ADDENDUM p.s. I like the short posts and fast rhythm of this site I will try to hold off on the treatises on all things music in every post and just answer the question instead of typing essays, sometimes you can get out of control when you type as you think. ignore my philosophical musings please. This is science, perception, and community, not a place for soapboxes.
I'm definitely 99% a basshead, listen to all styles, but love the bass of reggae music, the sub bass of southern hip hop, and the tuned tom bass lines of my local west coast hip hop.
Of course when producing I like a crystal clear clean even sound, then when the song is sounding good with a flat setting I know itll sound amazing in my truck or through any of my nice cans. (I rarely see people use that nomenclature, is that word banned here? What I mean is hi quality headphones of course; I don't see it used often and I don't want to get kicked off the raft just yet, lol)
When I listen to jazz I become a mid/trebble head because you never hear a jazz bassist thumping on an upright that sounds like an 808. And the kick should sound kind of punchy and slappy, not deep and round, and the ride/bass are the heart of the sound so for jazz that mid/high balance has to be there. Jazz and classical make me much more critical and appreciative of the wider spectrum of sounds.
But Bass resonates deeply within your body, it makes booties uncontrollably move, and its what I like to hear when appropriate to the style. Just got my Vmoda M-100...waiting to try them with and without my E17. It seems like the android has much less need for a portable amp, maybe its a better dac or just of PowerAmp software, but I have a hard time getting a better sound with the E17s. My girls apple thingee does sound better using the E17 with the same cans. Due to early support for FLAC I've always been a droid guy, and you can have full control of your library when ID3 tags fail to put an album together.
But we are here to talk about range, I have 1200watts of subwoofer in my truck and I love the way it feels, but the guys at the shop tuned it weird, I added a DB bump at 15k and it just opened up the mix entirely so I can now hear that "shimmer" in the music and feel the thump. My head unit has only 3 bands but a variable Q so I can dial it in. I always turn the music off when I'm rolling through a neighborhood, I would so hate being "that guy" with rattling civic waking you up at 1am with crappy subs and exhaust, lol.
So assuming the mids and highs are balanced, with a little boost maybe at 1k and somewhere above 10K, (1 or 2 db at most) I have my sub in the truck on max and turn it up just under the rattle limit.
We are talking headphones, which is different than live sound, and for live sound bass is NECESSARY for danceable music, and that really says something to me about vibration. The universe can be looked at as a series of vibrations or resonances, and that is why music is so powerful. It literally connects us with the universe, with space, with each other (if we take our cans off for a minute, lol).
If you are a basshead or interested in bass philosophy theres a great book about jamaican sound systems called Sonic Bodies, it reads like a philosophy and physics thesis mixed together, but it makes some amazing points. They talk about the loudness wars in jamaica, very similar to what has happened to our pop music. Every year a guy builds a bigger system that would have been painful to listen to but the next year every other system has upgraded. I hear that the public outdoor sound systems have been cracked down on in jamaica, which has hurt the music scene there tremendously.
I think I've made enough points for one post.
Thanks for the poll Chris, happy holidays everybody!
-pAugustus
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