Question about ‘neutral sound’ and preference.

[Tim Link]

Tim Link, MaxwellsEq, my personal opinion and observation on difficulty to set bass balance is due to a resonance, or a room modal peak, that takes the attention. Symptoms are: bass seems to be too much, turn bass down and now it's lean, turn it up and now it's overwhelming, it's just always seems to be off. Generalized, there doesn't seem to be single good level for bass when there is a peak. I understand your descriptions to be the exact same problem.

For live music one just have to change position to get balanced sound, but often this cannot be done if it is a crowded stage. One step to one direction could already help though, so try it.
For home stereo use room measurement to find the peak(s), fix it with what ever means, and suddenly it's easy to find level for bass that works. Actually even the midrange gets better and so on, masking reduced. Most likely it's just a room mode, but could be combination of room, speaker issues, and how speaker and room work together. Most simple thing is to use EQ to knock down modes / peaks first, then try to find bass balance again. Better would be to first find best positioning for balanced sound without exessive peaks, by changing speakers and listening position, and then use EQ. Perhaps use advanced EQ tactics but few parametric filters can do wonders already.

If and when there is modes in measurement and EQ, use high Q filter to knock them peaks down, low Q filters are not effective enough and in my small experience they could make the problem worse attenuating bass broadly, without fixing the issue which is the narrow peak. Don't be shy, -15db with Q 13 could be the cure! Narrow notch filters are very hard to hear, except if they fix a narrow peak, so it's very likely the filter is not audible anywhere else in the room, except where the mode got fixed the difference should be apparent. Peaks are far easier to hear and far more distracting than dips.

Please report if this helps My general feel is, when sound seems off but cannot quite pinpoint, it's very likely just a resonance, a peak in frequency response that kind of takes attention away from the music.

What you are saying is true. Lumpy bass and midbass is unfixable with overall level adjustments. However, I think our perception changes daily as well. My bass is pretty smooth. I've calmed all the major resonances in the room and the bass overall is clean and fast and all the notes are coming through with an even presentation. I'm following the Harman curve very closely at the listening position. The changes I get day to day involve more than just the bass. Sometimes the midrange sounds more emphasized. Other times I seem more sensitive to frequencies way up over 4 kHz. If I pay attention I notice the effect in everything I'm hearing, not just the stereo. But with everything else I just accept the changes without much thought. With the stereo or with a musical instrument I have more specific expectations and get very picky about how I'm perceiving the sound. I notice it with the car. Sometimes it sounds like the engine is raspier and gives me the impression it needs an oil change. Other times it sounds very smooth. I'm pretty sure it's just the state of my hearing.
My friend went to watch some car races with his mother. They took out their hearing protection for a while to hear the roar of the race cars at full volume. Probably not a good idea. He said on the way home it sounded to him like the car engine was heavily lugging the entire time. He had become dulled to high frequency sounds, so the engine sounded excessively bassy. If I ride my bike in rainy weather on streets with car traffic, the shearing sound of the car tires on the wet road is very loud and it will effect my hearing for a while afterwards, with my left ear effected considerably more than my right.

 

[Tim Link]

Got to say I have a preference for a taut more punchy bass reproduction from large bass drivers not working hard, as opposed to a typical 'port laden underdamped boom' as so many porty speakers tend to be tuned

I'm with you. I've got a total of eight 18" woofers loaded into corner horns in my room. I don't want to hear any woofers working hard.

Audiophiles over here seem to like more upper mid and top it seems and even with my ears I find that objectionable

I struggle with this too. I get the system balanced so the drivers are flat on axis up close, and then the integrated sound follows the Harman curve very closely at the listening position, so things seem to be working as they technically should. Whether this sounds good to me or not depends on my hearing state. If the mids and highs are a little low its always tolerable. If they are right where they're supposed to be they will sound too bright to me on some days, and that's harder to listen to overall than if the upper mid and top is a bit lower than spec. I end up turning down the mids and highs on some days. Just 1 or 2 dB can do it. Also turning on a loudness contour on days when my ears are extra sensitive to highs - or insensitive to bass seems to have a soothing effect.

 

[Tim Link]

I have to update my experience on this. My system is complex, with many settings that can get changed while I'm experimenting and then accidentally not get changed back to where they were because of lapses in my memory, or simply interface confusion while changing the settings, indavertently confusing which setting goes with which element. Fortunately I've taken to writing down settings in detail when I get a sound I like. Last night the system was again sounding unpleasing to me like it had the night before. Unable to resolve it, I actually LOOKED at my notes and saw that I had NOT returned to the settings I had noted. Rectifying that issue brought me back to a pleasing sound! So, even though my hearing may change from day to day it shouldn't on the vast majority of days make a good sounding system go to less than satisfying. This is one of the pitfalls of having a system with a lot of settings. This also shows me how almost impossible it is to fiddle with settings by ear to solve a problem I'm hearing. It's like trying to get a key into a lock in the dark with only one hand available. It's so easy when you can see, nearly impossible when you can't. It also doesn't help that there are settings in various places. I was looking on the computer for the problem, but it was in the receiver's settings. This morning it still sounds great. You may ask why didn't I just measure to see what was happening. I did. The measurement was pretty close to the Harman curve reference I had used. But because my speaker arrangement is unorthodox it needs a little tweaking from there to compensate. I had forgotten what that entailed. It's basically more from the midrange drivers, so it looks like a midrange bump in the total room response, but not when I limit the IR window in REW.

 

[tmuikku]

Here in lies also the end goal for a hifi system: when sound seems nice, always, nothing to tweak, it's as good as it gets, problem free, that's it, right? If soubd seems always off, it's not best it could be, obviously.

But, if sound changes by mood/brainchemistry as you say, it's not so obvious and simple anymore. How to distinguish a problem in the playback system from a problem in the auditory system then? Solution would be to figure out if there is a way to bootstrap the auditory system, to somehow measure it's contribution to perceived sound, to know what state the auditory system is. At least at a level, that some test would reveal when it's fine and when it's not. Is there some tests? how to do it actually? If there are multiple states, as it seems, what is the standard state of auditory system it most often is at listening time? Is there such thing? is there a sound that works with many/any state?

Conversely, if auditory system state is unknown and affects perceived sound, no playback system will ever be detected best, because auditory system would fool you even if it was. Could any reasonable system be best, if auditory system state was known, and even adjustable? are all systems equally randomly good, with not too much difference, just because auditory system equals them being unknown variable?

interesting philosophical stuff is there any studies about this kind of things?

 

[Tim Link]

Here in lies also the end goal for a hifi system: when sound seems nice, always, nothing to tweak, it's as good as it gets, problem free, that's it, right? If soubd seems always off, it's not best it could be, obviously.

But, if sound changes by mood/brainchemistry as you say, it's not so obvious and simple anymore. How to distinguish a problem in the playback system from a problem in the auditory system then? Solution would be to figure out if there is a way to bootstrap the auditory system, to somehow measure it's contribution to perceived sound, to know what state the auditory system is. At least at a level, that some test would reveal when it's fine and when it's not. Is there some tests? how to do it actually? If there are multiple states, as it seems, what is the standard state of auditory system it most often is at listening time? Is there such thing? is there a sound that works with many/any state?

Conversely, if auditory system state is unknown and affects perceived sound, no playback system will ever be detected best, because auditory system would fool you even if it was. Could any reasonable system be best, if auditory system state was known, and even adjustable? are all systems equally randomly good, with not too much difference, just because auditory system equals them being unknown variable?

interesting philosophical stuff is there any studies about this kind of things?

I remember reading somewhere that on preference tests it was noted that people's bass preference could change from day to day. Bass changes are what I notice most. Bass rumble can be very loud in a vehicle, so after a long drive on the freeway you may come home and perceive the bass from your stereo as being considerably weaker. I've had this happen once to both me and my friend after a car trip. Both of us were wondering if the woofers were even working at all when I fired up the stereo. When I took a sweep I saw that the bass levels had not changed since last I measured. It's amazing. Makes me think of that berry you can eat that makes sour things seem temporarily very sweet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum

 

[tmuikku]

so it's likely due to some adaptation process. listening to stereo at evening after work, and sound depends on which car one drove, the ev or v8? seems sensible.

Hmm, I wonder how long it takes to recover. I would bet the standard hearing (adaptation) is what effect ambient at home makes. Say, after good night sleep, perhaps after morning routines but before going out to traffic, hearing would be at some default state. Spending time at daily noise would then make it adapt, and it takes some time after getting home before reset. I bet other processes affect as well, like stress, body and mind could try to relieve by suppressing noise or something.

Perhaps for most hifi experience, spend nice weekend with family, enjoy outdoors like hiking, and then have a listen?

 

[jjaskuna]

My hearing issues seem to be as much about perceiving room reflections as much as high frequencies as such and one experiment I need to carry out is how a wide-dispersion/directivity speaker would compare in this way overdamped room to my more old fashioned speakers with response and directivity dips in the lower kHz region (feck it, I HATE not being in this industry now I've retired).

As for bass, our 'Soft Suffolk Red brick house' transmits low bass away from the sitting room and into the rest of the building including our next door neighbour, despite the party wall once being an outside wall before ours was tacked on a couple of years later in the late 1800's. Got to say I have a preference for a taut more punchy bass reproduction from large bass drivers not working hard, as opposed to a typical 'port laden underdamped boom' as so many porty speakers tend to be tuned (it doesn't have to be this way but that seems the commercial choice all too often).

Audiophiles over here seem to like more upper mid and top it seems and even with my ears I find that objectionable

Here in lies also the end goal for a hifi system: when sound seems nice, always, nothing to tweak, it's as good as it gets, problem free, that's it, right? If soubd seems always off, it's not best it could be, obviously.

But, if sound changes by mood/brainchemistry as you say, it's not so obvious and simple anymore. How to distinguish a problem in the playback system from a problem in the auditory system then? Solution would be to figure out if there is a way to bootstrap the auditory system, to somehow measure it's contribution to perceived sound, to know what state the auditory system is. At least at a level, that some test would reveal when it's fine and when it's not. Is there some tests? how to do it actually? If there are multiple states, as it seems, what is the standard state of auditory system it most often is at listening time? Is there such thing? is there a sound that works with many/any state?

Conversely, if auditory system state is unknown and affects perceived sound, no playback system will ever be detected best, because auditory system would fool you even if it was. Could any reasonable system be best, if auditory system state was known, and even adjustable? are all systems equally randomly good, with not too much difference, just because auditory system equals them being unknown variable?

interesting philosophical stuff is there any studies about this kind of things?

Very good point. The solution is to make the auditory system state known. With this, you can remove it (your hearing abilities) from the equation and really "hear" or perceive your gear. In theory at least.

I will say this about my experience and preferences. I have a fully treated room, a nice system, and could never figure out why my center shifted right. Treated the room completely, tried DIRAC, REW, ect. The root cause was my hearing, which none of those techniques addressed. Once I knew the state of my hearing system and calibrated for it, this is no longer a problem. I used to love bass and a lot of it. Now, however, I'm more into mids and highs. Likely because I went so long without perceiving them I appreciate them more now that I can perceive those sonic qualities again.

 

[tmuikku]

Yes eactly, basically everyone should be somehow aware abour their auditory system state when tuning their system, or assessing any other system. Refering to my previous post, perhaps bass level should be adjusted only in the morning when auditory system state is pretty similar as every other morning. Instead of morning it could be any easily monitored/regulated "personal standard" time, which has auditory system in relatively similar state day by day.

Another, if loud bass noise seems to affect perception of bass, one could try and study it with their own hifi system! First, listen quite loud, now turn the volume down, how much sound changes, how much was your auditory system adapted? for example, if bass is gone now with low volume, meaning it was very loud when listening loud, it likely is adjusted too loud, or is it too lean? right? assuming system is capable of loud sound before compression and distortion etc.

Yeah, equal loudness curve has an effect, but thats the point right, isn't that also about auditory system adabtability? perhaps some personal systematic testing, fooling around, could reveal some hints about our own hearing and help be more aware about it and how it changes through a day.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Bass rumble can be very loud in a vehicle, so after a long drive on the freeway you may come home and perceive the bass from your stereo as being considerably weaker.

I've experienced that. Another weird thing I've experienced is how surprisingly good everything sounds when I've returned after a long vacation!

 

[ozzy9832001]

If someone prefers let’s say 5 dB more bass than me, is this purely ‘taste’ or is it because they perceive less bass than me and require more for it to sound ‘right’? Same goes for all other frequencies. I’m sure this has been researched. I know participants in the Harman studies had varying levels of preference in the bass and that’s why I’m wondering because I assume that what they all ultimately preferred is what sounds the most ‘neutral’ (right) to them, not just ‘fun’.
Actually on second thought I don’t know what the difference between ‘fun’ and ‘right’ sound would be. Maybe they are technically the same since if it doesn’t sound right then it isn’t fun.

Depends...are they in the same room? Same setup? Same song?

I think it would depend on the genre of music, the room and the system itself.

To me, from 300hz and below is the body of a musical piece. It should be heard, but I don't want it drowning everything out, which is usually what happens if the room has no treatment or the MLP hasn't be optimized. I don't need the kick drum to drown everything else out because it's 20dB higher than everything else and rings out in the room for 5 seconds.

 

[tmuikku]

Yes, in isolation there might be some variance between individuals for "house curve", but at home with real systems there seems to be lot of things that matter what house curve seems good. You'd likely want system response balanced, not overwhelming or too lean bass, but there might not be a chance to make it work.

Short story: if there is strong modal peak say at 60Hz, on listening position, and you only have a "bass" knob to tune with in your receiver. Now, if bass seems too much and you take the bass down it quickly gets thin. Start to increase bass and suddenly it's too much, and it's very hard to find a balance as it always seems to thin or overwhelming, never balanced, but it's hard to understand why. Problem here is the modal peak really takes attention and drowns stuff, especially on songs where there is lot of things on that frequency, while some songs might be just ok.

Now, if you can take care of that peak somehow, move positioning or perhaps use EQ to knock it down, it's now easier to find balance with the bass knob. When it's nice there is all good attributes to sound, what ever those are to you but I'd say they could be pretty much the same for most people. Some people prefer lean bass, some this overwhelming oomf oomf crazy boom box to max without real lows, and all is fine, they just don't mind about it too much, perhaps never thought there is a problem, or how to deal with it if you mind your bass, take time to position the system, and use EQ to balance things, knock down peaks they really mess things up. Don't mind too much about dips, they are much harder to perceive than peaks. Measured response after tuning could be little bit different in different rooms with different DI systems, as you'd always adjust to situation.

edit. hahaa, I just realized I posted the same example a while back on this very thread well, worth repeating, as it seems always bothering me when I take the system to a new place, DSP settings must be tweaked in situ to restore balance. Good balance is critical in my opinion, overall balance, and also balance between left and right for good stereo image.

 

[Auditory Cortex]

This should be the same as with our vision. Screens and monitors are calibrated and there are very well known standards of color, saturation, black/white ratios, etc. From there people can change it if they like to see things with more blue, yellow, red, green, etc. But I feel that a very well calibrated picture is much more accepted and enjoyed by the majority of people whereas in audio there is a lot more subjectivity (frequency perception changed by age and loudness) or inaccuracy (headphones vs monitors, room treatment, etc).

 

[MRC01]

This should be the same as with our vision. Screens and monitors are calibrated and there are very well known standards of color, saturation, black/white ratios, etc. From there people can change it if they like to see things with more blue, yellow, red, green, etc. But I feel that a very well calibrated picture is much more accepted and enjoyed by the majority of people whereas in audio there is a lot more subjectivity (frequency perception changed by age and loudness) or inaccuracy (headphones vs monitors, room treatment, etc).

Most rooms alter the sound much more than they do light. So while many people have actually seen a well calibrated picture, fewer have heard well calibrated sound. And if they have, it was a brief demo, not long enough to accustom to it. Furthermore, I don't think a well calibrated picture is universally accepted; a lot of people prefer an overly saturated and contrasty picture - just like many do with sound.