Do YOU have a flat frequency response in your room?


The most basic truth of audio for the last 30 years is listeners prefer a flat frequency response. You achieve that through getting the right speakers, in the right position, in the right room, and then use room treatments and DSP to dial it in. If you are posting questions about what gear to buy and have NOT measured your room and dialed it in to achieve a flat frequency response FIRST you are blowing cash not investing cash IMO. Have you measured the frequency response in your room yet and posted it?

 

kota1

Showing 4 responses by esarhaddon

@Kota1
To start wiht, If you haven’t seen my responses before, I have been designing speakers since about 1975, so I have a definite advantage that many don’t have. BUT, that doesn’t meant that people can’t take clues from what I discuss and improve on what they have. The first place is to see what your system is producing. and I will say it again the Decibel-X Ap on a phne with or without a high quality mic can give you an idea of what you are producing. Yo can use static tones generated my a machine or a span of frequencies recorded, or some colour of generated Noise, or MUSIC.
I will always start with the idea that any SYSTTEM can only produce what your SPEAKERS are capable of. SO, possibly I am prejudiced, but that is where I always Start. If your speakers can Faithfully reproduce RAWE tones across the entire band with equal response, You have achieved the First step. Then look into the tonal quality, approach, attack etc. of the speaker. My current towers (that I built) I broke many of the basic rules on purpose. Like the crossover. Most of your high end speakers use higher order of crossovers and if you look at the individual response of most drivers. they roll off very gently. That makes me want to AVOID the higher order crossovers with their sharp roll off, This allows the frequency response of a driver to keep the crossover point level where often if you look at a graphic of a speaker, you will see definite dips at the crossover point. Then I of course use high quality components and things like a ’Foil Ribbon Coil’ (Continuous wind)instead of a wire wound coil (Fishing real wind) and this provides a much more accurate response and faster response in my speakers.
After you have a good speaker then you can play around with all of your other components to find a sound that you want.
Then there is a recent event in my life that provides a perfect example of what not to do. I was looking at a new AV unit and went to a local (So Called) high end store. i should have known something was amiss when I was introduced to the sales person as the Expert on that particular brand of machine. Now I had called ahead and told them EXACTLY what I was looking for and what I expected. What I have currently to work with and that I would be bringing my own materials that I was intimately familiar with. They immediately show me a system that on the surface seemed to have good quality Cord & Cables. what I had hoped ewer adequate components, but then he took my disk and put it into an X-Box to play. You can’t get any more Audiophile than an X-box now can you (SIC). The disk was a DVD audio of Chinese drums, which can produce some Very clear Low notes and resonances. His system couldn’t even reproduce the notes and he started backpedaling by telling me how the DiracLive setup originally was tuned with a Sub Woofer and he had just pulled the Sub from the system. I have a serious problem if Your system has defeated the low end of your towers in favor of Subs. Also that this sales person would present anything like this as I had previously told them that I didn’t use a Sub in my system. Also I will never believe that the Minnie towers he had with 4.5 inch bass drivers could EVER equal my system with 8 inch drivers o full towers. Bottom line this was the Worst possible disaster of a sales pitch I have ever heard. Also the store had paper thin walls and the only bass that I heard that day was from the next room over. Noting I don’t identify the store. So now I will NEVER know if the brand of machine I was trying to audition is any good or of any quality. I actually wrote the manufacturer and told them about this in hopes they would pull this store license to sell their product line. I don't think it will be rude to say that the system I wanted to interview was an Anthem and that the Store was somewhere in Metro Denver.

@ghasley
You seem to be assuming that the sound techniques I was talking about were from CHILDREN that listened to Boomboxes and earbuds. No I was talking about the Mid 1900s You know before you most likely were born.

Flat+ faithful reproduction of what the Sound Eng. and studio meant you to hear. I want to hear a trumpet or a pianie sound like they are live. Anything else is a muddied up mess that we have become used to over the years. I get up around live music and also participated multiple times and aspects of semi-pro music and trying to say that something less that a faithful sound form your speaker is desired is silly.

Now I like using my DiracLive Mic plugged into my Celliophone and then using the Decibel-X App to see both the instantaneous and average response of my system. I was initially amazed at how true my speakers did the job I built them to do. If yo hear something you consider TOO BRIGHT, yo need to get your ears cleaned out or just learn what LIVE music actually sounds like. I don’t know why ANYONE would desire their system to produce something adulterated and not realistic.
 

This takes me back to the days when everyone was getting a Graphic equalizer plugged into their system. I even did it for a short time, till I realized that it was the studio Eng and producers that made all of the music NOT realistic. We were trying to make up for what they had produced, forgetting that in most cases the SOUND that they created was in most cases what made or Broke an artist. SO in a sense we were all trying to find that flat response or what we saw as too much or Missing, but forgetting that the studio had some ulterior motive. Now a days we see a greater effort to make a realistic sounding musical presentation and now that we had gotten used to some distorted sound, we want to make what we hear now actually distorted. I do have an appreciation for both. The old sound was intentionally meant to sound a certain way and now I want to hear the TRUTH. It is as bad as corrupted politics.

@ghasley
I am sorry that you found my comment Snarky or... But YOU brought up the devices Boomboxes and earplugs, which didn't even exist till the turn of the century. And except for the dollar two ninety-five wired earphones given away with Japanese transistor radios your comment didn’t’ fit what I was talking about, but then you say it was. Colour me confused.
Yes some of it was modified to fit certain formats, as L:Ps still are, but I find that MOST of the music from the 50s, 60,s 70,s 80.s was mostly just what the sound Eng decided that he himself liked or the dictates of the studio. The later you can find that many label’s ’HAD A SOUND’! and that sound often made or broke many a musician. AND that this sound had little to noting to do with the LP, 8-trac, Cassette, Am, or FM industries. It was also a huge period of experimentation in SOUND and sound engineering. I only wish to be a straight shooter and if yo see other comments I make on this site I don't vilify company names or store names if at all possible. I try not to make personal comments other than to point out definite decencies in a comment made to me.