Consider the following excerpt from
this article:
"As a tuner for Chi-Fi earphone manufacturers, I often encounter difficulties and frustrations trying to convince their management and engineers to accept a certain tone or sound characteristics. They are judging my tuning based on their own experiences of how “good sound” should be represented. They cannot understand why “blurry and unclear” (in their own vocabulary – “模糊不清”) sound would appeal to the westerners. For earphones that are both sold domestically and exported, I have to tune for both the Mainland and western consumers. Therefore it isn’t easy striking a balance between the two audiences."
This was written by a guy in Singapore who tunes earphones for Asian companies for a living and it tacitly acknowledges two things, namely 1) that there are two broad categories of tuning that can broadly be referred to as "Eastern" or "Western" and 2) that what constitutes "Western" tuning can often sound "blurry and unclear" to someone with more Eastern preferences. My point is that this distinction hardly started with me-- but reading the above it clearly resonated with me as I am someone who has had many of my favorite IEMs dismissed as "bloated" and "muddy" (ie., "blurry and unclear") to my perplexed ears by people who seem to have a preference for what could be called "Eastern" tuning. This is really the crux of the matter to me-- I am trying to find a way to account for what appears to be a vast disparity in how some things are perceived without resorting to simply criticizing or dismissing someone's perceptions-- that's all.
I really have no stake in trying to associate one type of tuning or another with any particular geographical region or nationality so perhaps "Eastern" and "Western" was an unfortunate way to name the distinction-- I was simply trying to move away from the term "Chi Fi tuning". Perhaps naively, I assumed the phrase "Eastern tuning" was a less derogatory term. In any case let's move beyond that and define two broad categories of tuning-- let's call them Martha and Fred. Martha tuning has more of an emphasis on mid-bass and lower mids and Fred tuning has more of an emphasis on sub-bass and upper mids. It just so happens that Fred tuning happens to work really well with various genres of Asian pop however there can conceivably be many reasons for preferring one type of tuning over another based simply on someone's individual sensitivities and preferences and/or music choices. It also just so happens that people who prefer Martha tuning often find Fried tuning to have too much upper mids and lacking body in the mid bass and people who prefer Fred tuning often find Martha tuning to be bloated/muddy/hazy. Please note that I am only observing that the sort of distinction in tuning preferences I've labeled Martha and Fred above does seem to be valid to me...associating it intrinsically with any particular geographic region or nationality of people is over and above the point I'm really trying to make, which is simply that the distinction seems to exist.
It's actually from a much broader array of observations and readings including the article above and copious amounts of discussion across multiple audio forums.
No-- my only point is that it does seem to be a valid distinction. While I wouldn't be surprised if there was some correlation with various cultural preferences at times I am ultimately not trying to make any absolute claims about who prefers said tuning (or doesn't) relative to what part of the world they're from.
I think people can be differently sensitive to various regions of the FR in the same way they can be differently sensitive to different types of spiciness or flavoring in food. While I'm sure it's possible in both cases to make some degree of generalization based on geography & nationality for the sake of the point I'm trying to make here I'm fine considering it an entirely personal choice in much the same way that whether one is a "dog person" or a "cat person" is an entirely personal choice.
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