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I constantly think that hi end speakers (Wilson and JM Lab) sounded tilted up, at least 7-10db to give an airy and leaner presentation. Not exactly glassy highs but prominent. Of course, they also stretched the upper frequency to 40kHz the least.
Even though, those frequencies might not be audible but one can feel the presence.
What is your thought?
Follow Ups:
I try my best not to make any judgement based on the technology of the loudspeakers and I really try to avoid every reading a graph before an audition. Reading graphs create a bias which companies who market graphs want to do. It's similar to when CD players first came out. They put in their specs a wow and flutter reading. It would say something like wow and flutter: below measurable or audible limits. Of course this was an utterly pointless spec for CD and its sole reason for being was to "beat turntables"
The fact that decent modern entry tables have wow and flutter below the level of human detection was of course irrelevant because the numbers on the spec sheet were "higher" and therefore worse. Marketing BS to con people into buying CD.
Note: I have nothing against CD - I like them - own several etc - and there are many valid reasons to buy CD over vinyl but just pointing out the marketing BS to push push push the new thing.
The fact is people respond to different things while listening to music reproduction. Terry, the owner of my favorite audio dealer Soundhounds in Victoria British Columbia has been at this since the mid 1970s. He's been to all the shows and sold virtually every major speaker to come down the pike - sometimes sold brands dropped them and re-picked them up.
He sells up to date Soolos Meridian digital powered speakers, Quad and Magnepan panels, NRC measured hoopla Paradigm Sig, old school boxes from Audio Note and Harbeth, warm sounding Sonus Faber, to fun ass speakers like the Cerwin Vega CLS 215, to cutting edge digital Ayre and Linn streamers, to old SET tubes from Audio Note and Wyatech to big beastly McIntosh, Classe, and Bryston.
You can't please all of the people all of the time. He notes that some people are sit at the front of the chair listening "for" sonic attributes and thus are also listening "for" individual aspects of sonic reproduction. As a reviewer - reviewers tend to do this when reviewing. We have to "look for" problems. Or report on strengths. But it's not really a natural way to audition gear.
I have never listened to anything live and ever listened for or thought about staging. Yet on most forums and many reviewer commentary this takes up a massive amount of detailed space. And to me it's overrated - consider this article by Lawrence Borden http://www.dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=398
I understand what you're saying about those two and you can add a whole pile of others from most speaker makers out there that like Larry indicated below are geared for supposedly a popular stance.
The problem with some of the speakers you note is that my ear ends up focusing on frequency response or treble attributes and it doesn't sound "right" A Harbeth sounds more "right" but I'm sure it doesn't measure as well - probably because someone there actually bothered to attend classical symphonies and then goes home to design the speaker and say let's do this and this - and measurements be damned it sounds more like real instruments in space than the textbook.
I was on the PMC or B&W with Bryston track when I first was in this hobby. Bryston is what got me interested in higher end audio. And I kept track of THD and impedance in speakers and frequency plots for ages. And then a silly lousy measuring SET amp with ugly boxes that were "all wrong" by current mantra standards I heard pseudo blind.
You see the tube amp was a beastly sized thing and covered from a company I never heard of. It was in a rack on the bottom so I had no way to tell that it was a tube amplifier. I was listening to several things but piano for the first time sounded like an actual piano, bass was deep big tight and full bodied - wow - by far beat everything I heard the 20 years prior - and I heard JM Labs Mezza Utopia, flagship Paradigm hales, cabasse, Apogee, B&W, PSB, PMC, Genelec, Martin Logan, Focal, Castle, ProAc etc etc., on ruler flat exceptional measuring SS beasties - Levinson, Krell, Bryston, Classe etc.
Wow where was the sub? No sub. Okay but how did it sound so real - that amp is HUGE it must be 1000 watts - 8 watts. WTF? That is a SET - SETS are supposed to be gutless heavily distorting piles of poo. Some hack on some forum or some totally clueless or worse corrupt reviewer said so.
I said how can such ugly stuff that measures so bad sound so much better than everything else?
Terry - the guy who sells all the current measures perfect stuff - smiled and says - "good sound looks like "that"" as he pointed over to the system I just heard.
Unfortunately, personally speaking I hate it when something that measures like a SET sounds SO MUCH BETTER than stuff that measures like a Bryston. It's highly irritating to me because I like to see the numbers and something that will illustrate why the SET sounds "clearer" - why it sounds "LESS" distorted - why it seems to put out actual decay and body and 3D image. Why is there richer bass - why are the transients seemingly faster.
What's the answer I read? "SETs have pleasing 2nd order distortion which tricks you into liking it better." Problem is I don't associate distortion with clearer. Why do I need to turn the Bryston amps up loud to make things out while with a SET at lower volume I can make out things easier. Why do people leave SS for SET and not return. It's not trick - tricks don't have staying power.
The thing with Wilson is that I was impressed with the treble - but I have yet to hear one truly sound integrated - something is thin about the bass. The MAXX 3 at CES was all over the place IMO. And people always want to blame show conditions but plenty of other speakers in much worse room conditions sounded better.
I guess I don't want to be so much "impressed" by the stereo rather I want to be "satisfied emotionally" by the stereo. Impressive is cool but after 20 minutes I wind up turning it off to watch TV.
Perhaps it goes back to the "hi-fi" versus "musical" argument. I hate siding with the "musical" camp because it's uncomfortably too much like a religious cult for my left brain to handle.
But listening to the SS PMC/Bryston - Paradigm/Anthem - PSB/Musical Fidelity - B&W/Classe, Wilson/Krell, JM Labs/Boulder kind of systems I just can't take them. I can't relax - they sound hi-fi and they have cool aspects "slam" and power and they may even offer "pinpoint" imaging or lots of "air" and blah blah. But I want to sit back in the chair - I want the goosebumps and I NEVER EVER get it from ANY of those systems. It's fluorescent lights versus natural light. Fluorescent light may cover more of the room than opening the window to let natural light in but ...
For the absurd high prices that Wilson is asking for their products, their frequency response curves are p?ss poor. If given my druthers, I would pick PSB over Wilson any day of the week as PSB does not attempt to tonally shift the source being fed to it. It is by far a more accurate than what Wilson has put out.
It's been acknowledged for years that a neutral speaker will be perceived as bright by most listeners. The reason most folks avoid true studio monitors is they are very neutral and will sound good in a heavily dampened room like a studio but tend to be overly bright in an average listening room.
Will give a "tipped" up presentation in a real world listenting room. A couple db/octave smooth decline from low frequencies to high frequencies provides a "natural" sound.
Hi,
Since we're the only publication in the world that does true anechoic measurements (that I know of), I know a thing or two about this.
Your statement is too vague. When you look at any frequency-response measurement, you must look at curves taken on and off axis, and then summed curves (front hemisphere, sound power, etc.) as well.
When you say a flat anechoic curve will sound too lean and the balance should be tilted down, that relates to the sound power mostly. Basically, sound power takes into account all radiated energy (front, sides, rear, up, down), and when you look at that in a properly balanced, neutral speaker, you'll have a downward-tilting line -- and it is quite possible that the on-axis response is very flat with no tilt. A good example of that is the PSB Imagine T2 that I just reviewed. The reason you get this downward tilt is because when you get off axis, the energy in the highs decreases more than the bass. When you sum all that, you'll have less energy up top than down low.
It's when you have flat sound power that you have a lean, tilted-up sound. If you look at the on-axis response of that, you won't likely see a horizontal line, but one that rises significantly from the bass through the highs.
Hopefully that makes sense. Our measurements can all be found at www.SpeakerMeasurements.com. These are all performed in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council (NRC).
Doug Schneider
www.SoundStageNetwork.com
I agree with everything you have said. I was just trying to be concise instead of writing a long thread and I guess it led to a lack of clarity. It is the old debate about wide dispersion vs. controlled dispersion I think as many speakers with a wide dispersion have a more flat power response than those with some form of controlled directivity and often will sound a bit bright unless the room is large or well damped.
Hi,
Fair enough. For me it's important for people to know it's about far more than one curve. In fact, I had a long discussion with PMC's owner/designer in Britain and that was the thing that irks him -- magazines, reviewers, listeners, who put all their effort into looking at one on-axis plot when, in fact, you have to look at everything around the speaker.
Doug Schneider
Actually you have to listen to the speaker in a real room at the listening chair. I am constantly amazed that most every speaker that advertises and markets the hell out of using blind tests and measured at the NRC are always the speakers that in every demo room I listen to them in end up sounding the worst. Even the dealers selling them like the speakers from brands that don't do those things better.
Audioholics also noted that those "we do DBT's in our designs - none of them open themselves up to INDEPENDENT tests - It's marketing BS.
The Insanity of Marketing Disguised as Science in Loudspeakers
In it, he repeats the assertions made on his website, REG on Audio, about the infamous floor dip, which few speaker designers seem to address. REG's contention is that the failure to fill in the floor dip (so to speak), which usually occurs somewhere between 100 and 300 Hz, will account for the leanness that is characteristic of so many of today's high-end speakers. So rather than blaming an emphasis in the treble region, he seems to blame the leanness in the lower-mid/upper-bass region.
-Bob
I agreed with REG's general observation about how modern speakers tend to have a dip in the lower mids/upper bass, but I was surprised that he didn't also mention another room factor that contributes to the problem. It's not just due to the distance from the floor. The dip is also due to the room node in the middle of the room's width.
The typical audiophile with a rectangular room tends to place speakers symmetrically across the width of the room, i.e. an equal distance from each side wall. The sweet spot for listening is then also equidistant from the side walls. For a room that is 12 to 16 feet wide, this causes a "suck out" in in the 60 to 80 Hz area.
Robert Greene makes an excellent point (in his article). A loss of power (output) in the "power" passband (100 Hz - 300 Hz) due to destructive interference between the speaker's direct output and its output reflected off the floor, throws the sound of the speakers out of wack and shifts emphasis onto the speaker's upper frequencies.
A power band suckout makes the speaker sound unbalanced. Thats what the ear/brain reacts to. We interpret this shift down in low frequencies, as a shift up in high frequencies.
Classic tone control "tilt" switches operated this way. To give the illusion of boosted high frequencies, low frequencies are tilted down from a center "pivot" frequency. To give the illusion of boosted low frequecies, high frequencies are shifted down from a center "pivot" frequency.
I agree that some brands sound like that, but there are many high end brands that don't also. I prefer brands with soft dome tweeters because they tend not to be tilted towards the high's. Brands like Verity, Dynaudio, ProAc, Sonus Faber, etc.
Metal dome based designs are not generally "tilted up". If you dislike metal-dome designs then it's another attribute, perhaps break-up of rigid dome materials or something else.
I have metal dome designs which are flat as a pancake (excluding the requisite baffle step compensation of course) and they don't sound shrill or harsh at all. Not all metal-dome tweets are created equal either...
Cheers,
Presto
sell to old guys == low high-frequency sensitivity => turn up the highs.
,
I think a LOT of current speakers, high end and mid-priced, sound overly lean, threadbare and unpleasant. It is not necessarily because they are tipped up in the extreme high frequencies. The ear is very sensitive to any sort of roughness around the 3khz range and I think "problems" start that low with lots of speakers.
Given all of the technical advances in materials and construction, I think it is a matter of voicing--this is the sound most people actually want. The Canadian NRC has surveyed what the public generally prefers, and that is the VERY sound that I personally don't like.
I'd rather have a speaker that tells how good or bad a recording is then color the sound through rose tinted glasses if you know what I mean. Its a personal preference of mine as well but that is the sound that most designers are going for. They aren't trying to "voice" a speaker anymore. They are trying to make them as transparent as possible.
...on the room and the associated equipment.
The best speakers can sound bright because of their upper frequency extension and transparency.
All speakers have a slightly different tonal balance, which is part of what distinguishes them from each other.
I have heard Wilsons sound bright, cold and clinical.
And I have heard them sound very musical.
"High end detail", "Inner detail", etc., are NOT exclusively limited to very high frequencies 15 or 18 or 20khz and up. In fact, a designer can get the inital impression of more detail with a pronounced 8-12K range.
Also, JM Labs and Wilson commonly use variants of Focal inverted titanium dome tweeters. These seem to attract some listeners because they are intially "very detailed", but after a while I ended up considering them to be "extremely fussy" about equipment used. I'd rather build a design around a vintange Vifa D25ag-35-06 (with the phase plugey thing removed) than Focal 1" tweeters.
You need to remember that original usage of the Focal inverted Ti dome tweets in Wilson designs like the "Watt/Puppy" did not measure very flat at all, yet got rave reviews by audiophiles and many people in the studio environment. They were even used during recording as monitors as far as I know.
Lesson here? Beware of speakers that jump out as having better detail in quick a/b comparisons in showrooms. Don't kid yourself - designers who are smart know how to voice speakers so they sell. After a while, your "ooooh ahhh" detail could result in listening fatigue and a less than great tonal balance.
The older Ti dome Focal tweets had this interesting dichotomy. They would sound wonderful with guitar (especially the plucked string), cymbals, triangles and bells. But on anything but the most prestine recordings, I found them to 'shred' certain wind instruments, especially the flute. The Vifa D25ag-35-06 aluminum dome tweet and most dome tweeters with low enough distortion do not do this.
I think sometimes "detail" is a double edged sword, and not an indication of better rendering, but something ADDED to the music rather then something extracted from the innermost nuances of the recording.
Just my $.02
Cheers,
Presto
Unless your talking about a distortion spectrum past 22KHz, keep in mind there is normally no actual signal above the recording limits (21KHz for a CD format). Also, the average person has a poor ability to guess what frequency they hear, guessing much too high for high notes and too low for bass notes.
On the other hand, you can hear above 20KHz, it just has to be very loud compared to the range below.
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