Not a fun topic yet highly impactful.
Two audio components no one really talks about
1. The room
2. Your hearing
First the room. I have bookshelf speakers in the living room with a sub and I love the sound it all creates (won’t go into detail about specs, not the point here). It’s beautiful and I love it. Then I have a system in the basement and the sound is completely different. The living room gives an open and spacious sound and moving the same system to the basement gives it a focused and not spacious sound. The tones and detail is good just not as grand a sound as in the LR. Secondly, the sound was horrible in the basement until I put the speakers against the long wall. My point is the same system in two rooms sounds completely different and a choosing a different wall made a monumental difference but still can’t match an open room. I’m a Vandersteen owner (basement system) and i know all about speaker positioning and optimization. There has got to be diminishing returns on a sound system when your room is limited in what it can do with the acoustics.
Hearing. I recently had a hearing test and found I had hearing loss (a couple of decibels) in the mid frequencies (low and high were fine) and that it wasn’t due to age or damage but rather something I was born with. So what I hear and what you hear is different. I’m sure most of us have variations in our frequency responses. So when someone gives their endorsement on a amp or speaker or whatever, that sounds good to them and might not sound good to you. There is something to be said for tonal adjustments and for me in the 1kHz range. The point here is you need to decide what sounds good to you and you might not like that component someone swears is the best.
I’m always amazed and the amount of money people drop on systems and maybe they don’t need to spend that much money due to limitations mentioned above.
It’s not a fun topic but you have to admit there could be a lot you can do with the room to make the sound better. But maybe there is nothing you can do and no amount of money on equipment will change that.
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- 22 posts total
@doogabayne Don't worry about your couple of dB loss in the mid. Your speakers can't reproduce that flat. But the worst is the big hearing loss that can come with old age. The best hearing aids in the world are a very poor substitute for your own good hearing. My late father had bad loss in both ears as a very old man. He loved music and had a good if vintage system. He bought the best aids available but said that music no longer moved him. He didn't listen at all in the last decade of his life, moving mainly to BBC Radio 4, the best talk radio in the world. Make sure you enjoy it while you can Dooga |
In total agreement about the room, even the slightest correction with treatments makes a major improvement as does figuring out how your speakers respond to placement, toe in, etc.. I personally found by switching from bookshelves, (Triangle Comete’ EZ’s), to dipoles (Maggi .7’s), I was able to enjoy music again. I went back to listening rather than hearing what the speakers were and were not doing. As we age and after years of exposure to loud sounds weather we produced them or were from some external source, adjustments in our listening must be made to accommodate our hearing and the rooms we grow into to get us back to how we think things used to sound or should sound. One thing to I need to keep in mind as I go crazy chasing how I remember things sounded, is back in the day I heard music, today I critically listen and my current speaker choice, room correction and the advice I often get from fellow posters here on Audiogon has allowed me to continue enjoying this hobby as long as I don’t look at my credit card bills… LOL As for Hearing & Listening… Not to change the subject but… How many times has the wife come in at the part of the song you’ve waited for and starts talking and thinks you hear what’s saying, then says you’re deaf for not responding? … LOL Didn’t hear my wife because I was listening to the music…. |
I have two systems, the first is in a bad room with some treatments and the second is in an okay room with just a little conditioning. The speakers are different, the amps are different the preamps are different, most of the wires are different, the sources are different, so of course they will sound different. And as for my hearing? I can hear just fine as far as volume, but I’m sat to say, I can’t hear much above 11k. |
- 22 posts total