Originally Posted by opaqueice That's called a non-flat frequency response, and overall it usually sounds worse, not better (depending of course on the source material). If there's a single central goal of hi-fi audio, it should be to avoid that, so as to produce as accurate a reproduction of the original recording as possible.
These days we can get a pretty flat FR from digital sources until the speakers hit the room - after that all bets are off. Without room correction (and even that's not perfect) the in-room sound is not anywhere near flat. A shelving suckout of up to 10dB across much of the midrange, plus up to 10dB boost below 100Hz is not uncommon! It depends more on the room and speaker placement than the speakers. Annoyingly, placement for imaging and good FR are often mutually incompatible. Regardless of how flat the FR actually is, minor FR changes such as treble lift or reducing upper bass can have the same psycho-acoustical effect as boosting volume - it sounds "better" for a while... There is also evidence to suggest that a flat in-room response above 16KHz is not desirable...a gentle roll-off being preferred by most people in a possition to experiment. Please bear in mind that most recording engineers do not mix recordings to sound good in flat-response anechoic rooms! They anticipate the effect of an average (?) room on their mixes. As usual, YMMV. -- Phil Leigh ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22000 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
