coloured headphones, earphones are the ones that do not sound neutral, flat on their own, would that be accurate description of it? ofcourse without any amps and eqs, bass settings on cd players and etc.
Just about every headphone, earphone and set of speakers is colored to one degree or another. It's not possible to manufacture a perfectly flat transducer, so saying "colored headphones" just means "more colored" than other headphones.
Electronics like players and DACs and amps are relatively easy to design to have an audibly flat response (20Hz to 20kHz +/-.5dB) In fact, if I bought a player that was colored, I would instantly return it as defective.
Bigshot, do you believe it is possible to achieve anything a tube amp can (sound-wise) with an EQ or other software settings? I mean, all the possible colorations, distortions, etc. And would you say with a well set-up and high budget system, it is possible to set up a speaker system that is perfectly neutral to the human ear?
Coloured is the opposite of neutral. A neutral speaker should pronounce about the same amount of sound distribution across the lows, mids and highs, these speakers are lauded because of their usefulness in being used as a reference for tuning the qualities that a producer wants to create on a record album. Take something and think of the Yamaha NS-10 as an affordable neutral speaker and s as a result if you mix your recording down to said speaker you should have a sound that is calibrated as being flat and it should by rights sound good no matter whether you then go and play it on a $10000 hifi system or your portable MP3 player.
Of course colour adds flavor to your life and its what you listen to or for individually as a consumer, this may be bright as in a speaker which produces naturally more treble or warm as in a speaker that produces more bas or whatever but it's never neutral again after that point.
Most people enjoy a form of colored speakers because listening to a truly flat EQ curve for any extended amount of time can be considered harsh and tiring. When Yamaha introduced the NS-10 into the wild as a Hifi speaker everyone complained and said they sounded like crap, low and behold they produced a completely flat EQ curve and the rest is history after they won a Grammy with them.
Worst speakers EVER apparently. Because people don't like hearing everything equally... I blame the trolls living under the bridge at Yamaha. If you ask me for my frank and honest answer I think this is utterly hilarious.
Yamaha NS-10M is far from flat. In fact, if you search for its frequency response, it has a mid-centric frequency curve. My Yamaha HS7 speakers is much flatter than the NS-10M. However, a flat treble curve is often mistaken as harsh and bright since a lot of consumer and some hifi speakers have a treble roll-off so that the sound isn't edgy sounding. In my experience, the edgy sound isn't because of the flat treble, but the studio monitor is rather exposing the limitations of the DAC and AMP. If you pair a "warm" sounding DAC like Metrum's NOS R2R DACs or Schiit's Bifrost Multibit or even Chord Mojo or if you go all analog with vinyl, you'll realize how natural and far from boring sounding a flat frequency response provides IMO.
I have my Yamaha HS7 paired with my Bifrost Multibit and Schiit Asgard 2, and the synergy is amazing. It makes the Yamaha HS7 sounding much more expensive than its price point.
Of course if we judge things by todays standards we come to a completely different standard. The other issue that is relevant here is that the 10M is a completely different speaker to the original 10 if you are looking for a set of these. I did not realise when I posted this, it was a link to a 10M at the time last night. The second generation are nowhere near as reputed although many still use them.
Of course if you pair them with a warm DAC and amplifier as well as a decent sub woofer you will get a much better result out of them, but that's not exactly playing the same game now is it? In fact that just goes back to showing the point off that people need a little something to add to the blandness of life, I will rarely drink a straight black coffee but when I do it hits me for 6 about how harsh it is on my body.
A neutral speaker should pronounce about the same amount of sound distribution across the lows, mids and highs, these speakers are lauded because of their usefulness in being used as a reference for tuning the qualities that a producer wants to create on a record album. Take something and think of the Yamaha NS-10 as an affordable neutral speaker and s as a result if you mix your recording down to said speaker you should have a sound that is calibrated as being flat and it should by rights sound good no matter whether you then go and play it on a $10000 hifi system or your portable MP3 player. ... When Yamaha introduced the NS-10 into the wild as a Hifi speaker everyone complained and said they sounded like crap, low and behold they produced a completely flat EQ curve and the rest is history after they won a Grammy with them.
Ah, I think you may have completely misunderstood what is meant by "a reference", why the NS-10s became so popular in recording studios and how they were used.
You brought-up "the rest is history" without apparently knowing or understanding any of that history! You have to realise that the early 80's saw a new breed of freelance "star" producers. Being freelance, they were not affiliated to a single label or studio but constantly moved between studios. As each studio control room has a different design and therefore a different sound, this presented these freelance producers with a problem because it takes months to get used to the sound of a new/different studio, months these freelance producers didn't have. One of these producers came up with the idea of taking a cheap, small set of speakers with them to every studio, which could just sit on top of the mixing desks' meter-bridge. This provided an element of consistency between studios, as the producer could work as normal on the main monitors and switch to their own speakers in order to reference the main monitoring system to a sonic signature they were familiar with. It didn't really matter that the NS-10s were far from flat and sounded like crap, just that they were relatively cheap and small enough to easily transport and provided a distinctive sonic signature the producer could become familiar with. Other freelance producers copied the idea and the major studios, who were desperate to attract these "star" producers, installed NS-10s to save these producers the trouble of having to carry a set of speakers around. The concept of the "nearfield reference monitor" was born and by the end of the 80's most of the world's major studios had a pair of NS-10s, in addition of course to their main monitoring system.
Beyond the fact the NS-10s were chosen specifically because they were NOT flat or neutral and that they were originally just used as a "reference" rather than exclusively, there is one other vital fact you're ignoring: Once the producer completed the mix, it was sent to a mastering house to have, amongst other things, it's EQ (sonic signature) fixed, and these mastering houses NEVER used NS-10s (because they were crap!). It therefore makes absolutely no sense from a consumer's point of view to use NS-10s in the belief it will get them closer to some erroneous concept of the "original mix".
Back to the OP: Colouration is generally used to describe a noticeable frequency response which is different to the original sound. Colouration is therefore a type of distortion and contrary to some statements in this thread, not all distortion is bad, in fact distortion is a vital ingredient in the production of most most music recordings.
Beyond the fact the NS-10s were chosen specifically because they were NOT flat or neutral and that they were originally just used as a "reference" rather than exclusively, there is one other vital fact you're ignoring: Once the producer completed the mix, it was sent to a mastering house to have, amongst other things, it's EQ (sonic signature) fixed, and these mastering houses NEVER used NS-10s (because they were crap!). It therefore makes absolutely no sense from a consumer's point of view to use NS-10s in the belief it will get them closer to some erroneous concept of the "original mix".
The thing about the NS-10, the reason you often saw a pair sitting off-axis somewhere near the meter bridge of a studio with far better fridge-sized monitors installed, was precisely because they were crap. However, they were reasonably consistent crap.
Mixing things that sound great on the massive monitors is all well and good, but I have known producers be keen to take a quick peek on a token "crap" system, to check how well the track would survive- which is when they'd route things to the NS-10 for a few minutes. That said, you could also buy speakers specifically designed to consistently push things even further downmarket, see also the Triple-P Pyramids. Designed to sound like crap TV speakers, they were great for getting that cheap consumer audio sound in a reproducible way.
Possibly not the most glamorous end of pro audio, but an oddly useful one.
This is true of course, as many do to have a cheap set of Hi-Fi speakers purposefully for the point of seeing how their mix would withstand the crap that most people listen to music through.
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