Quote:
Originally Posted by bigshot
While we were listening, my friend said, "Let me show you something..." He got up and turned up the volume to a VERY high volume. I could feel the bass hitting the floorboards of the house as hard as someone hitting them with a baseball bat. .. He left it at that volume for a couple of minutes and then he ramped it back all the way to zero. He smiled at me and spoke very quietly, "Your ears don't hurt." ... I had just experienced a sound bigger and louder than anything else I'd ever heard, but there was no ringing or pain. While the sound was blasting me, I didn't even flinch.
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You performed a simple crescendo test. And you found out that despite your friend's use of a calibration system that wasn't state of the art even 35 years ago, he's managed to come closer than most home systems that you're familiar with to a flat frequency response, despite the fact that the speakers, microphone, room and equalizer are all very very imperfect. The proof that he did is your reaction to this test, and the other listening tests.
All things are relative, of course. With room treatments (and I mean real room treatments, involving partial demolition, concrete slabs, floating subfloors and lead sheeting), gated impulse-response measurements and further modern bla bla, you could be hearing reproduction that's as much improved over your friend's system as his system is over yours. And as has been pointed out, some CDs would still sound crappy. Crappier, even. You'd have to start making your own recordings... and then you'd be up against imperfections in microphones, preamps... it never ends.
Remember the bumblebee. It shouldn't work, it can't possibly work. Flat response is impossible, an engineering wet dream, a mirage, give up now. Yet improvement happens. It's even measurable. Go figure.
Quote:
Well, I got home and immediately started twiddling with the EQ on my system to get it closer to that sound. I'm going back for the 4th to do some more listening (and hot dogs too!) |
Have fun, and eat only
balanced hot dogs. Who knows, this may be the start of a whole new nonhotdog, nonpatriotic lifestyle-- it certainly won't be mainstream American. Are you sure you want to go down this road?