Hi Zolalll, I don’t know if you saw my other post but to me “natural sounding” means “as accurate as possible according to the artist’s intent”
thanks!
Can 'o worms officially opened!
Your questions are not off base at all, stanroz. As my homey radix points out though, the situation regarding standards in music production is.... complicated.
And you will probably get as many different opinions on it as there are experts on the subject.
One of the most respected authorities in the field though on this subject is Dr. Floyd Toole, who you may perhaps be familiar with, if you've spent any significant time in the audio discussions on home theater forums (like AVS Forum for example). And one of his principle contributions to the field was the development of the "spinorama", which is a new system for more accurately measuring and characterizing the sound of loudspeakers, for both music and also multi-channel audio setups, including home theaters.
This video is a little over an hour long. But it is well worth the time to watch and listen to for just about anyone interested in the subject of accurate sound reproduction. In it, Dr. Toole lays out many of the challenges associated with this in home (and other) setups. And also lays out some methods to improve this process, including his and Harman's new system of speaker measurement (the spinorama system I mentioned above). I've personally watched this video over a dozen times, and there are still new things I can take away from it, each time I watch...
Dr. Toole's book on
Sound Reproduction... is also considered by many to be one of the essential references or guides for the correct setup of speakers and other audio gear. It goes into many of the same subjects discussed in the above video, but I believe it also drills down even deeper on things like room acoustics and treatments, sub-woofers, etc.. By most accounts, it is well worth seeking out. Though it can probably get somewhat technical, and may be a bit over a newbie's head at first.
It took me a long time, for example, to grasp the concept of a speaker's directivity/dispersion. And why that is so crucial to a speaker's response when placed in a room, versus an echo-free measurement chamber. If you really want to better understand what a "neutral" or "accurate" sound is on a pair of headphones though, then I think you first have to understand what that means for a pair of stereo speakers in a semi-reflective room. Since most audio content (well, the mainstream stuff anyway) is still ideally mastered and produced for that kind of a listening environment. Once you have a firmer grasp on that, then it becomes a little bit easier to begin to grasp some of the challenges in trying to achieve something along a similar lines with a pair of headphones.
Dr. Sean Olive and some others folks at Harman have also been on the forefront of trying to expand this pioneering work on speakers to other devices, including headphones. And one of the first and most important products of those efforts was the development of a new target response curve for headphones (often referred to simply as the "Harman curve" or "Harman target").
Their current target was developed using a somewhat old and now a bit outdated ear simulator though, known as the 711 system, which is only accurate across a limited range of the audible spectrum. So there are now some attempts under way, both at Harman and elsewhere, to try to bring that work more up to date and into the 21st century, for potential use on some newer and potentially better measurement systems such as the new HBK 5128 system. If you're interested, you'll find threads (and often vigorous debates) on all of this in various topics on the ASR headphone forums.