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Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

Opening worm cans is a specialty of mine!

>So are these manufacturers purposely selling a "non-flat" speaker that sounds exciting and different and "detailed" without sounding shrill or excessively lean?<

Like every other component of an audio system speakers should be built according to the theorem “garbage in - garbage out”, which means without adding any further garbage. Your audio system shouldn’t be turning a Steinway into a Bösendorfer by applying changes to the spectrum as recorded. Toole has found in his tests that the listeners prefer loudspeakers with flat response. Flat response is the only correct manner if we talk hifi.
Why speaker manufacturers don’t try to get response as flat as possible, I don’t know. Such speakers are either voiced or incompetently designed. For me such speakers are not worth a second thought.

>I think, after seeing response graphs for Watt Puppies (speakers that were allegedly favorites for studio monitoring) which are ragged as a mountain range become revered speakers among the audiophile community. Perhaps the "right" peaks and dips in the audible bandwidth are pleasant sounding, such as the 2nd harmonic distortion euphoria of tube amps.<

No comment re: audiophile community and its references. To me the label “audiophile approval” is always a sign to stay away.

>If we add in the fact we all have different hearing curves and rooms and room materials, it almost makes no sense to even discuss preferences surrounding slight amplitude response variations IMHO.<

The same loudspeaker will sound differently in different rooms and in different positions in the same room. But that and different in-ear response is not the issue. A loudspeaker is not a musical instrument that should sound good, it’s a tool that should reproduce what’s on the recording 1:1, and that means flat response. YMMV, of course.

Klaus


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