Is a totally flat speaker really what we want for home reproduction?

[IPunchCholla]

I wonder how true that is (that engineers know and adjust for this). It is not adding frequencies, as much as it is giving an unbalanced impression of the music on the recording, compared to as it would be heard in the hall.


Well, this gets us back to my first post, accuracy to what? I want music to sound accurate to my understanding of a violin, cello, piano and so on. If this is better done with a non-flat FR, so be it. Likely this isn't a similar problem for those that mostly listen to electronic or rock, perhaps this goes some way to explain any divergence in thinking.


Seems like a whole lot of energy and fiddling. If I had some manual knobs to twist, I might do it on a per song basis, but (save in extreme cases) I would rather set and forget.

I’m not sure how accurate it is overall, but the one I know takes it into account. When I am making music (all electronic) I’m making it listening to monitors calibrated to flat. I can then simulate different listening situations from those.

I’m sure my particular interest in music colors my take, but I’m not interested in having people hear something true to reality, but true to my vision. Starting with producing music for flat speakers is the easiest first step.

As for the EQing of individual songs, given the 10k plus songs in my library, I’m not going to do it, but we would need that if every recording was completely made to the taste of the individual and those tastes differ significantly.

But my guess is, like with photography and people seeing similarly enough, people hear similarly enough, that calibrating (roughly) to an idealized flat speaker is again, the easiest way to get good consistent results.

 

[RayDunzl]

A "flat" speaker, would, since I'm not afraid of a little DSP to season to taste, seem like a good place to start.

Better than some wacko curve, anyway.

I tend to tune what I have to "flat" as measured at the listening position, with no complaints from anyone who's inhabited the sweet spot.

Unsmoothed JBL LSR 308 (red) and MartinLogan reQuest (black)

All the hash in the JBL trace is from room reflections creating cancellations, I presume. If measured up close, the hash is not evident to this degree.

The ML are much more directional, something else to my liking, for "critical" listening.

The hole in the bass is due to phase cancellation of standing wave in my asymmetrical (open to another room on the left rear corner) room. It disappears when the bass is stereo, and wasn't even noticed until measured.

The dip at 220 Hz for the ML is the dipole cancellation off the wall behind the speaker. The JBL exhibits this too, to a lesser degree.

Without EQ

Both a little over-ripe in the low end in this room for my taste.

 

[Chromatischism]

Thank you! This is the kind of help I'm looking for. I'm not seeking technical knowledge, but rather personalized advice. I'm completely satisfied with this answer.

Because personalized advice circumvents the need for a "flat speaker" in order to satisfy most people. The "one size fits all" approach doesn't fit most people. This is how I view the topic.

When we say flat we mean uncolored. It plays the signal you present to it without major changes. In essence, what a speaker is supposed to do.

 

[RayDunzl]

When we say flat we mean uncolored. It plays the signal you present to it without major changes. In essence, what a speaker is supposed to do.

That's what I think I get when I EQ flat.

See this.

 

[Frgirard]

When we say flat we mean uncolored. It plays the signal you present to it without major changes. In essence, what a speaker is supposed to do.

What you do with the distortion?

 

[sigbergaudio]

Because personalized advice circumvents the need for a "flat speaker" in order to satisfy most people. The "one size fits all" approach doesn't fit most people. This is how I view the topic.

I think you are basing this on a misunderstanding. A neutral speaker isn't a "one size fits all" approach that generally don't fit most people. On the contrary a balanced speaker will sound right on most content, and also sound right to most people. It's a common misconception that people are "different" with regards to how we hear or what we prefer. We're more similar than we like to think.

 

[MattHooper]

The LS3/5A was NEVER a grade 1 neutral monitor (LS3 not LS5), but designed initially to reproduce/emphasise distortion and hiss in a BBC OB van! It does this very well indeed, but 'natural tone?' Nah, never in my book as compared to its peers, it always sounded squeaky and 'lightened' on speech with 'tinsel' on top and in a domestic scene, a one note thump for mid-bass

I own the Spendor version (S3/5) and I find just the opposite: They produce to my ears among the most "natural" sounding human voice I've heard. I've certainly heard more startlingly clear and clean reproduction of vocals, but few that capture the "gestalt" as I hear it in the human voice - the combination of density and softness, the human quality.

I am constantly comparing the sound of voices as reproduced through different speakers with the real thing (casual comparisons, e.g. closing my eyes listening to a real person's voice, comparing it to the reproduced voice) and very few speakers have survived this comparison as well as my spendors. To me that's a hell of an achievement.

 

[DSJR]

The Spendor S3/5 wasn't the same as the BBC version with KEF drivers (Spendor did make an 'official' one for a short while but I think it was post the re-design in the late 80's, where KEF basically supplied kits of drivers and crossovers to licensed makers to be built up into cabs and sold as proper LS3/5A's. Even 'officially licensed ones' without the KEF drivers (such as the Stirling) were smoother, so not really the same, which I've known since 1975 when Rogers presented the domestic version to an unsuspecting audience Spendor twenty years back had some great new models, but for some reason, they tried to bury the classic models in the UK and wouldn't lend us any even to see if they were still competitive. they did relent after my time, but prices were ridiculous and there's been further changes since the (re)financing a few years back, their designer moving on to with Harbeth (lots going on there and with modern day design thinking too I gather, but prices will be high sadly)

I directly compared the Harbeth LS3/5A (post redesign) to the then brand new P3 model and the P3 was in a different world, with better imaging, a more believable soundfield generated (free-space on tall stands) and even then around 1990 or whenever it was, more power handling.

 

[MattHooper]

At the very least a good salesman can suggest a product that will satisfy the buyer. Most independent Hi-fi shops around me sell about a dozen different speaker models and amplifiers. You can tell that each product has been cherry-picked to satisfy most buyers, and at any budget. You can sample every product and form your opinion/preferences. That's the world I choose to live in. I trust the expertise of the salesman. I trust my ears. The noise is reduced to a minimum.

In this Forum environment we get long discussions on measurements, the CTA-2034 standard, the Harman curve and so on... This is absolute noise to me.

My goal is personal satisfaction, I do not understand these scientific measurements well and how they can affect my purchasing decisions. Like somebody previously said:

"most people will only look at the Pink Panther, the SINAD, the Speaker Preference Rating."

Ok, you've chosen not to learn anything about the relationship of speaker measurements to how they sound. The basics are actually not difficult at all. A single hour out of your life, likely far less than you've spent even in stopping in once to a local dealer or reading audio stuff online, watching this clear explanation from Floyd Tool should get you up to speed:

But, again, if you just don't care to understand it, if it's just not a tool you want to use...so be it. Nobody is forcing you nor should they. But then, I hope you understand at least why it's reasonable for other people to value such tools even if you don't.

I completely understand why some people want to have an understanding of the available research as a strongly guiding factor for weeding out products they might be interested in. So for instance seeking speakers that tend towards the "Harmon curve."

Personally, though I like to see speaker measurements, objective information about what is going on, I am not myself always caring about speakers engineered towards a single goal or sound presentation. I really enjoy the fact that different speaker designs sound different, and I get a kick out of how those differences play out in music reproduction. So I'm happy there are all sorts of different approaches, including eccentrics, out there in the audio world. If a speaker designer has said "frankly I don't care that much about flat frequency response, I just want a sense of kick ass dynamics and vivid presence" I'm not going to avoid it because it doesn't fit the Harmon curve, I'm like "I want to HEAR that speaker! This could be FUN!" And indeed I have had very enjoyable times listening to divergent speaker approaches.

 

[MattHooper]

The Spendor S3/5 wasn't the same as the BBC version with KEF drivers (Spendor did make an 'official' one for a short while but I think it was post the re-design in the late 80's, where KEF basically supplied kits of drivers and crossovers to licensed makers to be built up into cabs and sold as proper LS3/5A's. Even 'officially licensed ones' without the KEF drivers (such as the Stirling) were smoother, so not really the same, which I've known since 1975 when Rogers presented the domestic version to an unsuspecting audience Spendor twenty years back had some great new models, but for some reason, they tried to bury the classic models in the UK and wouldn't lend us any even to see if they were still competitive. they did relent after my time, but prices were ridiculous and there's been further changes since the (re)financing a few years back, their designer moving on to with Harbeth (lots going on there and with modern day design thinking too I gather, but prices will be high sadly)

I directly compared the Harbeth LS3/5A (post redesign) to the then brand new P3 model and the P3 was in a different world, with better imaging, a more believable soundfield generated (free-space on tall stands) and even then around 1990 or whenever it was, more power handling.

Cool.

I've always enjoyed the classic Spendor sound, listening to the old BC1s being my first exposure.

I auditioned a couple of their newer slim floor standing models (e.g. Spendor D7) and found them "Spendor in name only" in terms of sonic character. By that I mean they sounded nothing at all like their classic sound and didn't do anything for me.

BTW, I guess the first kind of "blind test" I ever did involved the Spendor BC1s. In the 90's a friend had got in to audio gear, started with him getting the Quad ESL 63s (which blew my mind, I later bought them too), but he also got hold of the BC1s. One day he said he wanted to do an experiment with me. He set up both pair of speakers beside each other, took me in to his listening room with my eyes closed, sat me down, and switched between them playing some music, asking me to guess which where the Quads. It was suprisingly not obvious at first! Eventually it did become more apparent (e.g. some more boxiness to the Spendors), but still, it was a surprise.

 

[tuga]

Cool.

I've always enjoyed the classic Spendor sound, listening to the old BC1s being my first exposure.

I auditioned a couple of their newer slim floor standing models (e.g. Spendor D7) and found them "Spendor in name only" in terms of sonic character. By that I mean they sounded nothing at all like their classic sound and didn't do anything for me.

BTW, I guess the first kind of "blind test" I ever did involved the Spendor BC1s. In the 90's a friend had got in to audio gear, started with him getting the Quad ESL 63s (which blew my mind, I later bought them too), but he also got hold of the BC1s. One day he said he wanted to do an experiment with me. He set up both pair of speakers beside each other, took me in to his listening room with my eyes closed, sat me down, and switched between them playing some music, asking me to guess which where the Quads. It was suprisingly not obvious at first! Eventually it did become more apparent (e.g. some more boxiness to the Spendors), but still, it was a surprise.

When the Spendor BC1 came out Peter Walker (Quad) said that forward-radiation boxes were finally up to par:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SOqCbh2ESOgC&pg=PT34&lpg=PT34&dq=martin+colloms+High+Performance+Loudspeakers+spendor+bc1+peter+walker&source=bl&ots=7mA8r-RzDp&sig=ACfU3U0jVhlmvUQj9ukWWf_zrmgbabC08g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjwyNrVyu3oAhWiVBUIHVEfC68Q6AEwAHoECAsQKQ#v=onepage&q=martin colloms High Performance Loudspeakers spendor bc1 peter walker&f=false

 

[Chromatischism]

What you do with the distortion?

I don't understand the question.

 

[Chromatischism]

There's a lot more information out there than there was in the '60s and '70s, and we need to grapple with it. We need to know enough to make it our servant, and not let it be our master. Education is now a life-long thing.

In another post, I mentioned the phrase, "due diligence". Thirty years ago, that would have gotten guffaws from listeners. Not now. Now, it's a requirement. And I'm not talking just about audio; I'm talking about EVERYTHING. Medicines, public office, cars, food and water ingredients ...... we now need to know so much more. And due diligence is the only way.

Yes, it would be nice to rely on someone else. It would be nice to have a crutch to lean on, to make the hard decisions for us. IOW, it would be nice to relax and be lazy, to let the other guy do the hard work. It would be nice to not learn new mathematics. It would be nice not to learn new computer apps. It would be nice to just trust someone.

Ain't gonna happen. Not in this New World. We gotta get smarter, basically because the liars, crooks, thieves and cheats are already ahead of us.

I'm half your age and I feel the same. It never ends unless you give up and go live a simple life in the woods. Not my style; I want to learn and know things to always be equipped for whatever I get into. I'd rather not be just an imprint of the first 2-3 decades I lived.

 

[DSJR]

Cool.

I've always enjoyed the classic Spendor sound, listening to the old BC1s being my first exposure.

I auditioned a couple of their newer slim floor standing models (e.g. Spendor D7) and found them "Spendor in name only" in terms of sonic character. By that I mean they sounded nothing at all like their classic sound and didn't do anything for me.

BTW, I guess the first kind of "blind test" I ever did involved the Spendor BC1s. In the 90's a friend had got in to audio gear, started with him getting the Quad ESL 63s (which blew my mind, I later bought them too), but he also got hold of the BC1s. One day he said he wanted to do an experiment with me. He set up both pair of speakers beside each other, took me in to his listening room with my eyes closed, sat me down, and switched between them playing some music, asking me to guess which where the Quads. It was suprisingly not obvious at first! Eventually it did become more apparent (e.g. some more boxiness to the Spendors), but still, it was a surprise.

Sorry if this is off topic... The later Spendor models after the S and Se series which were smooth but not bland at all, were deliberately balanced I believe to have a more forward upper midrange (the ex Spendor designer posts on a private forum fairly anonymously). I only really know the D7 of the 'new wave' of models and I actually liked the forward upper mids, but that's in smaller rooms and often close to wall siting, where the sub 400hz region may be boosted a bit. More recent models had shared drivers (not always successfully) and the trend has been to take the 'warmth' out for good or ill. For example, the latest Classic 100 model apparently has a 12" paper cone, which I gather is lighter and subjectively 'faster' (less boom?) than the plastic coned predecessor the ymade in one or another form for many years...

I'm eternally fond of both the Quad 63's as well as the BC1's, but the former now fall apart due to ageing adhesives and the latter are appreciating collectors items. The BC1 did evolve but interestingly, the significantly reduced bass distortion in last examples (with 'proper' tuned port) didn't affect the 'tone' overmuch. I'd kind of shifted to the SP1 by this time as it played rock music better without sacrificing too much of the midrange magic in its parent models (it's a kind of BC1/BC2 hybrid but with a doped poly cone rather than doped Bextrene). The 63's sounded fab if lifted and tilted back a little (a Quad dem at a Heathrow show had them sat on the floor playing into people's knees and sounding muffled and thick textured - Quad were seriously insular by this time and totally dismissive it seemed about more modern thinking which wasn't all bad - Spencer Hughes Lord bless him, wasn't at all stuffy in that way and did 'listen' to other viewpoints, but he passed all too soon sadly).

 

[krabapple]

Okay, I'm back and I'll definitely regret it. I am annoyed.

"Educating people" can mean a lot of things. Salesmen and cults "educate people". What differentiates you from a salesman?

I'm sure that 99,9999% of the people don't understand the CTA-2034 standard, and never will. And how does this CTA-2034 standard apply to off-the-shelf products you find in a store?

At the very least a good salesman can suggest a product that will satisfy the buyer. Most independent Hi-fi shops around me sell about a dozen different speaker models and amplifiers. You can tell that each product has been cherry-picked to satisfy most buyers, and at any budget. You can sample every product and form your opinion/preferences. That's the world I choose to live in. I trust the expertise of the salesman. I trust my ears. The noise is reduced to a minimum.

In this Forum environment we get long discussions on measurements, the CTA-2034 standard, the Harman curve and so on... This is absolute noise to me.

So, why are you here? On the Audio Science Review forum, I mean. If you don't want to be serenaded with all this consarned science noise, I mean. If you'd rather just trust your preferences from auditions at a hi fi sales shop, I mean.

Really, why are you here?

 

[kokakolia]

Welcome to the 21st century! How do you think I feel? I'm 71 years old. I used to think "technical information" involved choking the carb on a '47 Dodge pickup during winter!

There's a lot more information out there than there was in the '60s and '70s, and we need to grapple with it. We need to know enough to make it our servant, and not let it be our master. Education is now a life-long thing.

In another post, I mentioned the phrase, "due diligence". Thirty years ago, that would have gotten guffaws from listeners. Not now. Now, it's a requirement. And I'm not talking just about audio; I'm talking about EVERYTHING. Medicines, public office, cars, food and water ingredients ...... we now need to know so much more. And due diligence is the only way.

Yes, it would be nice to rely on someone else. It would be nice to have a crutch to lean on, to make the hard decisions for us. IOW, it would be nice to relax and be lazy, to let the other guy do the hard work. It would be nice to not learn new mathematics. It would be nice not to learn new computer apps. It would be nice to just trust someone.

Ain't gonna happen. Not in this New World. We gotta get smarter, basically because the liars, crooks, thieves and cheats are already ahead of us.

Despite the antagonistic air you sometimes see on this site, the forums here are the best way to learn how to do that due diligence. These people aren't your enemies .... they're your friends.

Sermon over. Jim Taylor

The 21st century is the age of misinformation. The liars and the crooks are weaving information with some truth and some half truths. Too much information is dangerous. You'll be influenced to consume more products through targeted ads and sponsored media. Social media and cable TV are nudging your political beliefs with 24/7 news commentary. Conspiracy theories are harmful. Case and point: you watch a few camping videos and YouTube algorithms nudge you into watching doomsday preppers. And this is where you ask yourself "Am I smarter or am I influenced?".

In the audio world this could translate into buying expensive DACs and speaker cables which (probably) won't make a perceivable difference in your system.

"It would be nice to just trust someone" <= In many situations you should trust people more qualified than you to get the job done. You're not going to perform surgery on yourself. You're not going to skip on a lawyer in court. You're not going to design the passenger aircraft you fly in. You're not going to self-diagnose and prescribe yourself medicine.

I would rather trust an expert over 3 graphs I don't understand and basic commentary when purchasing a speaker. The hype over certain products on the forums leads to buyers remorse. You don't want that.

To me, this "flat EQ speaker" concept is a bit like determining the perfect PH level for a good wine, and evaluating every wine on PH alone. I already imagine priceless bottles being emptied in the toilet because the PH level is "off-axis and unacceptable". There are other metrics obviously.

Maybe I'm arriving at the same conclusion as previously stated which goes something like "frequency response is insufficient in evaluating the performance of a product". Perhaps speaker manufacturers have transcended the goal of achieving flat frequency response. And it would take a Phd to understand the 100 other factors involved in engineering a speaker.

So yeah, I love the idea of trusting an expert.

 

[MattHooper]

The 21st century is the age of misinformation. The liars and the crooks are weaving information with some truth and some half truths. Too much information is dangerous. You'll be influenced to consume more products through targeted ads and sponsored media. Social media and cable TV are nudging your political beliefs with 24/7 news commentary. Conspiracy theories are harmful. Case and point: you watch a few camping videos and YouTube algorithms nudge you into watching doomsday preppers. And this is where you ask yourself "Am I smarter or am I influenced?".

In the audio world this could translate into buying expensive DACs and speaker cables which (probably) won't make a perceivable difference in your system.

"It would be nice to just trust someone" <= In many situations you should trust people more qualified than you to get the job done. You're not going to perform surgery on yourself. You're not going to skip on a lawyer in court. You're not going to design the passenger aircraft you fly in. You're not going to self-diagnose and prescribe yourself medicine.

I would rather trust an expert over 3 graphs I don't understand and basic commentary when purchasing a speaker. The hype over certain products on the forums leads to buyers remorse. You don't want that.

To me, this "flat EQ speaker" concept is a bit like determining the perfect PH level for a good wine, and evaluating every wine on PH alone. I already imagine priceless bottles being emptied in the toilet because the PH level is "off-axis and unacceptable". There are other metrics obviously.

Maybe I'm arriving at the same conclusion as previously stated which goes something like "frequency response is insufficient in evaluating the performance of a product". Perhaps speaker manufacturers have transcended the goal of achieving flat frequency response. And it would take a Phd to understand the 100 other factors involved in engineering a speaker.

So yeah, I love the idea of trusting an expert.

I think one of the problems here is that you are making arguments and suggesting conclusions about the nature of measurements, while having previously admitted such things are "all noise" to you. Might this not suggest your conclusions are ill-informed? And often ill-informed arguments tend to argue against strawmen.

For instance you seem to be fixated on flat frequency response without the concerns of off-axis response. Both on and off axis response have been shown to predict listener preferences pretty well.

So in your wine example, IF a certain PH level had been well studied to show that most people find that level tastes good, then it would certainly make sense to seek wine with that PH level. May not be guaranteed to taste good to you, but odds are better than wine with a 'poor-performing' PH level.

Measurement have to, and do, predict to some relevant degree how something will sound. I work in pro sound and use EQ all the time. If changes in certain frequencies using EQ didn't have fairly predictable results, my job would be almost impossible.

I auditioned many, many speakers over the past several years. That includes a few Revel speakers, which measure of course very well on the "Harman curve." They certainly sounded largely as predicted by the measurements: neutral, smooth, coherent, extremely competent designs. They sounded terrific, even if, in the end, I preferred something else a bit more. (But, again, my goals are not precisely those of many here, and speaker measurements will be even more salient to others).

I don't think you'll have a good idea of how salient speaker measurements are in terms of getting what people like, including what YOU like, until you learn more about them. But, again, nobody is forced to use these tools.

 

[Killingbeans]

We are diverging from the topic, but I guess my point is that it's hard for me to differentiate the lies from the science after being overwhelmed with technical information.

That's why actual education is important. It lets you filter out the lies and the BS (well, most of it) and allows you to focus on the useful stuff. It will become much less overwhelming.

 

[sigbergaudio]

The 21st century is the age of misinformation. The liars and the crooks are weaving information with some truth and some half truths. Too much information is dangerous. You'll be influenced to consume more products through targeted ads and sponsored media. Social media and cable TV are nudging your political beliefs with 24/7 news commentary. Conspiracy theories are harmful. Case and point: you watch a few camping videos and YouTube algorithms nudge you into watching doomsday preppers. And this is where you ask yourself "Am I smarter or am I influenced?".

(...)

I would rather trust an expert over 3 graphs I don't understand and basic commentary when purchasing a speaker. The hype over certain products on the forums leads to buyers remorse. You don't want that.

(...)

So yeah, I love the idea of trusting an expert.

I'm not sure I see a consistent argument here. How is a sales person in a hifi shop suddenly an unbiased expert? How is it that he isn't tricking you with truths and half truths? Being tricked into buying expensive DACs isn't a novel concept that came with the internet and internet forums? It's more like the other way around?

 

[mocenigo]

I already spend my work hours fixing other people’s mistakes why do the same at my leisure time too you know?

Are you perhaps a security analyst? This sounds suspiciously similar to what I do for work!