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RE: Yeah, I realize that.

I know that I am not listening at different SPLs. That's because I am aware of the various possible effects and take these into account. For example: when I got my Focal Twin 6's, I found that I was turning up the volume excessively, to get proper tonal balance. This was OK in mf passages, but resulted in "ear bleed" in fff passages. I noted that I had been trying to use move volume to make up for a loss in low bass. I decided to purchase a matching subwoofer. After installing my Focal subwoofer and adjusting the crossover for flat bass response using a calibrated microphone and REW software I noted that many recordings still sounded excessively bright and harsh. My system measured flat from 30 Hz to 20 kHz at my listening position. I turned down the tweeter controls on the Focal Twins half way, to get -3.5 dB at 10 kHz, shelved at -4 dB. This made most recordings sound about right, with some neutral, some perhaps a little over bright, and a few a bit dull.

One way to telling how loud an ensemble is at your location is to listen to whether and how much all of the instruments start to blend at the peaks. If you are upclose to the orchestra you will be able to hear intermodulation distortion from separate instruments at peak moments. I prefer to sit far enough back so that this doesn't happen more than once or twice during an entire concert. I can get the same effect on my system when playing back clean recordings at suitable levels. I can tell that the distortion is coming from my ears and not the speakers, because it goes away when I move far back from my normal near field listening position.

Tony Lauck

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


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  • RE: Yeah, I realize that. - Tony Lauck 03/15/1609:31:38 03/15/16 (0)

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