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RE: Ideal frequency response curve

The reason why a rolled off response sounds best is that recordings are made to sound good in the mastering studio on the mastering studio's speakers. Most of these have high frequency roll-off. Therefore a recording played back on an audiophile system with flat response will sound brighter than the way the mastering engineer heard it, that is to say it will be too bright (assuming the mastering engineer did a good job making the recording).

The question then arises: why does the mastering engineer have a speaker that is rolled off? The answer is that the mastering engineer wants his recordings to sound good on a variety of playback systems. These range all over the place, so it is a bit of a crap shoot. However, if his recordings fall near the center of the rolled-off vs. too-bright distribution of recordings then he will have the best chance of his recordings sounding good on many systems. The historical fact is that most recordings sound best when played back on systems that have slightly rolled off high frequencies. Therefore it is helpful to the mastering engineer if his playback system is slightly rolled off. When setting up his mastering studio, a first rate mastering engineer will dial in the high frequency response of his monitors by listening to a wide range of recordings and picking a reference set used to set up his monitors.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

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