General Asylum: BBC dip? by wdc

depends on what you mean by lower treble

for the sake of this particular argument, lets stereotype here and assume that high end speakers cater to those with an appreciation for classical music and are therefore designed to be judged reproducing same.

Speakers designed to reproduce live (not padded walled studio) recordings of orchestra may consciously or subconsciously be designed with what's known as a BBC dip.

A BBC dip is a dip in the response centered around 2 to 3k to compensate for our ears insensitivity to diffuse feilds around these frequencies (simply put, we have a hard time distinguishing original from reflection here) Recording microphones are not insensitive to diffuse feilds so (depending on the engineer) we sometimes end up with energy there that is a bit too much for convincing playback.

Ideally - we'd have a switch to activate/deactivate the dip for different recordings (again - dependent on the engineer). Commercial loudspeaker designers (one size has to fit all) may compromise and incorporate a partial dip - splitting the difference between compensated and non compenstaed recordings.

For answers to questions you didn't know existed and other nuances of loudspeakers - follow the highly recommended link below.

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