In Room Frequency Response Measurements

Smoothly rolled off treble. I listen far field.

My target is a gentle downward tilt across the spectrum, maybe -4 dB or so at 15 kHz relative to 400 Hz. In-room measurements are usually dominated by room acoustics at any given microphone location below 400 Hz or so, and therefore are not reliable. I mostly listen in and design for the farfield, but farfield and nearfield measurements should be very similar. Imho.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

The reason I started this post is because I exchanged e-mails with an Audiogon member who has a very expensive system where the speaker manufacturer came to his house and spent an afternoon setting the speakers. (Yes, it's that expensive a speaker). The measured in room response at the listening position was ruler flat well into the treble. The owner says it sounds great. I have my doubts.

One has to wonder what they did to compensate for the natural roll off of the highs that would exist. Cone speakers droop fairly fast as the distance increases. Not so much for panels/electrostats I think. I recall many years ago trying to get FFR at the listening position with some cone speakers that were +/- 2db a 2 meters. It took an equalizer and sounded way too bright and unnatural.

What type of speakers were they?

I listen in the near field, prefer flat, but rather a roll-off than a lift.

freq response is only one parameter, big difference how you look at the data ( different smoothing alogorithm, narrow band vs wide band problems ) and interpret them. IMHO, a even decay across the entire freq spectrum is more important. Not only bass amplitude or also bass reverb will change your preference in treble frequency response. If there is lots of comb filtering problems or resonance, you mostly would rather have less of the treble. You need a good mic or at least self correction algorithm to measure treble freq correctly.

Glai, good point about even frequency response decay.

Glai, agreed some of us have gone to the trouble to actually measure RT60. Freq response and acoustic decay are the kind of things that are as important as any component in a system, however, you will find precious few here that will agree - for most this is a hobby about collecting expensive gear, as opposed to a more balanced pursuit of overall sound quality.

Yes, I was down that road before. Without proper room acoustics, collecting gear is still fun as I can get different version of suck. If anything, I have become a better seller and buyer.

When I saw how moderately priced gear can make such great sound in a proper room, my collecting days were numbered.

RT60 is a must. I was tweeking my room last week. Sound was too lean but an even freq response was still maintained. It was due to lack of reverb in 150-400hz. The wood tone died out much faster than the high frequencies. Reduced two traps and proper tonal balance was restored. Meanwhile, there is no change in the frequency response.