the same across the frequency range.

Where this gets a bit difficult is that even though you send sound from your amplifier to the speakers that are flat, the way sound is reflected and distributed in a room emphasise and often increase the level of the lower frequencies, and attentuates high frequencies.

The result in the listening position is a frequency response that is sloping downwards from the bass to the treble (more energy in the bass than in the higher frequencies), despite the fact that the direct sound from the speakers are of equal energy to begin with.

If you want the sound in the listening position to be flat (you don't want that), you have to start out with more treble than bass.

 

[Anton D]

Perfect!