House Curve Question

[Ghoostknight]

Hello,

after quite a long time of trying different EQ settings i came around "House Curves" around 1 year ago, while i tried them before i kinda was confused that you actually have fairly steep house curves sometimes (more here for example https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...-is-your-favorite-house-curve.2382/post-67187), i just couldnt believe highs are "supposed" to be lowered that much

but i got around it again since i changed my room setup/treatment quite alot recently and i have to say,
-6db to -8db at 20khz, starting at 1k, mostly linear slope (and +1db under 100hz) starting from a fairly flat studio monitor sounds really great, actually the most "realistic" EQ i have heared so far

now i wanna try to understand why this may be the case, well most that tried studio monitors actually know they sound fairly "bright" and also noticed that sinesweep can become really unpleasent at higher frequencys

1. could be a possible explanation that high frequencys from natural sourced are actually "spreat out more" so the total "sound energy" at our ear is actually less than from a highly directional "focused" beam from our tweeters? (can be this be even explained like the higher the frequency the less energy goes to our ears? which would explain why a linear slope sounds beneficial)
also funny to notice, a sine sweep after this correction (-8db at 20khz in my case) sounds like a -really- "flat" sine sweep to my ears, which was kinda surprising to know and may explain why i like it so much

2. does somebody know what exactly the harman curve tries to accoumplish? should it mimic sound from a totally flat speaker (since i read something like that) or is this more a combination of "it should sound like a ´kinda´ flat speaker inroom response" but also "preference" of listeners played a role?
atleast with my DT880 i cant really agree that this sounds like a "flat" speaker, content over 10khz seems reduced, bass boosted (personally also not a fan of boosting 100-200hz that much) for example

since i think the easiest way of getting similar results is getting a "flat" sounding headphone and apply the same preferred house curve
with the DT880 and oratory1990 correction applied a 5000hz, 0,4Q, -3-5db high shelf filter sounds good, but i wish it would be closer to the speaker response i got, -8db sounds kinda "dead" with the DT880

or should i maybe go the sine sweep route here? since it was quite good, tho not perfect, to tell the "flat" to the ear sounding sine sweep

---

well, and of course you can maybe describe what expierences you had with house curves, i, as consumer really like the fact that you can basicly buy any flat measuring speaker you like and add your prefered EQ instead of trying hundreds of "manufacture EQs" of all the hifi speaker (one big plus to go with flat speakers (same goes for headphones, atleast how it sounds to the ear, but with headphones its kinda untransparent to say the least) imo)
tho, now im searching for a good headphone solution in this regard... really not a fan of the sibilance in flat speakers (and uncorrected DT880) for example

Also, what you guys think of the approach to get a kinda flat sounding sine sweep instead of a flat measuring one? its a correlation i noticed with those good sounding housecurve i found quite interesting, tho i cant exclude that this may be just my personal taste
and is there maybe a scientific explanation why a flat to ear sounding sinesweep sounds more realistic than a flat measuring one?

 

[bigshot]

High frequencies dissipate faster over distance than low ones. That's why when a car with a big speaker system drives by out on the street, all you hear from it is the bass. You would want to calibrate your system by measuring from the principle listening position. Closer or further away might affect the way the high end sounds. You're using near field speakers, so you wouldn't want to use the same curve as a large room. You'll need to pull the high end back a little.

I have a friend who does live sound systems. He EQs with sine wave sweeps, working from bottom to top in multiple passes looking for "wolf tones". Each pass is a little louder than the last. He has a great deal of experience doing this. He knows how to read the sweep and where to deviate from how it sounds to accommodate the more sensitive areas in the upper mids. I don't have the experience to do this myself, but it is possible.

The purpose of the Harman curve is to simulate the sound of speakers with headphones. You wouldn't want to tune your speakers to sound like headphones with Harman. That would be going backward.

With response curves, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Every room and set of speakers is different. Your ears hear slightly different too. The usual process is to measure and do room treatments to get as close to a balanced response as possible. Then fine tune the curve by ear using music to make it fit your ears and circumstances.

The reason a balanced response sounds more realistic than an unbalanced one is auditory masking. When one frequency is boosted unnaturally, it can cancel out the frequency an octave above. When there are spikes in the response, it can create what sounds to your ears as huge dips an octave above each spike. When the response is balanced properly the full range of frequencies is revealed evenly.

Masking is the principle that lossy file formats use to eliminate inaudible information to reduce the file size. It's an interesting subject and totally non-intuitive. I had a friend once do a demonstration for me. He played me some music, then he adjusted a couple of bands on his equalizer without letting me see what they were. He asked me what the difference in the sound I heard was. I said that I heard the sound get muffled, like the upper mids had been lowered. He showed me what he had done... He had raised the midrange. He hadn't touched the frequency band I heard the difference in.

 

[Ghoostknight]

High frequencies dissipate faster over distance than low ones. That's why when a car with a big speaker system drives by out on the street, all you hear from it is the bass. You would want to calibrate your system by measuring from the principle listening position. Closer or further away might affect the way the high end sounds.

ah, but is this a gradual thing all the way up to 20khz? i did know this but not that this "effect" goes all the way to 20khz

this may suggest that the house curve is highly dependent on distance to the speaker, and maybe waveguiding, tho if both are flat at the listener position i wouldnt think a "sharper" waveguiding has a effect on the listening postion itself
if distance is a big factor here, my speaker are around 1,6m apart in a stereo triangle, pointed slighty behind my head, tweeter are maybe 10-15cm aimed to high

one thing which i should also notice, its quite hard for me to understand how flat measuring speakers sound so bright if natural sources are recorded with a mic, i would think this dissipating faster over distance would have a effect on the mix and therefore on the output of a flat speaker, or are many songs already mixed so bright for "usual" setups?
or may it be the case that for example e-guitars are just not made "like" natural sources, and have a flat measuring sound which sounds "unnatural" ?

 

[bigshot]

It is a gradual thing all the way up to 20kHz, but you wouldn't want to balance for equal perceived loudness by ear up that high. Your hearing is going to start falling off in the top octave and if you balance by ear up there, you run the risk of pushing ultra high frequencies up super loud to accommodate your ears' inability to hear them. You might damage your hearing.

Careful EQing is only really necessary up to 10kHz. Beyond that, you just don't want any huge spikes. If you look at headphones' response measurements, they all go wonky above 10khz. That doesn't really matter because in recorded music, there isn't much up there except harmonics.

Synthesized instruments in pop music aren't designed to be the same as natural instruments. That's why it's best to judge the naturalness of a response using acoustic instruments like string quartets and pianos.

Yes, the distance of the mic from the instrument being recorded affects the brightness too. Mic placement is an aesthetic choice by the engineers to create an overall sound that meshes clearly without sounding muddled.

 

[Ghoostknight]

It is a gradual thing all the way up to 20kHz

ah.. good to know

Your hearing is going to start falling off in the top octave and if you balance by ear up there, you run the risk of pushing ultra high frequencies up super loud to accommodate your ears' inability to hear them. You might damage your hearing.

well never boost certain frequencys above a few little db is always advised
but i found that i dont miss the frequencys above 10k, it became more pleasent overall to listen to, frequencys over 10k can add somekind of "shine" to the music and sparkle and stuff, tho i think it sounds unnatural on flat speakers compared to the house curve

Careful EQing is only really necessary up to 10kHz. Beyond that, you just don't want any huge spikes. If you look at headphones' response measurements, they all go wonky above 10khz. That doesn't really matter because in recorded music, there isn't much up there except harmonics.

well this is what i dont like about most measurements, since oratory1990 follows the same rule, i think you can still hear the effects of uneven high frequencys it maybe not as audible as other stuff but it still matters (for me), specially in sibilance (but also harmonics and depending on the song, i wouldnt say high frequencys are not used at all) for example

 

[bigshot]

The "shine" you're hearing in the top octave is probably as much caused by spill error in your equalizer as it is your hearing up in those frequencies. And super audible frequencies are most apt to create distortion down in the audible range. So the shine you hear may be distortion.

In EQing, the top octave is the least critical to achieving a balanced response. It's up at the bleeding edge of hearing, commercially recorded music contains very little up there, and acoustic instruments don't have fundamentals up that high. The area to focus on for maximum realism and balance is the middle range up through the most sensitive area in the upper mids.

Audiophiles put way too much emphasis on sound they can't really hear. There was a study where they took recorded music and played it for people with a full range response and with the top octave rolled off. They asked them which sounded better. If I remember correctly, about a quarter of the people couldn't hear any difference at all, and the ones that could had no preference of one over the other. They thought they both sounded equally good.

If you want to achieve really great sound with an equalizer, the highest frequencies are the wrong tree to bark up.

 

[castleofargh]

Hello,

after quite a long time of trying different EQ settings i came around "House Curves" around 1 year ago, while i tried them before i kinda was confused that you actually have fairly steep house curves sometimes (more here for example https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...-is-your-favorite-house-curve.2382/post-67187), i just couldnt believe highs are "supposed" to be lowered that much

but i got around it again since i changed my room setup/treatment quite alot recently and i have to say,
-6db to -8db at 20khz, starting at 1k, mostly linear slope (and +1db under 100hz) starting from a fairly flat studio monitor sounds really great, actually the most "realistic" EQ i have heared so far

now i wanna try to understand why this may be the case, well most that tried studio monitors actually know they sound fairly "bright" and also noticed that sinesweep can become really unpleasent at higher frequencys

1. could be a possible explanation that high frequencys from natural sourced are actually "spreat out more" so the total "sound energy" at our ear is actually less than from a highly directional "focused" beam from our tweeters? (can be this be even explained like the higher the frequency the less energy goes to our ears? which would explain why a linear slope sounds beneficial)
also funny to notice, a sine sweep after this correction (-8db at 20khz in my case) sounds like a -really- "flat" sine sweep to my ears, which was kinda surprising to know and may explain why i like it so much

2. does somebody know what exactly the harman curve tries to accoumplish? should it mimic sound from a totally flat speaker (since i read something like that) or is this more a combination of "it should sound like a ´kinda´ flat speaker inroom response" but also "preference" of listeners played a role?
atleast with my DT880 i cant really agree that this sounds like a "flat" speaker, content over 10khz seems reduced, bass boosted (personally also not a fan of boosting 100-200hz that much) for example

since i think the easiest way of getting similar results is getting a "flat" sounding headphone and apply the same preferred house curve
with the DT880 and oratory1990 correction applied a 5000hz, 0,4Q, -3-5db high shelf filter sounds good, but i wish it would be closer to the speaker response i got, -8db sounds kinda "dead" with the DT880

or should i maybe go the sine sweep route here? since it was quite good, tho not perfect, to tell the "flat" to the ear sounding sine sweep

---

well, and of course you can maybe describe what expierences you had with house curves, i, as consumer really like the fact that you can basicly buy any flat measuring speaker you like and add your prefered EQ instead of trying hundreds of "manufacture EQs" of all the hifi speaker (one big plus to go with flat speakers (same goes for headphones, atleast how it sounds to the ear, but with headphones its kinda untransparent to say the least) imo)
tho, now im searching for a good headphone solution in this regard... really not a fan of the sibilance in flat speakers (and uncorrected DT880) for example

Also, what you guys think of the approach to get a kinda flat sounding sine sweep instead of a flat measuring one? its a correlation i noticed with those good sounding housecurve i found quite interesting, tho i cant exclude that this may be just my personal taste
and is there maybe a scientific explanation why a flat to ear sounding sinesweep sounds more realistic than a flat measuring one?

You start with speakers then suddenly DT880 and oratory's headphone curves kick in. What is going on?

Speakers: Harman guys led by Toole tried stuff and concluded that people do like normally balanced room response. calibration and favored sound go hand in hand. That is pretty much what they demonstrated with their blind listening room setup and speakers moving pretty fast behind a curtain. If you believe blind testing is flawed, disregard all of Harman's work on speakers.

Headphones: Harman guys let by Olive tried one sort of logic for a flat sound (diffuse field, standard ear canal simulator), and it didn't work like almost everybody already expected. Instead people on average like something kind of similar to DF but overall tilted toward a warmer FR. Plus some extra bass boost that has been hypothesized as an attempt from the listener to compensate for lack of tactile boost, but there is nothing done on this to claim it's the answer. It just seems like a fairly plausible reason.

In practice, listening to the same track on headphone and speaker leads to a bunch of differences; sound on the left not getting much action into the right ear. No room reverb. And our own concept of flat being mainly determined by how different the headphone's sound reaching our eardrum is from what a real sound source at a distance would be after being changed by our very own HRTF(shape of our head/ears/ear canal) and reaching the eardrum.
That also very predictably resulted in no universal response for all. The best result Harman got has been estimated by them to satisfy around 60% of listeners. Which is great and also far from the consistency we can get with one well calibrated pair of speakers well placed in a nice room. They also found that a big cause of variation in experience was placement on the ear and seal quality changing how much bass the listener was really getting. So in practice it's to be expected that more people will want to tweak the amount of bass. Hearing loss might motivate to boost the treble, and just having a not perfectly average head will motivate other changes to get closer to our own impression of perceived flat. The basic concept that we want flat remains like with speakers, but delivering it in a one fit all solution just does not exist. The Harman curve for headphone is a best effort to please the most people.

We mostly don't touch the high frequency with strong EQ outside of maybe reducing the amplitude because:
1/ It's high energy stuff and it's easy to damage the ear with something we might hardly notice.
2/ High frequencies have short wavelengths so even very minute changes in placement on the ear might have a big acoustic impact at those frequencies(not all as a group as it's usually a matter of resonance and some multiple of the wavelength makes it happen or not. Meaning also that if you rely on measurement from a coupler, there is absolutely no guaranty that you'll get the same type of chaos response at your eardrum.
I didn't read the rest so I have nothing to say about it.

 

[Ghoostknight]

You start with speakers then suddenly DT880 and oratory's headphone curves kick in. What is going on?

well, normally house curves are just a speaker thing, but i tried start a discussion about getting similar sound from headphones, since this is also mostly a headphone forum

Speakers: Harman guys led by Toole tried stuff and concluded that people do like normally balanced room response. calibration and favored sound go hand in hand. That is pretty much what they demonstrated with their blind listening room setup and speakers moving pretty fast behind a curtain. If you believe blind testing is flawed, disregard all of Harman's work on speakers.

"normally balanced" means what? measured flat? or "flat/balanced" heared by humans? i kinda missed the fact that harman researched stuff for speaker too, i have to look up stuff here

Headphones: Harman guys let by Olive tried one sort of logic for a flat sound (diffuse field, standard ear canal simulator), and it didn't work like almost everybody already expected. Instead people on average like something kind of similar to DF but overall tilted toward a warmer FR. Plus some extra bass boost that has been hypothesized as an attempt from the listener to compensate for lack of tactile boost, but there is nothing done on this to claim it's the answer. It just seems like a fairly plausible reason.

what feels strange to me is the big bump in the harman curve, is it a fact that this is purely a earcanal thing or how much preferences flowed into this?
i kinda have to try to reduce the bump and see how it compares to the flat measured + house curve applied speaker setup

i agree with the bass boost, tho i dont understand why 100-200hz is boosted as well, just boosting 20-80hz for example sounds better to my taste and yes, compensating the lack of tactil is also i think a reasonable cause, bass on its own, specially sub bass is just barely audible without tactile, so boosting helps a bit to get a similar "impact" of bass

In practice, listening to the same track on headphone and speaker leads to a bunch of differences; sound on the left not getting much action into the right ear. No room reverb. And our own concept of flat being mainly determined by how different the headphone's sound reaching our eardrum is from what a real sound source at a distance would be after being changed by our very own HRTF(shape of our head/ears/ear canal) and reaching the eardrum.

sound on the left not getting much action into the right ear

true but this is mostly compensated by crossfeed many people use, me included

No room reverb

i "kinda" disagree here, my room is fairly good treated, and having less room reverb sounds just superior, tho this is not the case with headphones for some reason, atleast not to a degree i would expect by having no room reverb at all

And our own concept of flat being mainly determined by how different the headphone's sound reaching our eardrum is from what a real sound source at a distance would be after being changed by our very own HRTF(shape of our head/ears/ear canal) and reaching the eardrum.

it would be quite interesting to see a measurement of a ear canal response of a flat measuring source
tho its probably not helpful in getting headphones closer to speaker since also sound from speakers is (differently) altered by the ear canal
im still wondering if sound of (specially over ears) is actually altered that much differently to speakers, since the full ear has still an effect on the sound, the only thing that seems different is the direction of the source (and turning your head around in front of speakers doesnt seem to have actually that much impact)

The basic concept that we want flat remains like with speakers, but delivering it in a one fit all solution just does not exist. The Harman curve for headphone is a best effort to please the most people.

i wish there would be actually a standard already for "flat" sounding speaker-like sound, it would be way easier to get your desired sound with EQ after that
tho i guess it makes sense that harman trys to focus on getting "the most sales" in the end

We mostly don't touch the high frequency with strong EQ outside of maybe reducing the amplitude because:
1/ It's high energy stuff and it's easy to damage the ear with something we might hardly notice.
2/ High frequencies have short wavelengths so even very minute changes in placement on the ear might have a big acoustic impact at those frequencies(not all as a group as it's usually a matter of resonance and some multiple of the wavelength makes it happen or not. Meaning also that if you rely on measurement from a coupler, there is absolutely no guaranty that you'll get the same type of chaos response at your eardrum.
I didn't read the rest so I have nothing to say about it.

hmm i agree, tho i dont see a reason to not -reduce- high frequencys if it actually sounds better (atleast for "personal use")
maybe there isnt a universal way for high frequencys because they highly depent on the ear canal/placement, so what might be bright for one is dark for another

 

[bigshot]

i "kinda" disagree here, my room is fairly good treated, and having less room reverb sounds just superior, tho this is not the case with headphones for some reason, atleast not to a degree i would expect by having no room reverb at all

I'll let Castle answer the rest, but I want to comment on this one...

The goal of a good speaker system isn't to eliminate the room entirely. Room reflections aren't automatically bad. I can guarantee you that you really wouldn't like the sound of your speakers in an anechoic chamber. The room is as much a part of the sound of a speaker system as the speakers are. You want a "live" feel, but it needs to be live in a way that doesn't wreak havoc with your target response. The reflections and delays from the room are what create depth and dimensionality. We perceive distance and directionality using cues like that. With headphones, all of that has to be simulated and recorded into the mix. Since there is no one-size-fits-all HRTF, those secondary depth cues don't feel as real as the natural primary depth cues by with a speaker system inhabiting a sympathetic room.

You have a near field system. The effect of the room is much smaller than with a full sized system. You can achieve a balanced response easier, because there are less variables, but the dimensionality of a good full blown listening room system would vividly show you the difference a really good room makes. Add multichannel to that and you have a whole further level of experience.

 

[Ghoostknight]

The goal of a good speaker system isn't to eliminate the room entirely. Room reflections aren't automatically bad. I can guarantee you that you really wouldn't like the sound of your speakers in an anechoic chamber. The room is as much a part of the sound of a speaker system as the speakers are. You want a "live" feel, but it needs to be live in a way that doesn't wreak havoc with your target response. The reflections and delays from the room are what create depth and dimensionality. We perceive distance and directionality using cues like that. With headphones, all of that has to be simulated and recorded into the mix. Since there is no one-size-fits-all HRTF, those secondary depth cues don't feel as real as the natural primary depth cues by with a speaker system inhabiting a sympathetic room.

well atleast i made the expierence (tho i didnt come around to try many good systems) that each reverb reduction actually has a positive impact on music, specially in the bass area where it literally can sound like a new subwoofer/speaker, also you actually start hearing which reverb was actually intended and what "isnt there anymore"

atleast i agree that a total dead room isnt the solution either (and many report strange sideeffects with "dead" rooms), a little room interaction makes it indeed sound better and more natural since "normal sounds/voices" also interact with the room in the same way
but any "strong peaky" reverb effects of the room are undesirable imo (first point reflections, sitting or having the speaker next to the wall, roommodes, open nontreated corners (clap test))
if reverb "spikes" are undesirable (atleast thats my guess), the question would be which level of reverb is actually "good/desirable", i guess there is probably somewhat a standard for studios

well now as i think about it, headphones sound indeed a little more "clinical" compared to speakers, which may be because of nonexistent reverb, tho atleast compared to my speaker setup i think soundstage&eq are more different/obvious compared to speakers than the reverb

You have a near field system. The effect of the room is much smaller than with a full sized system. You can achieve a balanced response easier, because there are less variables

yes true, which might be the reason why the reverb difference isnt so obvious for me

but the dimensionality of a good full blown listening room system would vividly show you the difference a really good room makes. Add multichannel to that and you have a whole further level of experience.

hmm would actually love to try different rooms if you are right (tho hearing different system in each could be kinda hard to compare)

 

[redrol]

Here is my own target curve which is not actually a theoretical target, I tuned an iem, loved it so much that the curve itself is my new target. Enjoy

 

[castleofargh]

"normally balanced" means what? measured flat? or "flat/balanced" heared by humans? i kinda missed the fact that harman researched stuff for speaker too, i have to look up stuff here

It's a very bad attempt to not say something clearly wrong. The general idea is to aim for a flat speaker (on its own in an anechoic chamber), and then try to deal with the issues from the room, mostly in the low frequencies and up to what's his name frequency (somewhere around 300Hz but changes with the room).
Floyd Toole cared (retired, not dead) more about a bunch of variables than about a certain frequency response following an exact target. His position being that it's better if it's fairly smooth and flat or with some gentle slope, but that we can tolerate and get used to a lot in that regard. He's also arguing that recordings aren't consistent enough for one frequency response to be the right one for all. Cf. audio's circle of confusion.

what feels strange to me is the big bump in the harman curve, is it a fact that this is purely a earcanal thing or how much preferences flowed into this?

It is a fact that on average, the human ear will have about that much gain in the 3kHz area. What that means :
1/ The headphone doesn't have that bump. It's the measurement with an ear simulator that shows the bump caused by the ear simulator. It's trying to show what your ear will do to the sound.
2/ You never hear sound without the ear and ear canal impact on the response. Whatever amount of boost you're getting, your brain will think that is the amount required for flat. The exact resonance from your ear canal can shift in frequency and amplitude depending on the length and shape of the canal (left and right probably aren't exactly the same). Go with what feels best for you because only you have those ears.

i agree with the bass boost, tho i dont understand why 100-200hz is boosted as well,

They asked people and got that headphone curve. I personally also don't like a bass boost that extends above 100Hz. On my HD650 where I do 99% of my headphone listening, I actually reduce the area around 200Hz a little and like it that way. Not grand objective reason why.

i "kinda" disagree here, my room is fairly good treated, and having less room reverb sounds just superior, tho this is not the case with headphones for some reason, atleast not to a degree i would expect by having no room reverb at all

The amount of reverb we need or accept is more complicated than some set amount. We have experience of various rooms, we hear people and the sound of various things in various rooms, and the brain does 'remove' a bunch once it knows what's what. Now when using speaker simulation on headphone, I personally cannot stand the amount of reverb of big rooms, no matter how cool those places are for a concert or as a speaker room. With the headphones, I'm in a different, much smaller room, and I'm guessing my brain knows it and will not do the reverb attenuation at the level it was doing when I was in such a cool big room enjoying the heck out of it.

it would be quite interesting to see a measurement of a ear canal response of a flat measuring source
tho its probably not helpful in getting headphones closer to speaker since also sound from speakers is (differently) altered by the ear canal
im still wondering if sound of (specially over ears) is actually altered that much differently to speakers, since the full ear has still an effect on the sound, the only thing that seems different is the direction of the source (and turning your head around in front of speakers doesnt seem to have actually that much impact)

The difference between speaker and headphones is that we don't measure them the same way. If you use an ear simulator to measure a speaker, you will of course get the ear simulator gain near 3kHz. And if you measure a headphone with an omnidirectional measurement mic from a distance, you won't get much of anything ^_^.
What makes it more reasonable and expected for a speaker to sound right when they are flat, is that we're used to any sound source in a room to be emitted "flat", as it is.
So that works.
With headphones, again, various things will not agree with some band being panned around us. Some audio, some visual (not seeing the band, the sound turning with the head and clearly telling the brain that the sound is on or in the head). Tactile stuff (no bass but feeling the headphone) and whatever else I'm not thinking of right now.
All that and the fact that the response should normally change with the direction of the sound based on our HRTF, that's what creates such a mess with headphones and results in the flat sounding flat rational to not work correctly. With speakers, all that works better. Stereo is still not like a single sound source, but several variables remain similar enough or identical to how we experience sound sources from a distance all day long.

i wish there would be actually a standard already for "flat" sounding speaker-like sound, it would be way easier to get your desired sound with EQ after that
tho i guess it makes sense that harman trys to focus on getting "the most sales" in the end

If you want that, you need to measure it at your own ears. Again, there cannot be a one fit all response for headphones. It's already wrong to have one FR for sounds that try to subjectively feel like they come from different directions.

hmm i agree, tho i dont see a reason to not -reduce- high frequencys if it actually sounds better (atleast for "personal use")
maybe there isnt a universal way for high frequencys because they highly depent on the ear canal/placement, so what might be bright for one is dark for another

Again, you do what you feel is fine for you. So long as you don't unwillingly cause danger to yourself. Beside placement and measurement difficulties, there is age and hearing loss. Old guys rarely mind too much high frequency once they have lost a lot of sensitivity in that area. That too is in the Harman papers leading to their headphone target.

 

[bigshot]

They asked people and got that headphone curve. I personally also don't like a bass boost that extends above 100Hz. On my HD650 where I do 99% of my headphone listening, I actually reduce the area around 200Hz a little and like it that way. Not grand objective reason why.

I'll venture a guess why it is like that... That's the range where drums sit. The drums are the pulse of the music and they carry a lot of the perceived blunt energy in a mix (as opposed to the sharp jabbing of the 3kHz range). That area between the bass and the mids is important for sound to feel full and strong.

 

[Ghoostknight]

His position being that it's better if it's fairly smooth and flat or with some gentle slope, but that we can tolerate and get used to a lot in that regard.

while i agree, i opened this thread since i think my house curve (around -7 to -9db at 20khz) sounds very natural, if someone also thought that high frequencys from flat speakers sound "too much", he/she should really try the house curve too

thats why i opened the thread in the first place, the house curve sounds so life-like that i kinda wanna know what is going on, the FR response from natural sources sound way closer to the house curve than to truly flat speakers imo
tho the strange thing is the house curve nearly doesnt relate at all to the house curve, so my guess is that we perceive "natural high frequencys" way less than with flat speakers, maybe im very sensitive to high frequencys and thats why i prefer it while others prefer a truly flat sound but imo it sounds more life-like with house curve, which was a strange discovery for me
Also if someone like me thought "speakers never truly sound like natural sound sources" should try a house curve!! i probably enjoy this EQ much more than i would have new speakers actually...

He's also arguing that recordings aren't consistent enough for one frequency response to be the right one for all. Cf. audio's circle of confusion.

i also agree here, tho what i think with the house curve is that "good" recordings sound mostly even better/more natural, but bad recordings sound usually worse than without housecurve (and i kinda tried any genres i listen to and music from any time)

It is a fact that on average, the human ear will have about that much gain in the 3kHz area.

yes, i just tried to reduce the bump and the harman curve bump already sounds pretty fine imo, it can be a little reduced in my case -1db to -1,5db (tho i would suggest everyone to try for themself -2db to +2db seems like a good starting point to try) i used a peaking filter (3,5khz, Q1,0)

What makes it more reasonable and expected for a speaker to sound right when they are flat, is that we're used to any sound source in a room to be emitted "flat", as it is.
So that works.

well thats what i dont get, in theory flat speakers, with music mixed on flat speakers with a sound engineer with somewhat normal ears "should" sound natural, but the house curve is way closer to "natural sound" imo, something must be going on with high frequencys and maybe bigshot is right with the loss of high frequencys over distances compared to other frequencys which makes it 1. plausible that the house curve sounds more natural and 2. probably this lost of high frequencys is i guess a linear thing, so a linear house curve slope can match it pretty well

 

[Ghoostknight]

tho i should also mention, i always likes reduced high frequencys, normally i used similar settings to my studio monitors integrated "eq" knobs to reduce high frequencys digitally (its a slope starting around 4,5khz to 10khz, and i usually used -2db to -4db)
since truly flat sounds very bright (atleast for me), distortion and crooked frequencys can be quite unpleasent on flat speakers

but i prefer the house curve way more than the high frequency eq of my studio monitors

one thing that the house curve does and is quite noticable is that voices get more quite, tho i find it in most cases more pleasing that way, since voices can sound quite overdone on some music