Flat vs Musical

Mike

Mike

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http://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/flat-vs-musical/

A good post by Paul McGowan. I have found that a little bump between 40-100hz can add nice body to the lower mids.

After several hours of measurements and tweaking speaker placement, here is me doing some final EQ'ing of Justin's Avantgarde Uno XD's in Boston this week. The ability to dial in the bass to the room is a nice advantage. The improvement was substantial if I do say so myself.

97ebbdd25dad1bb8f99d7e6e40b11b90.jpg


Now the question with some speakers (not ones you can adjust the bass), when does adding a bump become too much of a good thing and why do some designers add such a big boost in the lower mids? Do they test their speakers in a wide variety of rooms, with a wide variety of music and amplification? Not always I'm sure.

But when that boost becomes too much, the question is why did the designer do it? I believe it's based on the music THEY listen to. Adding a big boost in the lower mids (say 60-80hz), adds wonderful richness to the weightiness and tone of a cello for example in classical music, but it's a nightmare when that same listener puts on a jazz piece with stand up bass.

It's a delicate balance. Caution must be used so it doesn't become too much of a good thing.


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Since the bass in recordings are all over the place, it is impossible for there to be a "one setting fits all", unfortunately. Good enough for gubment work is often the result.
Wise people long ago came up with a revolutionary concept called a "bass" control knob, but elitists would have none of it! ;)
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Mike, great thread. Lot's of variables like AJ mentioned. Another to consider is ported speakers. I see so many on hard tiled surfaces or similar with down firing ports, really makes me wonder "all the time". It is a fine line to tune the speakers to the room if you can apart from using software too.
 
Mike said:
I have found that a little bump between 40-100hz can add nice body to the lower mids.

But when that boost becomes too much, the question is why did the designer do it? I believe it's based on the music THEY listen to. Adding a big boost in the lower mids (say 60-80hz), adds wonderful richness to the weightiness and tone of a cello for example in classical music, but it's a nightmare when that same listener puts on a jazz piece with stand up bass.

It's a delicate balance. Caution must be used so it doesn't become too much of a good thing.


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Click to expand...

I agree with you wholeheartedly on your statements above. You hit the nail on the head w.r.t. the "delicate balance" of any boost (particularly in the lower frequencies when trying to balance the "room" or integrate subs). You would not believe what a difference in sound can be gained/lost when playing with small (sometimes incredibly tiny differences) amounts of boost or reduction of upper/middle/or lower bass content. While one setting (as mentioned by you and others on this thread) rarely ever is the "best" for all types of music and recordings, finding the best compromise for all recordings/styles of music can be a tedious task. Also, in addition to any boost/reduction, you have the dilemma of where you set the frequency cutoff (and any phase manipulation) using low pass filters/DSP in order to try your best to integrate separate subs to the rest of the drivers if your speaker system has them. Too high a cutoff and no matter how good your subs are and/or your time coherency is, and you tend to muddy up the image. Too low and the image gets lean in a hurry.

While we are not versed in acoustics or have any expertise in balancing rooms, we have spent a decent amount of time with our system trying to balance it within the room and integrate our woofer towers with our main towers. During these travels we have found out a ton of things with one of them being what you spoke to in your original post. Which is how much of a "delicate balance" all this is when using whatever tools you have at your disposal to try to make the system sing to its fullest in whatever room you have. It is amazing how "too much of a good thing" (as you mention above) can be had with just the tiniest of change.

One last thought based on our travels...It is funny how balancing a room with test tones (while nice to use and tend to help overall) sometimes causes more trouble than if you just used your ears on familiar music and recordings in the first place when messing with EQing the room to your particular tastes.
 
AJ Soundfield said:
Since the bass in recordings are all over the place, it is impossible for there to be a "one setting fits all", unfortunately. Good enough for gubment work is often the result.
Wise people long ago came up with a revolutionary concept called a "bass" control knob, but elitists would have none of it! ;)
Click to expand...

Very accurate IMHO. The elitists will make sure we are never card-carrying members of the high-end club given our system has a preamplifier with tone controls. What is worse, we actually have a DSP in the loop to integrate our bass stack with our main towers. Oh my!

Seriously though, regardless of ones choice on tone-controls/no tone controls, "DSP never"/DSP is fine, all subs are bad/some subs are good, more circuitry in the path is always bad/sometime complexity adds beauty, etc. etc. we always approach it as whatever moves us more with our system and feeds our musical passion is what is right. Regardless of if the spectrum is flat or some strange bumpy mess.
 
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