What turns some genres (eg. highly compressed Rock, Metal ) into an awful sounding mush?

[flexy123]

I got "decent" but very budget powered PC speakers (Edifier R1280) which sound good with highly dynamic music like most modern Pop, Jazz, Latin etc.
When I play VERY compressed "loud" Metal or Powermetal, out comes an awful sound mush as if with very cheap speakers.

I had the same phenomenon with a rather bad 5.1 system (which was good for movies), with a powerful 400W subwoofer. It was ok for some music genres, but utterly awful for others.

When I listen the same songs on headphones, the sound...ie. my favourite bands like Nightwish, it sounds GOOD.

What are the criteria with a sound setup that decides that it is also good for such genres w/ compressed music?

I am planning to soon get a "real" system with a Marantz or Denon Amp, and possibly Dali speakers. As this seems decent, I hope there won't be a "sound mush".

 

[ozzy9832001]

Because metal genres have more going on in the bass region than most others. A lot of sound in rapid succession causes a mess with the room acoustics. This is why headphones sound fine. It's probably not the speakers so much as it is the room. I strongly suggest reading up on room acoustics. It will give you a much better understanding about what is going on in the bass region.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Further avenues to explore:

1. Is this dependent on volume at all? If so, IMD may be involved. Dense music tends to be substantially more demanding on speaker IMD levels. R1280s still only are an inexpensive 4" after all. They should be plenty loud in an untreated room, but that would bring us back to the above post.
2. Headphones may be EQ'd to put less emphasis on the kind of midrange frequencies that tend to give a "congested" impression, typically around 1 kHz.

 

[Sokel]

Had a look at this Nightwish ,got a couple of songs to see where they bang.

Massive mid-bass to above midrange (1.5-2Khz) energy and that's about it.The 100 to 300Hz area is where pretty much everything beats.
Subs will only help lower but I think no less than a real 3-way may be needed,a single driver suffering all this seems to much of a task.

 

[DVDdoug]

Compression does mush everything together making it harder to hear individual instruments. And that's pretty-much the musical style with very note on every instrument and drum hit accented ("turned up to 11").

Headphones do generally give you better sound quality, and they go louder while remaining "clean" and you also don't get room reflections so it's usually easier to hear details (or defects) with headphones.

 

[neRok]

I watched a few videos on how to mix metal guitars and drums, and that was pretty enlightening to me. The drums and guitars and vocals all seem to exist in the same 100-500Hz range, and that's the same range as the room modes etc occur. That also means there's a lot of sound content in that range, so you want to make sure the loudspeaker is good and proper in that range. Here's the review of your little Edifier speakers with some comments;


Here's a screenshot from one of the vids I linked showing how much he EQ's out of the drums between 300-600Hz;


Oh, and BTW, some metal is just recorded and mixed bad. When you try to play bad quality music on good speakers, it stands out for how bad it sounds. It is what it is. Older bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest and Megadeth have so many remixes of their old albums (more than 1 remix sometimes! So yes, 3 or more version of the same song), sometimes you just gotta hunt them all down and see what you like the best. This is all related to the loudness war.

 

[malone-m]

The elevated and uneven upper mid/treble region could be the cause too. In that frequency region (approx. 3 - 6 kHz) is human hearing very sensitive and many (particularly older) metal recordings have some weight on those frequencies. If a speaker emphasizes it, sometimes nothing but piercing noise plus bass boominess can be heard..

 

[flexy123]

I watched a few videos on how to mix metal guitars and drums, and that was pretty enlightening to me. The drums and guitars and vocals all seem to exist in the same 100-500Hz range, and that's the same range as the room modes etc occur. That also means there's a lot of sound content in that range, so you want to make sure the loudspeaker is good and proper in that range. Here's the review of your little Edifier speakers with some comments;
View attachment 318471

Here's a screenshot from one of the vids I linked showing how much he EQ's out of the drums between 300-600Hz;
View attachment 318472

Oh, and BTW, some metal is just recorded and mixed bad. When you try to play bad quality music on good speakers, it stands out for how bad it sounds. It is what it is. Older bands like Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest and Megadeth have so many remixes of their old albums (more than 1 remix sometimes! So yes, 3 or more version of the same song), sometimes you just gotta hunt them all down and see what you like the best. This is all related to the loudness war.

I am using the EQ settings from that review, but maybe I can still do a bit more, will check your link out.
I am well aware that these speakers are ultimately just "cheap" speakers and there are limits if essentially most action happens on that 4" driver.

"Recorded and mixed bad", oh 100%. Add the fact that some recordings are RIDICULOUSLY compressed, the source is already a mush. Good example, and there are countless, Beast in Black (Power Metal), choose any random track, there is no dynamics, the tracks are "simply loud" from beginning to end and it sounds awful

 

[sigbergaudio]

Been a while since I've listened to Nightwish, but listened to random tracks through 5-6 different albums now, and overall it sounds decent, not mush-quality.

Contrary to the belief of some high-end aficionados, rock is a very difficult genre to get right.

• To begin with it's difficult to mix, but they seem to have pulled that off reasonably well with Nightwish.
• The next problem (as mentioned by others) is the sensitive 100-500hz area that very often get muddled by a combination of the room and too weak presentation from th speakers themselves.
• A decent and smooth fundament below 100hz is also necessary (and here again the room often wreaks havoc), and some speakers will struggle with compression.

You are not guaranteed to get this right with "real" or more expensive speakers either. Perhaps a system with some "rock oriented" speakers like JBL or Klipsch combined with a subwoofer and DSP/EQ that allows you to tame the room may be the way to go for a midpriced system.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Listening to the Century Child album now, actually pretty good sound quality. Thanks for reminding me about Nightwish!

 

[ozzy9832001]

I haven't listened to nightwish since a concert I watched on youtube when Floor became the new lead singer.

I did listen to Dark Chest of Wonders after reading this post and it sounded really good to me. Marco's bass playing is great.

 

[flexy123]

The elevated and uneven upper mid/treble region could be the cause too. In that frequency region (approx. 3 - 6 kHz) is human hearing very sensitive and many (particularly older) metal recordings have some weight on those frequencies. If a speaker emphasizes it, sometimes nothing but piercing noise plus bass boominess can be heard..

Been a while since I've listened to Nightwish, but listened to random tracks through 5-6 different albums now, and overall it sounds decent, not mush-quality.

Contrary to the belief of some high-end aficionados, rock is a very difficult genre to get right.

• To begin with it's difficult to mix, but they seem to have pulled that off reasonably well with Nightwish.
• The next problem (as mentioned by others) is the sensitive 100-500hz area that very often get muddled by a combination of the room and too weak presentation from th speakers themselves.
• A decent and smooth fundament below 100hz is also necessary (and here again the room often wreaks havoc), and some speakers will struggle with compression.

You are not guaranteed to get this right with "real" or more expensive speakers either. Perhaps a system with some "rock oriented" speakers like JBL or Klipsch combined with a subwoofer and DSP/EQ that allows you to tame the room may be the way to go for a midpriced system.

Oddly enough, the Dali Spektor 1 (which I eyed 1st, along with a used Marantz/Denon AMP) measure awful, and the review of them here contradicts many other opinions about the DALI Spektors claiming they're supposedly really good budget passive speakers.


You are not the first recommending me JBL, in fact I was just recommended the JBL 308p Studio Monitors on some other place, and I hear them mentioned (along with Klipsch) a lot in particular when talking about Metal and similar genres.

Without having heard them or having compared them, say to the Dalis, I cannot say whether I would prefer them or possibly the Dalis nevertheless, as I can "only" go after the measurements. Yet I am actually not sure whether a neutral frequency response is what I want as I do in fact prefer "fun sound" (V-Shape), which of course is a very SUBJECTIVE thing, so it's possible I might like the Dalis despite them measuring poorly.

As for Nightwish and similiar, coming back to my R1280T, let me explain it this way. People now say these recordings are actually good and on THEIR equipment it sounds good. As soon as a lot of action is going on in the music, what comes out of these speakers is lacking any power and it sounds "flat" and "cheap".

 

[sigbergaudio]

As for Nightwish and similiar, coming back to my R1280T, let me explain it this way. People now say these recordings are actually good and on THEIR equipment it sounds good. As soon as a lot of action is going on in the music, what comes out of these speakers is lacking any power and it sounds "flat" and "cheap".

Well to be fair, and no offence, your speakers ARE incredibly cheap, so it is limited what is possible for that kind of money.

 

[neRok]

Oddly enough, the Dali Spektor 1 (which I eyed 1st, along with a used Marantz/Denon AMP) measure awful, and the review of them here contradicts many other opinions about the DALI Spektors claiming they're supposedly really good budget passive speakers.

Have you gone to a store and listened to the speakers?

 

[flexy123]

Have you gone to a store and listened to the speakers?

not YET!

 

[Philbo King]

I got "decent" but very budget powered PC speakers (Edifier R1280) which sound good with highly dynamic music like most modern Pop, Jazz, Latin etc.
When I play VERY compressed "loud" Metal or Powermetal, out comes an awful sound mush as if with very cheap speakers.

I had the same phenomenon with a rather bad 5.1 system (which was good for movies), with a powerful 400W subwoofer. It was ok for some music genres, but utterly awful for others.

When I listen the same songs on headphones, the sound...ie. my favourite bands like Nightwish, it sounds GOOD.

What are the criteria with a sound setup that decides that it is also good for such genres w/ compressed music?

I am planning to soon get a "real" system with a Marantz or Denon Amp, and possibly Dali speakers. As this seems decent, I hope there won't be a "sound mush".

There is a lot going on. Over-busy arrangements, cymbal bashing drummers, clipping baked in during mastering, generally a love of noise by everyone involved, compressing the mix to -6 LUFS with peaks at -0.01 dBFS, all of these play their part. It's the new normal!

 

[ozzy9832001]

As for Nightwish and similiar, coming back to my R1280T, let me explain it this way. People now say these recordings are actually good and on THEIR equipment it sounds good. As soon as a lot of action is going on in the music, what comes out of these speakers is lacking any power and it sounds "flat" and "cheap".

To be fair, I have a fully treated room as well. I use the Edifier 2850DB and I love them. Though they have an 8" woofer and a mid range and I use 2 subs. Really need a sub to take some of the pressure off the woofer.

 

[Chrispy]

Apparently the Edifier speakers you have . You really need to just get better speakers I think. The JBL 308s would be an improvement. Just because a sub advertises "400W" is pretty much meaningless as to its capabilities in any particular respect.

 

[Balle Clorin]

That music is unlistenable on any system. It is not necessarily the systems fault.Headphones have many faults too , maybe two wrongs cancel out?