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RE: Ideal frequency response curve

My record library consists almost exclusively of recordings of acoustic music, a mixture of studio recordings and recordings made in concert halls with or without an audience. If I play these recordings on a system set up for flat high frequency response (as measured at my listening position) these recordings are heavily skewed to the bright side. Some highly regarded recordings, such as most of the Mercury Living Presence recordings, are so bright that they are painful to listen to, the equivalent of "fingernails on the blackboard". None of the recordings in my library sound dull with my system set up flat. When I adjust the high frequency response of this system so that the recordings range from slightly dull to slightly bright, nearly all of the recordings in my library sound very good, and the ones in the middle sound excellent. None are painfully bright and none are boringly dull.

I know what live music sounds like from decades of going to live concerts. I know which recordings in my library are the best from reading reviews and years of experience listening to many of these on different systems. I know that, as originally set up with "flat" cross-over settings, my system was horribly bright. I measured it's response at my listening position and it was flat from 1 kHz up to 20 kHz, which was as high as my calibrated microphone went.

After adjusting the high frequency response (by turning the high frequency control for the tweeters on my left and right speakers half-way down) I got a setting that sounded approximately correct, consistent with live music and consistent with how these recordings sounded on other systems. I measured this and found that there was a gradual roll-off starting around 1 kHz and ending up down -3.5 dB at 10 kHz, leveling out at a maximum attenuation of about -4 dB at 12 kHz and up.

I already explained why recordings tend to be too bright on flat systems. That's because that's the way they are made. If you want to know why they are made that way, you would have to talk to the people who made these recordings (most of the great engineers are no longer with us). While you are at it, you can also talk to the successful speaker designers, who won't sell many recordings if their products were flat because customers don't buy products that give them "bleeding ears".

Anyone who wishes to confirm this for himself will need to meet a few requirements:

1. They must have a system that is full range for the music being played.
2. They must have the ability to accurately measure their system response at the listening position using calibrated instruments.
3. They must have a record library with a wide range of acoustic music
4. They must be intimately familiar with how live music sounds by attending numerous concerts of different types of ensembles in different halls from a variety of listening positions in the venues.
5. They must have the ability to compare their memory of live events with what they hear when they play recordings of similar ensembles on their system.
6. They must have some way to adjust the frequency response of their system, at least as flexible as traditional tone controls.
7. They must have the ability to listen critically and identify small differences in frequency response while listening to music, down to at least the +- 0.5 dB range over 1/3 octave bands.

None of these requirements should be difficult for a competent audiophile.

Tony Lauck

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


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