Re: "House sound" Do the designers here have a "house sound"?
I'd like to add a little addendum to what I said earlier. DDF (Dave) and Craig are right on their points, or at least I agree with them anyway. Based on my experience: voicing is about tonal balance more than anything, but this isn't as simple as it sounds. As much as we would prefer that the room not be looked at as part of loudspeaker, its influence is there and there's no way around it. Sure we can take gated measurements to a point, but it's hard to measure the low frequency balance in a room, as a result the proper bass balance is something we have to work out based on the diver's intended position in the room, and personal preference plays a role here.
DDF is also correct when he says sometimes a speaker needs to measure non-flat in order to be perceived as flat. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the LS3/5a is an excellent example of this. Most measurements of the speaker show it to not be perfectly flat, but when used as intended most people would describe it as a very flat sounding speaker. It is the speaker's interaction with its environment that makes the difference, combined with the way we tend to perceive tonal balance as a whole.
The upper end of the the spectrum isn't much better. You would think it would be, but here's a little anecdotal story to explain: When I was tweaking the SpiritWinds I had what looked like a very flat and smooth frequency response. Anyone would have agreed that it was flat. However, the treble region just did not seem exactly right to me with some of my reference music. I began to play with small changes in the tweeter's resistors until I had it sounding exactly the way I wanted, and what seemed correct to my ear with my reference music. The change was about 1 dB in tweeter level. This doesn't sound like enough to matter, but raise an entire tweeter's range by 1 dB and it is clearly an audible change. The frequency response, however, was superfluous at this point, because both before and after response curves appeared to be flat. In fact, even side by side it was difficult to discern the difference between them visually, but audibly, they were clearly different sounding. For those who say, "make it flat, and be done with it" are failing to understand how much audible difference can exist between two seemingly flat response curves. This is voicing of a flat speaker. (I am sharing things that took me years to learn guys, you don't always get this kind of insight).
Finally, as I mentioned above - for a given flat on-axis response between two loudspeakers - where the crossover point is will still make them sound different. Different slopes in the crossover will make them sound different. Different directivity and off-axis response will make them sound different. Monopole or dipole, it will sound different. It's never as simple as flat response.
Jeff B.
I'd like to add a little addendum to what I said earlier. DDF (Dave) and Craig are right on their points, or at least I agree with them anyway. Based on my experience: voicing is about tonal balance more than anything, but this isn't as simple as it sounds. As much as we would prefer that the room not be looked at as part of loudspeaker, its influence is there and there's no way around it. Sure we can take gated measurements to a point, but it's hard to measure the low frequency balance in a room, as a result the proper bass balance is something we have to work out based on the diver's intended position in the room, and personal preference plays a role here.
DDF is also correct when he says sometimes a speaker needs to measure non-flat in order to be perceived as flat. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the LS3/5a is an excellent example of this. Most measurements of the speaker show it to not be perfectly flat, but when used as intended most people would describe it as a very flat sounding speaker. It is the speaker's interaction with its environment that makes the difference, combined with the way we tend to perceive tonal balance as a whole.
The upper end of the the spectrum isn't much better. You would think it would be, but here's a little anecdotal story to explain: When I was tweaking the SpiritWinds I had what looked like a very flat and smooth frequency response. Anyone would have agreed that it was flat. However, the treble region just did not seem exactly right to me with some of my reference music. I began to play with small changes in the tweeter's resistors until I had it sounding exactly the way I wanted, and what seemed correct to my ear with my reference music. The change was about 1 dB in tweeter level. This doesn't sound like enough to matter, but raise an entire tweeter's range by 1 dB and it is clearly an audible change. The frequency response, however, was superfluous at this point, because both before and after response curves appeared to be flat. In fact, even side by side it was difficult to discern the difference between them visually, but audibly, they were clearly different sounding. For those who say, "make it flat, and be done with it" are failing to understand how much audible difference can exist between two seemingly flat response curves. This is voicing of a flat speaker. (I am sharing things that took me years to learn guys, you don't always get this kind of insight).
Finally, as I mentioned above - for a given flat on-axis response between two loudspeakers - where the crossover point is will still make them sound different. Different slopes in the crossover will make them sound different. Different directivity and off-axis response will make them sound different. Monopole or dipole, it will sound different. It's never as simple as flat response.
Jeff B.
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