Boring to me

 

X2.

 

Terrible to me.

 

Dry and a bit lacking in low end and likely more forward than you like.

 

...and likely more forward than you like.

Explain please.

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you gotta just hear it. It's not necessarily bad once you get used to it but the upper mids will be hotter than what you may like.

 

I know what flat sounds like. I dont know what you mean by forward.

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Wouldn't a pair of headphones into a stereo with all EQ set to flat give a good indication of what it would sound like?

 

if they are flat headphones

 

flat headphones cost more then decent set of components. My byerdynamics are flat, sounds awesome to me. if I need equalization I can do that.

 

Ever heard one of those?

That's what flat would sound like

 

far from it.

 

Ever met a person that was "a bit forward" in personality?

 

Most people have not heard a flat car and have no idea what they are talking about. They mistakenly think that flat on a RTA = flat. If you want to know if a system is flat, you need to use gated response to see if the speakers have a flat response. A truly flat sound system sounds excellent, just listen to any good pair of headphones or studio monitors.

 

This

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Flat is the holy grail of frequency response. No peaks, no equalization needed. Ideally a truly flat frequency response of a system will lead to the most natural sound. The place where this almost always fails is speakers which have lots of peaks and notches in response and on top of that the environment they play in can also have a big effect. So usually when I listen to my headphones I keep every EQ'ing flat and they always sound most natural and generally I try to tune my sound system with that as a reference.

But this is all psychological, you need experience to base this off of. Go listen to a live jazz band or classical orchestra up close, no amplification, no electronic equipment. Jazz music and classical generally have far more dynamic range and frequency response than modern music which just seems now to want to sound as "loud" as possible. Then listen to a good recordings of jazz music or classical on a decent set of headphones, it should sound like a live concert with flat EQ. Telarc stuff is pretty much the gold standard of good instrumental recordings. Then usually you'll be better able to spot the failings of an audio system's response.

 

A flat response doesn't mean you'll hear everything exactly the same. i.e. bass guitar same loudness as drums, vocals, keyboards, oboe, theremin, etc...
Flat means you'll hear the recording as it was mixed/engineered/*insert proper term here*. If it was mixed with prominent vocals, the vocals will be prominent, if the track is bassy, it will sound bassy.

So with a flat system you'll hear it like it was intended to sound. This means you're at the mercy of the recording. I think this is why many people base audio gear choice off of music genre.


I actually experienced this recently. I've been working on my system, trying to get it all set up and eq'ed properly but it seemed like the bass was lacking even though I thought I was giving it plenty of power. I recently bought a deadmau5 album. I set the sub level to where it sounded consistent with the rest of the spectrum. When I listened to some of my other music (mostly metal and rock) I noticed the low bass is lacking and I would tend to turn the sub up a little.

Basically I thought the bass was lacking because most of the music I normally listened to did not have very strong bass.

 

Flat means you'll hear the recording as it was mixed/engineered/*insert proper term here*. If it was mixed with prominent vocals, the vocals will be prominent, if the track is bassy, it will sound bassy.

So with a flat system you'll hear it like it was intended to sound.

The last thing in your quote I chopped should be first. The first part is not entirely correct.

Even **** speakers will have more prominent vocals if the vocals are prominent, more bass if bass is more prominent, it just wont' be as intended.

People immediately think studio monitors but always keep in mind that the Auratone 5c and Yamaha NS10's are/were very popular, both of which are far from flat and most of you would think sound like ****. But if you can get your midrange in your mix right on those, it's right.

 

Yeah, I think some people need to rethink what flat means. In basic terms, it means input = output. The sound will ultimately be dictated by the recording. A lot of popular music is recorded similarly, and so you can correlate "flat" to a particular description of sound, but it doesn't always hold.

I listen to some music flat, I listen to other music with the bass or treble adjusted, and I listen to some music sloped downward from 20-20k -- which is the baseline of how my system is calibrated.

 

And...

Even if one's FR is absolutely, perfectly "flat," in that a flawlessly calibrated microphone and objective measurement tools are used to validate conclusively that each db level across the entire spectrum is of equal db when averaged over time, then our perceptions of this responce will still be altered due to equal loudness theory and personal sensitivities to sounds at different ranges or lack thereof). Thus, this question is ultimately subjective, while certain themes may be summerized.

I like what you said about input = output. For me, that is how i define "flat"...while technically it may be frequencies of equal loudness across the curve or frequencies of percieved equal loudness across the curve.

Please mock with sensitivity...I know I'm still a "newby" :icon_bs:

 

I like flat. I think my system is fairly close at highway speeds. At full stop there is too much bass- but once the noise / vibration cancellation kicks in at speed the net result is probably close to flat.
I tune the system so that every recording I listen to sounds good- regardless of how it was mixed. It seems like the closer to flat the better for this approach.

 

Wow...lots of misinformation here.

"Flat" means that if you measure the sound at the listening position, all frequencies are reproduced at the same level. Whether you like it or not has way more to do with WHERE you're listening.

A speaker system that has perfectly flat response set up in the same room where the recording was made, would sound a lot like the original event, in terms of frequency response.

Move those same speakers to a different room, and the wouldn't sound the same--the room adds its own "color" or changes to the frequency response that you hear. Additionally, it seems that in smaller rooms, we like additional bass in order for the sound to be perceived as accurate.

Cars are little rooms. We like a lot more bass in cars--about 9dB below 60Hz is what I think is the norm, after 25 years of tuning cars for all different kinds of listeners. Additionally, the car has lots of reflective surfaces all very close to the speakers and to your ears. Because of that, the curve that often sounds best in a car is a measured response that has roughly the same shape as the power response of a speaker designed to provide flat response in a much larger room. Bass boost below 60Hz and a gradually diminishing high frequency output "sounds" more accurate in a car, like flatter response sounds more accurate in a bigger room.

There's no need to make gated frequency response measurements in a car. You'll have to apply such a small window to eliminate reflections that you'll only be able to approximate an anechoic response at VERY high frequencies. Additionally, there's no need to consider the speaker's reponse and the room's response as separate in a car becuase the reflections arrive so quickly after the direct sound from the speakers.

 

None of that takes into account the fact that different material is often recorded differently, with very different tonal characteristics. This includes different performers within the same genre, different albums from the same performer, and even different productions of the same album. Your observation that there are a typical set of preferences is limited to a select set of recordings that share the same characteristics. Recordings that deviate from that would obviously not require the same manipulations.

So, although it's useful to highlight the differences between small rooms and large spaces, I think it's dangerous to think of FR curves fitting a single template. Not that that's what you were necessarily implying, but I think what happens is people will try to mimic everyone else's curve (we have a thread here devoted to that... :/ ), which may not suit their goals very well.

 

^^^ BOOM!!!

 

I call BS. If you want to EQ differently to change what's on the disc, then that has nothing to do with your speakers, it has to do with your perception of "good sound" applied to recordings where the guy doing the mixdown has a different perception of good sound.

A recording that has too little bass has too little bass. Boosting the bass in your system doesn't "fix" the system it "fixes" the mix.

 

No.

Using your same example, I'm saying that if a particular recording has "too little bass," a flat system (better word is accurate) will reproduce that recording with too little bass. Nothing more or less. Input = output.

I guess my 2 cents to the OP is don't aim for flat....aim for accurate.

 

One important thing to remember is that the human ear is more sensitive to higher frequencies than to lower frequencies. Which means if you had a system that could play every frequency from 20-20000hz at the same db level the higher frequency stuff would sound louder than the lower frequency stuff. So I'm assuming a car that played completely flat would sound awful. Now the sensitivity of our ears tends to level off around 90-100db which means at this db level we hear the entire spectrum just as easily but it is still not perfect and we would still hear peaks throughout the frequency range even though the system was playing them at the same db level. Now If you're talking about a car that plays completely flat to our ears, that would sound amazing

 

One important thing to remember is that the human ear is more sensitive to higher frequencies than to lower frequencies.

Not entirely true, it's largely loudness dependent.

I prefer the Fletcher-Munson curves

 

I think it can suffice to say that in a car a "flat" frequency response (defined as equal energy over each octave rather than each frequency--I incorrectly stated that in my previous post) will sound like it lacks bass and includes too much treble.

Of course, recordings that also lack bass and have too much treble will sound especially thin and bright on such a car audio system. Now, if the mixdown of the track was done by a recording engineer IN A CAR, then the additional bass and reduction in high frequencies that seems to be required for music in a car to sound believable might be already included in the mix. Then, maybe less bass boost would be required in the playback system.

 

But the engineer didn't have to do it in a car to produce an album that's generally high in bass. For example, I would be surprised to learn that some of the tracks on Autolux's latest album were done in the car. Or a couple of Sonic Youth's albums from the '00s. There are a number of popular hip hop albums known for overbloated sub bass, and this (perhaps unfortunately) spread its way into R&B in certain circles. I can also think of several "indie" bands have created otherwise good sounding records if not for the strangely sloping FR on the bottom end.

Take the evolution of metal through the 80s, into the 90s, and then today. The differences in the spectral content are pretty staggering, considering that the genre really hasn't changed a whole hell of a lot.

I know you mentioned in the "target curve" thread that JBL aims for a particular curve based on, I guess, experimentation with different listeners playing different music. But this is obviously a solution where you try to please all of the people some of the time -- or some of the people some of the time, as the case may be. Having a stupid bass knob and treble knob on your radio is still pretty useful to most people, except audiophiles, who think it should be on 00 all the time.

 

Bam found it and a good read on the NS10.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/yamahans10.htm

found a similar one last week on the auratones.


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Love this tread.
Lets not forget that every human hears the same thing differently!
Depending on the amount of damage that persons hearing has been subjected to.

At the end of the day its about the amount of enjoyment and the endorfins your brain releases from what you've heard. My preference to anyone else is vastly different.

Personally. In an anarcoustic chamber with a "flat" FR(which I altered by standing in it) with music I enjoy sounded bland and clinical(no foot tapping going on) then again maybe thats cause I dont know any better?

 

Love this tread.
Lets not forget that every human hears the same thing differently!
Depending on the amount of damage that persons hearing has been subjected to.

Wrong.

This is why some of us build "music places" and you don't........

 

Listening to music in an anechoic chamber is NOT the pinnacle of enjoyment that people suppose it to be. It sucks. Completely unnatural sounding--like a dry, overcooked hamburger with nothing on it.

 

you think it's butter cake with no icing, but it ends up being dry cornbread.

 

Sounds flat.... no highs no real low's kind of sounds like a Bose...

 

Anechoic is for making waterfalls, ideally !

It will show what a particular driver is capable of !

More like a veggie burger, as far as enjoyment [ To a meat eater ].