Debunking Audio "Truths" - Flat Response = Best Sound
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- čas přidán 24. 08. 2023
- Like I say in the video, please don't get worked up over the hype in the title and just go by what I'm saying in the video. I'm not really trying to "debunk" anything, just point out the very obvious connection between the speakers and the room they are playing in.
The frequency response measurements (includes off axis response) for speakers are done anechoic, meaning without room interaction. And that's a standard way to measure the objective performance of the speaker, but it's not tied to the reality of using that set of speakers in a room.
To measure THAT performance, you have to set them up in the room where they will be used, and that gives a true representation of what the actual sound quality is. You can not judge the sound quality of a pair of speakers based on the anechoic measurements - they have to be in the room they will be used in and you have to listen to them.
The room matters a great deal - as much as 50% of what you hear when a pair of speakers are playing is the room itself: the reflections and how the size / shape / density of the boundaries / and level of absorption change the sound you hear.
I know it's easy to dismiss that effect (I used to) when you are not willing to do anything to change it. But denying reality doesn't mean it stops being a factor.
The experiment where you set up speakers in different rooms (and then outdoors) should illustrate quite clearly just how much of a factor the room is and the very real impact it has on the overall sound quality.
So buying speakers based on measurements and reviews of those measurements, is like buying food based on the ingredients without knowing if you like how it tastes. Music enjoyment is, like eating, a purely subjective act and while there are things about it that can be objectively measured, they would be the least significant factors in the process.
Add to that the fact that no one is making truly bad speakers these days and that means the anechoic measurements are even less relevant.
It's fine if you enjoy watching or reading reviews (either objective or subjective), but stop conflating that with determining how good a pair of speakers will sound in your room.
For example, I enjoy watching camera reviews (for video and photography), but I never take just those reviews into consideration when buying a new camera. First thing I do is recognize that there's little actual difference in the objective performance between models where image quality is concerned, and it then comes down to features and ergonomics, and whether I can afford it.
If buying speakers without listening in the room you will use them, your main criteria for selecting a pair should be whether you can afford them and if they appeal to you visually. Because there's not going to be a significant difference between different models / brands in the same price range. And when you have them, you can then get to work setting them up in your room to optimize the sound quality you can get from them.
The best approach (and the one that has worked best for me) is to set up your speakers by ear, then do some basic in-room measurements and tweak from there. Tweaking means speaker positioning and EQ. To get the best sound you need to put in the time to do both.
AND if you really want the very best sound quality, you need to add effective room treatment that will reduce the strength and duration of the reflections that can dominate what you hear in a room. That means thick (at least 6" thick) acoustic panels placed where they will be the most effective.
Reducing the early reflections and the reverb time will dramatically boost clarity and detail, and you will hear the music like you've never heard it before. I can't over stress how much of an improvement effective room treatment will produce.
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Like I say in the video, please don't get worked up over the hype in the title and just go by what I'm saying in the video. I'm not really trying to "debunk" anything, just point out the very obvious connection between the speakers and the room they are playing in.
The frequency response measurements (includes off axis response) for speakers are done anechoic, meaning without room interaction. And that's a standard way to measure the objective performance of the speaker, but it's not tied to the reality of using that set of speakers in a room.
To measure THAT performance, you have to set them up in the room where they will be used, and that gives a true representation of what the actual sound quality is. You can not judge the sound quality of a pair of speakers based on the anechoic measurements - they have to be in the room they will be used in and you have to listen to them.
The room matters a great deal - as much as 50% of what you hear when a pair of speakers are playing is the room itself: the reflections and how the size / shape / density of the boundaries / and level of absorption change the sound you hear.
I know it's easy to dismiss that effect (I used to) when you are not willing to do anything to change it. But denying reality doesn't mean it stops being a factor.
The experiment where you set up speakers in different rooms (and then outdoors) should illustrate quite clearly just how much of a factor the room is and the very real impact it has on the overall sound quality.
So buying speakers based on measurements and reviews of those measurements, is like buying food based on the ingredients without knowing if you like how it tastes. Music enjoyment is, like eating, a purely subjective act and while there are things about it that can be objectively measured, they would be the least significant factors in the process.
Add to that the fact that no one is making truly bad speakers these days and that means the anechoic measurements are even less relevant.
It's fine if you enjoy watching or reading reviews (either objective or subjective), but stop conflating that with determining how good a pair of speakers will sound in your room.
For example, I enjoy watching camera reviews (for video and photography), but I never take just those reviews into consideration when buying a new camera. First thing I do is recognize that there's little actual difference in the objective performance between models where image quality is concerned, and it then comes down to features and ergonomics, and whether I can afford it.
If buying speakers without listening in the room you will use them, your main criteria for selecting a pair should be whether you can afford them and if they appeal to you visually. Because there's not going to be a significant difference between different models / brands in the same price range. And when you have them, you can then get to work setting them up in your room to optimize the sound quality you can get from them.
The best approach (and the one that has worked best for me) is to set up your speakers by ear, then do some basic in-room measurements and tweak from there. Tweaking means speaker positioning and EQ. To get the best sound you need to put in the time to do both.
AND if you really want the very best sound quality, you need to add effective room treatment that will reduce the strength and duration of the reflections that can dominate what you hear in a room. That means thick (at least 6" thick) acoustic panels placed where they will be the most effective.
Reducing the early reflections and the reverb time will dramatically boost clarity and detail, and you will hear the music like you've never heard it before. I can't over stress how much of an improvement effective room treatment will produce.
Damit John, your disclaimer took all the fun away 😅😂
I like a perfectly flat response, except for maybe a little bass boost. And maybe some treble boost. And sometimes i have to adjust the mid levels.
😂
Spot on! Some people spend ton's of money building and adapting their listening room so their premium speaker sounds good. You can also work the other way around and adapt your speaker to the room by EQ or in the design of the speaker. I went from a well damped room in my house in the Netherlands to an echo box in Brazil where all the floors are tiles, the walls are blocks / concrete and the ceiling is concrete. Very well build by the way but acoustically a disaster. I needed to tune my crossover to get better results and ad some soft material in the room. But the main thing is that the drivers do have a good timbre, match and tonal integrate and do not show signs of harshness for long listening, whatever the room.
I agree that the best way to run REW, especially for the beginner is to use it to identify the big problem areas. Use it to help you fix those, then just make the fine adjustments with your ear. Set up your system the way that makes it enjoyable for you to listen to. Repositioning speakers, simple acoustic panels are very inexpensive and effective ways to really improve your listening enjoyment.
I like your audio related content a lot. I read a little bit into it 25 years ago, built amps and speakers and such. It all makes sense now. Thanks John!
Good video and oh so true. I have room treatment but still have the ceiling bounce null, which I may address, and the floor bounce that I can’t do too much about. With regards to equalization, the success or failure of this is tied to on axis response vs off axis response. If the off axis response mimics the on axis response but just a few db down then equalization works well. There are lots of videos that explain this far better than I can.
nice to have these conversations and explanations.
for those who look at others measurement or started doing their own this is helpful.
for consumers flat does not matter in general, at least any measured flat response.
what i like to do is listen and do adjustment from there, no mic needed. for me that made the speakers sound much better in my room, so good i can never go back to non eq'ed again.
Yes, 7:46 !!
People want great sound quality BUT everyone and everybody knows that room treatment is the first and only thing that will bring that great sound quality then the rest is just smaller optimizations in comparison.
There is some audiophiles that carrying in and out different components in the same lousy room for their HiFi system their WHOLE life! 😮
(And expect a different resut..)😅😮
And the biggest component both in size and amount of impact on the sound quality is the ROOM..
Latest example is the Jay CZcamsr that just treated his whole listening room there he has carried in and out ultra high end components for YEARS!
And all that time were essentially wasted when he has not really heard the true performance and what they were able to bring to the table.
When he was listening on the components with a far from optimal room.
Don't be that guy 😂
Now you know, and the ball is in your hands.🎉❤
Your pinned comment is gold.
Any enthusiast would be well served to copy and paste, use it as a path to killer sonics.
Nice work
I endorse this video.😊 😂
He’s right you know, average speakers in a good room can sound better than good speakers in a bad room.
Loads of early reflections not only mess with the frequency response but also the time domain and imaging just disappears and ear fatigue sets in faster.
This is one of the reasons an open baffled speaker can sound so good if you’re in the right spot as there directional, even at low frequencies.
Sorry. I didn’t explain did I?
Directional sound means less sound splashing out the sides (of the speaker) and reflecting back of the walls and back to your ears out of time with the original sound that comes direct from the speaker.
John, your ability to explain complex subjects in a simple and easy way to understand never fails to impress me. Thanks!
I love your voice, makes the videos so interesting. lol. Much love from South Africa
So true, the room I have is like a sound stage /shell all in brick. So very noticeable and don't need much power. I have curtains and rug to dampen. Still has small reflection but doesn't ring.
John, your videos are always truly practical, useful, helpful, and very "real-world", and usually also pretty blunt and to the point, even if that point is counter to the "norm" or "common" way of thinking about the topic, and that's one thing I have come to appreciate about your videos... REAL talk, about the MOST important and essential audio topics, without all of the "fluff" or super detailed and extreme "mumbo jumbo" of the typical "audiophile" world, some of which doesn't even really matter and is a totally pointless waste of your time to worry about or even discuss! (I won't go into details there, but I'm sure you know what kind of stuff I'm talking about, lol!)
Unfortunately, having an opinion that goes against the norm is taken as a personal attack, these days.
Guys get way too upset if you dare question what they take as established fact, even though they usually haven't done anything other than listen to someone else who's telling them the established facts.
Basically it comes down to what you want to believe and anyone that says something to back that up is good, and anyone who questions it is bad.
@@IBuildIt Yeah, unfortunately that is true nowadays, because people in general are too overly "sensitive" and "upset" about the tiniest of things, but modern day "snowflakes" aside, the real, genuine, old skool, die hard audio nerds like myself, (and you!), really appreciate knowing the real truths about things, even if that truth is totally opposite to the "norm"... Most average people in today's modern society simply cannot handle the real truth about anything, simply because they've been living their entire lives inside the "Matrix" and are "programmed" by the media, especially social media, and "societal norms" to believe a certain thing... Then when anyone comes along and reveals how things TRULY are, behind all of the fluff, then they just break down and get upset... It's an unfortunate reality nowadays, that the majority of typical people cannot handle the truth, but I just say "oh f___-ing well!" (Keep yourself blind then, that's your choice! Lol!)
But I have Asperger's/A.S.D. myself, so I am always rather blunt and direct, and always very truthful myself, even if it makes some people upset, I always just "tell it like it IS", rather than "sugar coating it" just to be saying what someone wants to hear... And that's probably a big reason why I really appreciate when I hear the real truth from someone else who knows also, even if that truth may be sometimes difficult to accept, I'd still rather know it rather than just something that may be "easier", but that I still feel deep down isn't totally true!... But I know I don't think like most average people do... But that is totally OK with me!
Anyway, keep on doing your own thing, and making good information, practical, real-world useful videos, as that has always been a good thing about your channel! Have a great day man!
well done!!
Yep. Have to design the environment to compliment the system. The listener should establish their expectations and budget and design accordingly. Your room experiment demonstrates a bathroom and large living room have significantly different acoustic characteristics. It is all about "Sound Design for Quiet Measures(R)", or in this case "pleasing" Measures.
Thank you! I needed to hear that and it makes sense.
Good advice, thanks .
Great video John. Completely agree 👍
The best for me is flat speakers, with my head at the right distance from them. Flat speakers give you the truest sound. The further your head is away, the worse the sound. The closer, the more full they sound, they turn into a pair of headphones. Distance can be helped with adding more bass or treble or mids.
"Anechoic" is such a beautiful word.
It’s silly how this hobby has to be so oppositional; it’s like it exposes a general flaw in human nature.
The points here about the importance of room interaction are totally valid. That doesn’t, and shouldn’t, cause any sort of conflict with the “opposing” view that speakers with a linear off-axis response typically interact better with most rooms, and are more amenable to eq than speakers with poor off-axis response.
These are not mutually exclusive tenets, and both should be considered. I also agree with John’s statement that just because a particular speaker has a fantastic off-axis response, it isn’t guaranteed to sound good in everyone’s particular rooms. Rooms with less correction tend to like speakers that have more narrow dispersion, but like John said, you gotta try a speaker out in your room before you know.
To put it more succinctly, we’re just dealing with probabilities here, and we want to do what we can to increase all probabilities that our setup will please us.
The flaw in human nature is our desire for simple, easy answers when they don't fit the application. And then being convinced that the easy answers are all that's needed.
People think that every room has "special" caracteristics but it really doesnt. By design the absorption coefficient of the room will rise with frequency and this relativly linear. So The the thing that matters most is how wide or narrow the radiation pattern is.
The biggest difference between rooms is the base response which has nothing to do with directivity. I dont get why some people always say constant directivity is not important.
Positioning of the speakers you have is vital. Some "crappy" speakers sound pretty good when positioned right. Gotta tell you though, good speakers, positioned correctly, sound amazing v. pretty good. It's all in the design, and what they are meant for.
Love my ESS AMT-1D speakers, but also have others that sound great if positioned correctly in the room. Even the Bose (yeah, I said it lol).
John, what microphone do you use for measuring response in a room?
MiniDSP Umik-1
Thank you@@IBuildIt
I totally agree. And I would go one further by saying that you don't even need my microphone and graphing software. You can use just a frequency generator like when it comes in an app for your phone if you have Bluetooth connectivity and use your owners and listen as you sweep up the frequency the ups and downs will make themselves very apparent. Good enough for government work. PS you'll setting your equalisation to response in your ears as well, in one Fell Swoop.
OR maybe use your. . . EARS !
Use eq and tone controls. Flat response speakers sound terrible in any room. They always need some bass enhancement so would like like real life. Maybe that is the recordings, does not really matter, I just use eq or tone controls and enjoy life. It makes it very hard to buy new speakers as the trend is to make flatter electronics, and omitting tone controls. Almost need to take portable tone controls to stereo stores to select speakers. Modern demo systems sound like very clear, detailed tin cans to my ears, nothing like real life.
"Flat response speakers sound terrible in any room."
What flat speaker have you heard that sounded terrible?
As I say, the room can make or break the the best and worst of speakers. You can even take a set of Bose 301s properly setup in the perfect room for those, and they can sound better than JBL, pioneer hpm-100, etc. IF those speakers are in a terrible environment/room layout and the little Bose 301 are in the right setup they can perform better. The room means everything, makes all the difference. The finest speaker in the world I dont think can make the worst of rooms work for them, I don't think so.
Particularly for passive speakers that don't have adjustments built in, the amount of bass (baffle step correction) should suit the room. Rooms here in the UK tend to be brick, so any speaker that has a flat anechoic bass response will have too much low end or certainly more than a predicted response based on US drywall rooms or heavily treated mastering studios.
However, that is the modal range. In the mid and highs I don't see how an uneven response or directivity could be desirable.
Did I say an uneven response and poor directivity would be desirable? Don't think so.
What I did say is that they are not as important as you think they are.
@IBuildIt Then what IS important in comparison? Presumably you are saying don't focus on response and directivity because xxx is going to give you better sound instead.
Not good with abstract concepts, I see. Sorry if that comes across as an insult - it isn't meant as one.
Here it is in a nutshell:
There isn't any xxx. There are no easy answers. This isn't a binary, yes no, good bad situation.
It's one where there are variables and ONE of those is the objective performance of the speakers.
@IBuildIt You can't say response and directivity are less important but not say compared to what. An amount must be relative to something. That's how quantity works. 🤔
From what I can gather you are really trying to say that objective measurments such as FR and directivity do not relate well to subjective preference because speakers and rooms are too complex to draw correlations from so therefore one must hear every possible speaker option in their own room?
P.s. I respect you, please do the same for me. That was absolutly an insult.
No, it was absolutely not an insult. It's a fact of nature that a lot of people don't think in abstract terms and it's beyond their control. But the issues start when a person starts explaining abstract concepts and the person can't grasp what's being said.
What you are saying here is a great example. You are looking for definite answers for a situationally complex problem. It's deeper than that, and like I said, easy answers don't cut it if your goal is the best sound quality.
100% agree
I agree with all of this. Another thing that most people don't understand, is that almost all brand name speakers *purposely* color the sound, and that happens so much that people have come to regard that as the baseline of "what sounds good" because they don't know any different or better. Bose is probably the most egregious offender here, but they have purposely built their entire company on NOT having flat response, and most non audiophiles think Bose stuff sounds great. Each room is also different, and each amp is different, and each person's ears are different.
So you have to do you. Don't get obsessive about anything, just experiment until you figure out what sounds good to you, and run with it.
Nice you acknowledge click bait title. So much right in this video. The room is most important! What's wrong here is your comments about estimated in room response. While not 100% the estimate in room response prediction performes with a high degree of accuracy above about 500 hz (room transition frequency)
Awesome stuff, when Toole himself said that the major indicator for sound quality for most people is the bass performance. So predicting something that most people won't even notice that much is probably not something to brag about.
Over and over I get the feeling that the people that have the most to say in opposition to what I'm saying have never done any practical work in the field, and are just repeating the stuff they heard from the people that are saying what they want to hear.
@@IBuildIt certainly a solid foundation of bass is very important but the room dominates behavior below the transition frequency. Above that I don't know about you but I like my mids and highs so I certainly care about loudspeaker behavior. While it seems like you question my credibility to have these discussions perhaps you should reach out to have Dr Toole and have a detailed discussion on this topic. Or review his other CZcams videos, or read his book. The man spent almost his whole career reaching the topics with massive budgets and real data.
Recognize this: everyone has an agenda. Even (and maybe especially) the people who've spent their whole career on something.
Mine is to question the "truths", regardless of where they originate. Toole's was driven by a desire to set a standard that happened to be financed by a manufacturer. I oppose standards. I think standards are the birth of mediocrity and the death of innovation.
Yours is unclear, but part of it is probably defending the ideas that you prefer to believe.
Given that I quoted Toole's conclusions on bass, you'd think you would realize that I'm familiar with his work. I don't need to discuss the subject with him, because his views are already well established and easy to access. I agree with much of what he says, but strongly disagree with other points.
And while I say my agenda is to question truths, I'm doing this purely from an entertainment / self educational point of view. I'm not trying to "prove" anything, just putting an alternate take out there to counter the accepted one to encourage people to think instead of blindly accepting.
@@IBuildIt ok but your opining on a topic with no evidence does nothing to move the needle on the pursuit of truth. I don't make a habit of trying to get into someone's head and try to extract what I think their movites are. I don't think that's healthy behavior. In this case I can see your motivation is clearly views, clicks, and everything that comes along with being an influencer. If you disagree with Toole's work ok but conduct your stuff and publish it in the AES Journal. He's work has evidence unlike your empty options (even though you hint at appealing to your own field experience as authority). He's also been a mover and shaker in the industry moving it forward in major ways. My goal in all this is clarity and truth with no skin in the game. I don't like people spreading misinformation and I'll challenge it anytime I encounter it. This is audio not saving babies. I join this channel due to your craftsmanship and curiosity topics that I'm interested in. Seems you are going a different direction.
Yup. More people should watch this a few times. Only thing I can add. The typical room was designed in Ottawa at the NCR in the 80's. It became the IEC standard room and represented a typical living room, rectangular in shape. If you want the specs you know my email John. Totally agree with the calibration file is not important. Most electret microphones are flat in the low frequency range down to about 10 hertz and will have a little bump way up above almost all music. Take a look at the Calibration files and see a whole lot of zeros in most of them. I have 19 mics. from 1 inch to 1/4 inch. Excepting the high frequency response and the 1 inch mics able to stand 174dog bones. There is very little differences. Where I place my mics makes the greatest differences.
Ah, like everything else that comes out of Ottawa. Destructive BS, in other words :)
It's like one of those things you have to experience to know that flat sound lacks character. Probably what you want when mastering music but not when enjoying it.
Thing is most rooms won't improve any speaker, they'll likely just make the sound of the speakers worse. So the flattest you start with, the best end result you'll have. Plus odds are that your speakers will match your particular room are slim to none. And objectively, flatter is better. A transducer, device that converts input energy of one form into output energy of another, is more accurate if it does so accurately; without skewing the signal: Flat FR.
Again, you don't seem to get it. You can't separate the speaker from the room it's playing in when you are looking to judge sound quality.
Flat response is an objective target, but only useful for the speaker designer and can't be used to determine sound quality. When the speaker goes into the room, it becomes a system and then you have to look at that system to rate the sound quality.
When you put a flat response speaker in a room, it stops being flat because the room is altering the response. That's measured as a system - the speaker in the room.
Same if you put a speaker that isn't flat in a room - the response changes, but it may not get any worse than the one that was flat to begin with. Indeed, that non-flat speaker might measure flatter in the room.
Acoustics is too complex for easy answers. Sound isn't a 2d thing that graphs neatly and behaves as you think it should - it's much, much more complex than that.
@@IBuildIt 1/x "looking to judge sound quality. "
I'm not judging sound quality. I'm talking objectively better speaker performance.
"it becomes a system."
Not really. The room can and will negatively affect the sound, that's why speaker position, listening posting and room treatment is essential. But flat speakers are still objectively better.
@@IBuildIt 2/x "speaker that isn't flat in a room"
The speaker is either flat or isn't. It's not relative to a room. The "Room Response" is what you're referring to, but you keep confusing the two together.
Room Response Vs Speaker Response. 2 different things. Not the same thing.
That's what you don't seem to be getting.
@@IBuildIt 3/x " that non-flat speaker might measure flatter in the room."
Like I said, the odds of your retail speakers to perfectly coincide with your room are negligible. You're 100x better off buying off flat speakers, then treating your room and using EQ / room correction.
Your inaccurate speakers; objectively worse performing speakers, non-flat speakres, will basically NEVER work better than an objectively better performing speaker in a room.
@@IBuildIt 4/4 Because the odds of your particular speaker defects just coinciding with your room modes are again, negligible. It just doesn't happen.
The room will just make your bad speaker worse. Again, you're 100x time better to buy a flat speaker and EQ it as you want in your room, than having to fix a speaker because its FR is messed up, and then adding the complexity of ALSO fixing the room at the same time...!
Me personally i like more non flat , for example my jbl partybox sound more fun than the KRK Classic 7 monitors that i have paired with 12.4 sub .....dont know why but i think studio monitor for listening music is not so good ideea !!
The problem is stereo itself, each ear hears two speakers.
Thanks for speaking speakers! It's better than all the political bullshit out there.
Flat in an anechoic chamber means you'll get some nice room gain on your bass when you move into the real world, and that's a good thing. Everyone likes bass, right?
Great video, John. I will say that you can EQ a good speaker (on an off axis will be EQ’d similarly), but I don’t think you can effectively EQ a bad speaker (on and off axis will be EQ’d differently).
Name some speakers that are so bad that you can't EQ them.
If you need to go looking for examples to answer to that question instead of naming at least 3 off the top of your head, it's not a thing.
Hey, John. Thanks for calling me out 😂. I’ll see if I can find example, but you maybe find the following interesting: czcams.com/video/zrpUDuUtxPM/video.htmlsi=_0b2Itndsb_uDWQ-
You can start about 28mins into the video.
There are a couple examples shared by Toole.
I watched that video a while back, and just skipping through it to the point you mentioned,. He says the speaker measurement was done in 1985. That's almost 40 years ago and a lot has changed since then. Like I said in this video, no one is making truly bad speakers these days, so all of them can be EQed to suit your taste.
Also worth mentioning is his focus on off-axis response and having even coverage being crucial. But that's a criteria that he developed based on this "typical" room idea, where acoustic treatment isn't being used. When you properly treat a room for the purpose of making the best listening experience possible, off-axis response becomes less important because you are going to absorb the reflections anyway. In a properly treated room, you are just getting the on-axis and slightly off-axis output from each speaker, and very little of the reflected energy from the room.
@@IBuildIt I do agree with your comments above, and thanks for responding :)
As evidenced by Erin’s Audio Corner, there are many speakers today that are designed well and respond well to EQ.
I also agree that people need to focus on room treatment. They will spend thousands on audio interconnects, and won’t even spend a $100 on room treatment.
a GEQ is your friend
You're really not debunking anything. In order for that to happen, you'd have to have proof that what your saying is correct. I realize you used quotes and have a disclaimer for the video.
What your video is saying is that measurements don't matter because the room will alter the sound you are hearing. The latter part of that last sentence is true. With that said, however, measurements matter, especially the free field measurements that show the actual speakers performance. Why would someone want to buy a speaker that say has a -5dB dip at the woofer crossover. In the room that could be nullified or it could be made worse. Why take the risk. Having the information allows you to make an informed decision about how a speaker may perform.
Also keep in mind that the avg Joe doesn't care about the performance. He or she isn't interested in the minor nuances of the speakers response. Most likely they will listen to it as is or use the available tone controls on the speaker to adjust.
In the world of high end audio, which is where people like Floyd Toole reside, it matters. So, does treating the room. Who is going to spend $10000 on a high end system and put it in a bunker? The room needs to be treated.
And this idea that flat doesn't sound best is incorrect as well. The problem comes in when it comes to high and low frequencies because we don't hear them as well as the mid bands. This is why loudness EQ was created many moons ago. A rise in the bass and highs is required until we start to reach the 75-80dB mark...and even then, depending on how well you hear, you'd need to increase it further for it to be perceived as flat. That's the goal, that all the sounds are perceived as being equal and this requires a fairly flat response from about 250hz up until about 5k.
Copied directly from my pinned comment:
"Like I say in the video, please don't get worked up over the hype in the title and just go by what I'm saying in the video. I'm not really trying to "debunk" anything, just point out the very obvious connection between the speakers and the room they are playing in.
The frequency response measurements (includes off axis response) for speakers are done anechoic, meaning without room interaction. And that's a standard way to measure the objective performance of the speaker, but it's not tied to the reality of using that set of speakers in a room.
To measure THAT performance, you have to set them up in the room where they will be used, and that gives a true representation of what the actual sound quality is. You can not judge the sound quality of a pair of speakers based on the anechoic measurements - they have to be in the room they will be used in and you have to listen to them.
The room matters a great deal - as much as 50% of what you hear when a pair of speakers are playing is the room itself: the reflections and how the size / shape / density of the boundaries / and level of absorption change the sound you hear.
I know it's easy to dismiss that effect (I used to) when you are not willing to do anything to change it. But denying reality doesn't mean it stops being a factor.
The experiment where you set up speakers in different rooms (and then outdoors) should illustrate quite clearly just how much of a factor the room is and the very real impact it has on the overall sound quality.
So buying speakers based on measurements and reviews of those measurements, is like buying food based on the ingredients without knowing if you like how it tastes. Music enjoyment is, like eating, a purely subjective act and while there are things about it that can be objectively measured, they would be the least significant factors in the process.
Add to that the fact that no one is making truly bad speakers these days and that means the anechoic measurements are even less relevant.
It's fine if you enjoy watching or reading reviews (either objective or subjective), but stop conflating that with determining how good a pair of speakers will sound in your room.
For example, I enjoy watching camera reviews (for video and photography), but I never take just those reviews into consideration when buying a new camera. First thing I do is recognize that there's little actual difference in the objective performance between models where image quality is concerned, and it then comes down to features and ergonomics, and whether I can afford it.
If buying speakers without listening in the room you will use them, your main criteria for selecting a pair should be whether you can afford them and if they appeal to you visually. Because there's not going to be a significant difference between different models / brands in the same price range. And when you have them, you can then get to work setting them up in your room to optimize the sound quality you can get from them.
The best approach (and the one that has worked best for me) is to set up your speakers by ear, then do some basic in-room measurements and tweak from there. Tweaking means speaker positioning and EQ. To get the best sound you need to put in the time to do both.
AND if you really want the very best sound quality, you need to add effective room treatment that will reduce the strength and duration of the reflections that can dominate what you hear in a room. That means thick (at least 6" thick) acoustic panels placed where they will be the most effective.
Reducing the early reflections and the reverb time will dramatically boost clarity and detail, and you will hear the music like you've never heard it before. I can't over stress how much of an improvement effective room treatment will produce."
PS: if you think it's a given that audiophiles properly treat their rooms when they spend thousands (or more like hundreds of thousands) on their gear, you are misinformed. 95% of the people who are serious about high quality audio have never listened in a properly treated room. BTW, carpet and a few pieces of foam are not proper room treatment.
Invest in the best most comfortable headphones you can afford and you don’t need room treatments, don’t have to worry about room issues coloring the sound because with headphones you don’t have to worry about that stuff. Your listening experience with be very consistent regardless of your listening position within the room. But make sure the headphones are the most accurate and most importantly the most comfortable for you.
Yep, very different experience though. But factoring cost, headphones are a no-brainer for price/performance.
flat is not flat
If you can't do room treatments, just buy good headphones.
For most it's not even a consideration, because they don't know their room should have any treatment.
@@IBuildItpretty sure carpet and draperies are a type of room treatment,
Not really room treatment, because they over-absorb the high frequencies that you need to be careful to preserve, while doing nothing at all to the low frequencies that are the main problem in a room.
Real room treatment focuses on the low frequencies, and it does that with thick absorbers or tuned base traps. The goal is to even out the reverb time over the full frequency range, and you can't do that with drapes and carpet.
@IBuildIt guess I have special carpet and draperies from the thrift store, they're amazing, somehow my homemade speakers blow my buddies kefs of the face of the earth