Midrange frequencies an "acquired taste"?

[shabd]

Most hi-end audiophile tube amp makers design their products for the full range but what separate the best tube amps from the the top ss are the mids specially with the 45, 2a3, kt66, 34, px25, 845,etc. specially low wattage set amps, direct heat or pp parallel class A. Once you hear the sound, there is no going back. Take for example the AN Ongaku....my lottery dream.

 

[fireismind]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilavideo /img/forum/go_quote.gif With a few notable exceptions, most instruments are in the midrange, so if you have crappy midrange, you have crappy sound, regardless of how you dress up the bass and treble.

Very well said. Midrange was definetly the last portion of the frequency spectrum I came to appreciate. Now that I have, it adds so much depth to music. After you get a proper set of speakers / phones with decent midrange detail, its like you get a whole new music collection too. You really have to re-listen to your entire collection to hear the true character of the vocals, guitars, drums and other layers of goodies hidden in most recordings. it's quite an amazing experience hearing new things in songs you thought you knew well. Midrange is where all the intimacy is.

With good midrange you can actually hear what good production sounds like! (Not to say that well done Bass and Treble don't have their place in good production)ts too bad the loudness war has ruined a lot of what would've been amazing sounding music over the last 15 years. Mainstream music really can sound horrible when you get a nice stereo put together. Unfortunately the JVC/Sony boombox's don't make this apparent to the masses.

Luckily for us there are still a lot of great people with great taste in sound working in the music production business, so we can feed our systems what they deserve...

 

[xkRoWx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoseFan /img/forum/go_quote.gif I believe semen is an acquired taste.. I myself liked it from the get-go but there is a fair amount of bias there as it was my own. But once you get used to the taste, there is no going back. Back to what? I don't know.

LOL!

 

[Menisk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoseFan /img/forum/go_quote.gif I believe semen is an acquired taste.. I myself liked it from the get-go but there is a fair amount of bias there as it was my own. But once you get used to the taste, there is no going back. Back to what? I don't know.

Find a friend and remove the bias? Do a review maybe?

 

[MrGreen]

Interestingly, on these forums I find treble to be an acquired taste. A lot of people seem to favour the darker side of headphones, which results in something that doesn't sound anything like live music, especially when you take into account that a lot of recordings are fairly dark to begin with because of limitations in microphones or mixing choices.

Whether or not the rolled off highs are part of the reason they buy particular headphones or not is another story.

One of my favourites is "Tenor Sax Sounds harsh". I'm pretty sure it's supposed to, especially since the vast majority of recording artists will be using a metal mouthpiece.

Oh well.

 

[ford2]

If you have no mids your music has no sparkle,I listen to a lot of female vocals and mids are everything.

 

[ford2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoseFan /img/forum/go_quote.gif I believe semen is an acquired taste.. I myself liked it from the get-go but there is a fair amount of bias there as it was my own. But once you get used to the taste, there is no going back. Back to what? I don't know.

Nothing like a free feed,though some would say you are being selfish in not sharing it around.

 

[Mad Max]

LMAO these messed up people



On topic: No mids, No music. F$#% dat s@^&.

 

[Bilavideo]

Listening to mids is not an acquired taste. It's what we do most of the time. The problem is that we've been trained to value the extremes at both ends of the spectrum - for the same reason we like salty snacks, put carbonation into our beverages, over-caffeinate, and fall prey to fat and sugar. All of these imbalances are exciting. They jolt us out of our center. At the very least, they're a luxurious part of the spectrum left underserved by the clock-radio sound of cheap speakers in TVs, computers and even iPods.

The acquired taste is the love of boom boom and hiss for their own sake. The rediscovery of midrange is more about reversing this acquired taste. It's not that midrange is everything; it's just most of it. Bringing LF and HF into the picture is one thing. Burying the midrange in the process is overkill.

 

[ninjikiran]

Quote:

Originally Posted by etiolate /img/forum/go_quote.gif mr green is right. you can't expect people that don't focus on listening to actually reproduce the music correctly... they want the boom for their buck. listening is not something to just do on the go, and you can't impress someone with a nice listening rig as quickly as a big screen tv. it takes focus, and most people just don't have the time or persistence to deal with that.

For tv's they do something more shady, they just oversaturate the image so it looks "better" when in reality its not and if configured as such you will loose some of the color spectrum, like telling the difference between the high end brightness of reds. So it just seems like your getting a better image, and our eyes want to convince us that we are.

For me vocals are part of a package that can make average or above average instrumentals shine. Just the feeling you get. Of course there are some instrumentals that sound great but are just tainted by terrible vocals but that is the singers fault. I am not a big fan of pop today, the vocal range for most popular music is not wide enough and all ends up sounding the same to me.

 

[LFF]

Quote:

Originally Posted by n3rdling /img/forum/go_quote.gif The magic of music is in the midrange

Right and wrong!

The real magic is in a natural balance across all frequencies. When you achieve a natural balance across all the frequencies, your ear will naturally be tuned to pick up the mid-range frequencies more.

That's my approach to mastering, remastering and sound restoration. I have noticed time and time again that focusing on a natural presentation of material, even with hiss and noise, can sound much better than just targeting the mid-range. OK....I'm saying too much.

 

[ninjikiran]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF /img/forum/go_quote.gif Right and wrong! The real magic is in a natural balance across all frequencies. When you achieve a natural balance across all the frequencies, your ear will naturally be tuned to pick up the mid-range frequencies more. That's my approach to mastering, remastering and sound restoration. I have noticed time and time again that focusing on a natural presentation of material, even with hiss and noise, can sound much better than just targeting the mid-range. OK....I'm saying too much.

I would say you are 100% right in terms of my tastes, I find something too "samey" to get boring almost isntantly but if you mix it up properly it becomes immediately addictive.

It is kind of like those roach wall plug ins, they alternate frequencies so they can't get used to it. Where with music if something has a similar sound throughout it kind of gets boring and drones into the background. I guess its not as dynamic?

I am not qualified to properly define these things so please bear with my terrible audio vocabulary.