cedd
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- Joined
- Apr 9, 2021
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I'd like to point out this is a philosophical matter and not something that can be answered with science or numbers.
My reasoning is simple. We use listening audio equipment to listen to the waves encoded by recordings, not the waves encoded in our listening audio equipment. If the latter were the case there would be people listening to headphones without a recording playing; obviously no one does this... lol...
The Harman curve is imprecise. It is not ever going to be the same for everyone as everyone's ears are different. This means, by using it as a metric, we end up in the situation we're in now with a vast array of audio equipment that are all targeting slightly different curves, resulting in an infinite numbers of colorings and no fixed authority to say one more faithfully reproduces a recording than another. The end result is the diminishment of influence that any recording has over the listener's experience. At best, adherence to the Harman curve distorts the recorder's intentions, making their recordings more pleasing to hear by picking up the slack in their poor choices. At worst it stifles recording practice growth and maturity by hiding to the recorder their unadulterated choices, failing to give the honest feedback necessary to improve.
The Harman curve is extremely useful in sound engineering, particularly when making a pleasing song or soundscape. I don't deny this. But that is not an excuse to force it on every recording regardless of if the recording's intention is to sound pleasing or "balanced" to our ears or not. And certainly if someone just wants to listen to pleasing sounds they would probably benefit by tuning their listening equipment to this curve. But that doesn't make it a valid metric to judge the equipment's frequency response against.
A flat response is flat for everyone. It's the only sensible aim for listening audio equipment and it's what all equipment should be striving for.
My reasoning is simple. We use listening audio equipment to listen to the waves encoded by recordings, not the waves encoded in our listening audio equipment. If the latter were the case there would be people listening to headphones without a recording playing; obviously no one does this... lol...
The Harman curve is imprecise. It is not ever going to be the same for everyone as everyone's ears are different. This means, by using it as a metric, we end up in the situation we're in now with a vast array of audio equipment that are all targeting slightly different curves, resulting in an infinite numbers of colorings and no fixed authority to say one more faithfully reproduces a recording than another. The end result is the diminishment of influence that any recording has over the listener's experience. At best, adherence to the Harman curve distorts the recorder's intentions, making their recordings more pleasing to hear by picking up the slack in their poor choices. At worst it stifles recording practice growth and maturity by hiding to the recorder their unadulterated choices, failing to give the honest feedback necessary to improve.
The Harman curve is extremely useful in sound engineering, particularly when making a pleasing song or soundscape. I don't deny this. But that is not an excuse to force it on every recording regardless of if the recording's intention is to sound pleasing or "balanced" to our ears or not. And certainly if someone just wants to listen to pleasing sounds they would probably benefit by tuning their listening equipment to this curve. But that doesn't make it a valid metric to judge the equipment's frequency response against.
A flat response is flat for everyone. It's the only sensible aim for listening audio equipment and it's what all equipment should be striving for.