In my humble opinion the real magic is in the music. Guided by measurements and sane decisions we can get it out
.
It's called "taking measurements" and yes the correlation between many measurements and the perception of large groups of people has been done - see Toole. I have a few arguments with his conclusions (small ones) but for the most part I completely concur with his findings.
I once discovered that a "bad sound" that I was hearing on a particular recording was clipping of the source. I developed a technique to remove the clipping and it sounded better to me. I sent the two samples out to many people and for the most part people preferred the clipped one. - Go figure.
Having universal truths does not mean that people will accept them. No one wants to be told that the general consensus trumps their personal perception. But if your personal perception is well out of the norm than you also shouldn't expect anyone to listen to your opinion.
FYI - hearing loss very seldom has dips and/or peaks, > 90% of loss is a gradual declining HF loss that tends to go away at higher SPLs.
In my humble opinion the real magic is in the music. Guided by measurements and sane decisions we can get it out
The magic truly is the music, which is why the speakers need to get out of the way.
I had a guy come over who wanted to listen to airplane engines and stuff like that! Seriously!!
Another factor in favor of the NS10’s widespread adoption was that it was inexpensive and readily available. For every professional who had a pair on hand as a sort of mid-fi reference, there was dozens of home recording enthusiasts for whom it became a sort of totem. Buy a pair and your mixes will grow three more inches overnight.
Interesting short paper on the NS-10: https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/assetlibrary/n/ns10m.pdf?Mox1MHrRfMC0jrcxfvOtE1aJ4mEwV4P.
It wasn’t even about if it mattered, it was about “who makes the lowest distortion drivers”.
A few of us showed examples but fewer even cared. Oh well.
It matters to me. I have them and love them.
Barry.
i think your mistaking me for lbstyling on this one Doc.
and as to my perception and opinion being out of the norm and not being worth being listened to...that's a personal bias on your part.
Last edited:
this one is expressing a lot of biased opinion that should be backed up with measurements, no?
did you measure the control room spl or just guesstimate?
That comment was not for you, but for people in general, who often have misconceptions of hearing loss.
And I did not mean your last concern to you in particulate either. IF you find yourself "out of the norm", then ... Maybe your within the norm, I don't know. According to Toole's results I am certainly within the "norm" as I agree with 90% of what he claims the "norm" want. The "norm" here being, from HIS results about 90% of people. There are a few aspects of audio that I don't think Toole has studied in much depth. Nonlinear distortion is one of them. "Imaging" is another.
I think have some pocket change here somewhere.....
I'm sure anything you don't know about room interaction Earl, isn't worth knowing. But you cannot have an apples with apples comparison if you include it. That's not to say that you cannot also have tests that include room interaction, just that it would be unlikely to be considered empirically comparable between users under any constraints you would accept, no?
I'm suggesting it would be useful for designers to have a $200-$300 reference point speaker to compare notes with when making measurement or anecdotal comments about new designs. Its all just a bit of fun people!
I'll say it again, a reference point, not an ultimate reference level speaker. I would suggest we could take the discussions of the drivers discussed on this thread as information to support a shortlist. I hear good things about the Satori driver measurements.
Depends on the type of noise. Wide-band traffic noise for example will not have notches, but the impulse from shooting a gun will always arrive at the same time and is by far the worst culprit of "notch" loss. How common is that? I don't know, most people that I know use protection. I do now, but didn't a long time ago. My hearing has a little greater than average loss.
Be careful with definitions. A "dip" is common, a "notch" is not. To an audiologist a "dip" could be several octaves wide, so a Q of .5? Let's agree on a "dip" as Q < 1 and a notch Q > 1. "Notches" would be rare. "Dips" quite common.
If you mean linear distortion, of course, however, EQ would have no effect on nonlinear distortion.
"room distortion" does not really have a definition in my lexicon. Rooms have complicated "frequency response" differing across the band in many ways. In the modal region EQ could smooth the linear response, but again, it would have no effect on the nonlinear distortion.
"EQ" for "personal preference"? No Thanks.
"room distortion" does not really have a definition in my lexicon. Rooms have complicated "frequency response" differing across the band in many ways. In the modal region EQ could smooth the linear response, but again, it would have no effect on the nonlinear distortion.
"EQ" for "personal preference"? No Thanks.
That is a very complex question.
What one wants is for the direct sound, the sound before any room reflections, to be smooth (near flat, but slight HF downward slope) AND, and this is a big and, the room response to be smooth as well. If the speaker is designed to be flat by the manufacturer, and is so when it ships, then no room EQ is going to improve that speaker. It can only degrade it unless the original speaker design was flawed in some way.
In the modal region, things are the exact opposite. The free field response matters not at all and the rooms modal region EQ is essential and dominate.
What one wants is for the direct sound, the sound before any room reflections, to be smooth (near flat, but slight HF downward slope) AND, and this is a big and, the room response to be smooth as well. If the speaker is designed to be flat by the manufacturer, and is so when it ships, then no room EQ is going to improve that speaker. It can only degrade it unless the original speaker design was flawed in some way.
In the modal region, things are the exact opposite. The free field response matters not at all and the rooms modal region EQ is essential and dominate.