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Bright High End Speakers = Bad Room?

Long time lurker, new poster and diving right in.
I have noticed on the threads, a lot of what are considered high spend speakers, high end B&W's particularly, but not exclusively, being faulted for being "bright", a viewpoint typically garnered from "heard them at a show", etc.
I would posit that the reason this is, not exclusively of course, but in many cases, is due to a conscious decision in how these speaker companies balance on/off axis energy  (or an unconscious decision due to the space they were voiced in).

Whether it is assumed you are going to have more off-axis energy due to reflection/diffusion and/or assumed you are going to have less off axis energy due to absorption, if you don't implement your room accordingly, you are going to find the speaker bright or dark versus a speaker, even a low end one, that is voiced in a room more like the typical partially or poorly treated room.
Thoughts?


atdavid

Showing 1 response by erik_squires

erik_squires
16,644 posts
 
The anechoic and/or quasi-anechoic measurements people are used to seeing are supposed to be flat.
In a room you should have a descending response from around 100-150 Hz. This is what all of the automated room-correction software tries to do, more or less. They don’t attempt a ruler flat response for exactly the reason stated by the OP.


There are some other things going on in tweeters I'd like to mention though.


B&W and some other "high end" speakers use a ragged tweeter response designed to elicit a sense of detail. This is a trait I blame Stereophile for hyping/promoting as "neutral." It isn't.


Brands which shy away from this kind of tweeter trickery are Magico, Vandersteen and YG Acoustics.  However, that doesn't mean the rest of their response is ruler flat/accurate either. Just that they at least don't try this hyper-detail trickery.  Of course, I call it trickery, you might call it a wonderful feature. :)


Having said all this, I also find that the floor area behind/between the speakers is an unexpected place for harshness in a speaker sound. If you have a solid floor or rack between the speakers, it’s worth experimenting with blankets/pillows in the area.
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