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 4 responses by gosta

Agreed. Don't want the speakers to do the eq-ing. There are other tools for that where you actually know what is done and only when it's needed.
I often get the impression that a good deal of the members on this forum appreciate to be fooled by a speaker being non-bright on bright recordings, that is quite rolled-off in the highs. They seem to call it musical. And name other speakers more true to the recording bright. Then there are speakers that are more bright than they actually should be, which may be fine as a working tool identifying problems in a recording. The end result of course a lot depending on the room and the listening distance. 
@teo_audio 

That curve is about what I normally do with digital eq to "tame" my loved ATC 150asl somewhat. Maybe up to 4db around 3,5 khz where they cross to the tweeter. Except for a flat response in the bass.....

Can't really agree that most pro monitors are especially exaggerated in the highs (above 8 khz). Maybe they are just not rolled-off and a little more direct in their dispersion. Most often they have controls to take down/roll-off the treble. NS-10 of course very special. Made only to work with the mids.
Fully agree. Wish I could find a TACT unit. My solution at the moment is a sonos streamer to martinlogan Unison for the ARC and then Antimode 2.0 for individual settings. Antimode has four channels to play with. Finally different dacs.