Speakers that don't seem to match their measurements

[sigbergaudio]

What are the limits? I suppose if there are speakers available that you are familiar with to compare to, then you have an understanding of how those you are familiar with sound in your space, can hear how they sound in the room you are auditioning in and from there roughly gauge what other speakers would be of interest/sound like in your room.

Not sure if I understand what you mean. If I listen to familiar music on speakers in a room with reasonable acoustics, it's not impossible to judge the qualities of said speakers.

If one has good understanding of how acoustics affect speakers, that is helpful to better understand the quality of the speaker. If one has zero understanding of how acoustics affect speakers, it's more likely that you conclude wrongly about the speaker quality.

 

[Digby]

Please define "this".

added extra bass and treble, perhaps trying to make up for lost spatial aspects?

Not sure if I understand what you mean. If I listen to familiar music on speakers in a room with reasonable acoustics, it's not impossible to judge the qualities of said speakers.

That is what I mean

 

[YSC]

I agree to what you are saying to an extent, but at the same time I don't think older people sit at live concerts and go "the sound is dull."
I suspect the brain compensates for this in a way we don't completely understand. But possibly our brains do that better at live events than when listening to loudspeakers. Hard to know.

I think I can speak a bit more on this. My parent is just on hearing aid tuning by audiologist that fits the hearing loss pattern and boosted back accordingly. as soon as she gets the aid she instantly felt like tuning off the EQ boost in the upper mids and highs. What I think is that for live concert, it is what the person is hearing in real time, so by perception, it is just what it is, like the volume to them is just low. But then when listening to a recording, especially HiFi, human tends to listen more on the recordings done at their prime time. So when a song in their memory (often even tinted with nostalgia), the now unpercievable frequency is feeling dull or sharp or whatever.