Yes showroom sound strikes again. Putting aside the hyperbolic statements about PMC et. al. not knowing a thing about acoustic engineering... they know quite well what they are doing and what sells speakers to the masses, even the professional masses.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the idea of
“ showroom sound” keep being brought up on this forum.
And it seems to lead to a puzzle:
The idea is that showroom sound tends to be a frequency response that hypes the high frequencies and often the low frequencies as well. Not necessarily always a “smile” EQ, but at least a frequency response that will tend to emphasize the sense of clarity and detail.
And then the idea is that it’s sort of like the Pepsi challenge (where the obviously sweeter taste compared to the less sweet taste wins out at least in short comparisons): The consumer listens to a B&W or whatever, here’s those emphasized highs as clarity and detail, and so when they compare that sound in the store to a more neutral speaker, the neutral speaker sounds less exciting and more dull. So they walk with the more exciting sounding speaker.
The problem there is that we are constantly told that in blind testing people actually prefer neutral sound.
So what’s going on then?
Why would people prefer showroom sound in the showroom, versus not in blind tests?
If showroom sound is a real effect, then why doesn’t it show up in blind testing where people prefer the showroom sound since they are often comparing speakers like B&W to neutral speakers?
Is it perhaps something that, like the Pepsi blind challenge effect, doesn’t hold up over time? And that in the blind testing studies for some reason, the effect fades?
I mean, if the showroom sculpting of the sound isn’t a thing, and doesn’t really work because people prefer a neutral sound, then what are these companies like B&W doing Insulting those frequency responses.
It would seem to be a total waste of time.
(except that they also seem to be selling lots of speakers doing it).
