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RE: Ideal frequency response curve

"The question then arises: why does the mastering engineer have a speaker that is rolled off?"

My answer is that the digitization of audio has essentially forced such practice.... Prior to the digital age, extended HF (beyond the audible range) was often highly desired, some even claiming it enhances how we perceive the sound within the audible range.... (Even Radio Shack was marketing ribbon tweeters and other extended HF products in those days.)

This totally changed when the bandwidth limited CD displaced vinyl as the consumer medium of choice. (And with MP3 dominating current music sales, the need for extended HF seems to have gone away completely.)

With the comeback of vinyl, if future digital electronics (computers, entertainment products, etc.) can tame the RFI emissions which I think brought down quality sound reproduction at all levels, we might have a resurgence of audio products with extended HF. Not to mention maybe even studio products that do likewise.

"The answer is that the mastering engineer wants his recordings to sound good on a variety of playback systems."

I don't think using rolled-off speakers would be an ideal conduit to make recordings sound good on a variety of playback systems. Even playback systems of the Best Buy variety.... If one doesn't know what's up there, how would he know if it will sound OK on other systems?

Maybe this is why we've had recordings with strange HF artifacts in recent time. If the drivers are excessively rolled off, and the mastering engineer doesn't hear the top octave, he might not be aware of HF artifacts that could make it to the final released product.

The mastering engineer should be able to hear everything, good, bad, and ugly. He would then be able to better determine what would be best for a variety of systems.



Edits: 06/17/15

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