Plasnu, my take has long been that discomfort comes when there is a geometrically weighted imbalance in spectral content.
It's like a see-saw to me, lows on one end, highs of the other.
Bass heavy will sound bad and equivalent to being treble light.
Just like bass light will sound treble bright.
It's all about balance imo.
What's cool i think, is the old rule of thumb that low freq times high freq (in kHz) should equal 400. You know 20-20K = 400.
I know the old rule was more for telephony and various bandwidth limited devices, but i think it's based on some fundamental logic about hearing perception.
We can change kHz to Hz and multiply 20 times 20,000 to get 400,000.
The sqr root of 400,000 is 632Hz, and we get the center of the spectrum geometrically.
Which is also the center of the spectrum in terms of number of octaves,
5 above and 5 below.
I use 640 Hz as the center for ease of math.....and it becomes the fulcrum of the see-saw.
Frequencies can be mapped from end to end on the see-saw in logarithmic scale where each octave is the same width.
20-40, 40-80, 80-160, 160-320, 320-640 <fulcrum> 640-1.3k, 1.3-2.6k, 2.6-5.1k, 5.1-10.2k, 10.2 to 20.4k
Picture 10 different seats on the see-saw.
So far an extreme example, if we add 3dB to the bottom octave 20-40Hz, which is as far from the fullcrum as can be, we have to add 3dB to the top octave on the other far end to easily and quickly balance.
Often explains smiley face tuning trend, especially when the track had no real lows or highs to begin with.
Another thing to note, is say there is too much bloat in the 3rd octave up, 80-160, two seats from the fulcrum.
Well, the cure of course is to fix it, of itself.
But a balancing tonal technique could be to add equal bloat to the octave seat two above the fulcrum, 1.3-2.6k.
I think alot of this kind of "funny business tonal balancing" occurs, fixing wrong with more wrong, when we tune by ear without measurements.
I apologize for this long winded post, but earlier i stressed how much being able to adjust tonality has lessened fatigue for me.
I had tried using parametric and graphic equalizers with very limited success for some time.
Out of dumb luck, when setting levels for various 4-way builds, and leaving the level controls in place because i would mix and match different sub, mid, HF, and VHF sections together, i began to notice how easy it was to fix problem tracks during playback.
Then i came to see the see-saw theory.......as each of the 4-sections coincidentally happened to span about the same number of octaves.
A big factor in it working that wasn't mentioned previously, is that the entire system can be tuned very flat mag and phase, since is is so easy to adjust to taste in real time afterwards. Truly flat tuning is soo much easier ime.
