bigshot
Headphoneus Supremus
I had a unique opportunity yesterday. A friend of mine who designs speaker systems invited me over to spend the day listening to his rig. His theory is that if you achieve a perfectly flat response, just about any kind of music you throw at a system will sound good.
I've done some work trying to achieve flat response with my system, but not to the degree he's done. He's spent the last several months perfecting the response of this particular rig, which includes horn loaded bass speakers capable of reproducing cleanly all the way down to 20 hz. He's carefully matched components on his speakers to make sure they cover the whole spectrum of sound evenly. He has an octave equalizer that he uses to fine tune frequencies one by one as he sweeps through them using a tone generator. This ensures that what you hear out of the speakers is *exactly* what is burned into the CD.
We spent all day listening to a wide variety of CDs and SACDs. I was amazed at what I heard, because it isn't what one might expect... The bass was massive, rolling out of the huge horn with perfect definition from the lowest frequencies all the up to the upper bass. It struck me how different this is from most good stereos I hear... They'll have a big, muddy low-low, but there will be a gap between that and the low mids. With a bass guitar, this can make the bass sound rumbly, but without definition. On this balanced system, it was continuous all the way through, so the pluck of the bass was connected to the low thump. The bass was LARGE... much larger than I've ever heard without turning up the bass and switching loudness on, but it was so clear and defined, all of the other frequencies cut through cleanly. If I tried to push my bass up that high it would put up a thick wall of sound that would drown everything else.
The midrange was WAY back from where one would normally hear it. At times, it sounded like the mids were too low, but then the instrumentation would change and there would be plenty of mids again. I've had a theory that the proper amount of bass or treble is the position where the sound in those frequencies can "lay back" and then enter again, rather than being a continuous rumble or hiss. I never applied this theory to mids, because I assumed most engineers would always keep the mids up front in the mix. This isn't true. Over and over again, I heard passages that had the mids weaving in and out around the bass and treble. It really changed my opinion of how mids should sound.
The high end was crisp and clear, but not overly loud... just loud enough to cut through... not so much that at high volumes the high mids and low highs make you flinch. It was a much more subtle effect than most midrange systems. (I've heard these kinds of controlled highs on top end home stereo gear though...)
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. The sound was coming at me in gusts of air being pumped out of the horns of the speakers. I opened my mouth to talk, and even yelling, I could barely hear myself. 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." Amazingly enough, they didn't! 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.
My friend explained that when you go to big arena concerts, the equalization for the room is all over the map. Some frequencies are swallowed up while others have huge spikes. When they turn up the volume to fill the hall, they use the overall sound level to judge how loud to go. Dips in key parts of the spectrum might fool the engineer into boosting the overall volume to compensate. But if there's a huge spike in the sound in a tight frequency that isn't easy to hear, an overall 70 db might be pushing that one frequency into the audience at much higher volumes... say 120 or 140 db. You might not notice the spike, but it digs into your ear and causes the ringing, pain and hearing loss. However, if the sound is balanced, you can raise the overall level MUCH higher without any problem, because what you hear is what you get.
Another interesting thing was to listen to electronic music with continuous tones that go low and then up high. He played songs that I was familiar with that had sweeps like this, and I had always heard them with diminishing and growing volume swells along with the sweeps. On his system there was no swell at all. The sweep was perfectly even. What I assumed was some sort of expressive dimuendo and crescendo combined with portamento was actually dead zones in the frequency response of my speakers!
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!)
See ya
Steve
I've done some work trying to achieve flat response with my system, but not to the degree he's done. He's spent the last several months perfecting the response of this particular rig, which includes horn loaded bass speakers capable of reproducing cleanly all the way down to 20 hz. He's carefully matched components on his speakers to make sure they cover the whole spectrum of sound evenly. He has an octave equalizer that he uses to fine tune frequencies one by one as he sweeps through them using a tone generator. This ensures that what you hear out of the speakers is *exactly* what is burned into the CD.
We spent all day listening to a wide variety of CDs and SACDs. I was amazed at what I heard, because it isn't what one might expect... The bass was massive, rolling out of the huge horn with perfect definition from the lowest frequencies all the up to the upper bass. It struck me how different this is from most good stereos I hear... They'll have a big, muddy low-low, but there will be a gap between that and the low mids. With a bass guitar, this can make the bass sound rumbly, but without definition. On this balanced system, it was continuous all the way through, so the pluck of the bass was connected to the low thump. The bass was LARGE... much larger than I've ever heard without turning up the bass and switching loudness on, but it was so clear and defined, all of the other frequencies cut through cleanly. If I tried to push my bass up that high it would put up a thick wall of sound that would drown everything else.
The midrange was WAY back from where one would normally hear it. At times, it sounded like the mids were too low, but then the instrumentation would change and there would be plenty of mids again. I've had a theory that the proper amount of bass or treble is the position where the sound in those frequencies can "lay back" and then enter again, rather than being a continuous rumble or hiss. I never applied this theory to mids, because I assumed most engineers would always keep the mids up front in the mix. This isn't true. Over and over again, I heard passages that had the mids weaving in and out around the bass and treble. It really changed my opinion of how mids should sound.
The high end was crisp and clear, but not overly loud... just loud enough to cut through... not so much that at high volumes the high mids and low highs make you flinch. It was a much more subtle effect than most midrange systems. (I've heard these kinds of controlled highs on top end home stereo gear though...)
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. The sound was coming at me in gusts of air being pumped out of the horns of the speakers. I opened my mouth to talk, and even yelling, I could barely hear myself. 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." Amazingly enough, they didn't! 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.
My friend explained that when you go to big arena concerts, the equalization for the room is all over the map. Some frequencies are swallowed up while others have huge spikes. When they turn up the volume to fill the hall, they use the overall sound level to judge how loud to go. Dips in key parts of the spectrum might fool the engineer into boosting the overall volume to compensate. But if there's a huge spike in the sound in a tight frequency that isn't easy to hear, an overall 70 db might be pushing that one frequency into the audience at much higher volumes... say 120 or 140 db. You might not notice the spike, but it digs into your ear and causes the ringing, pain and hearing loss. However, if the sound is balanced, you can raise the overall level MUCH higher without any problem, because what you hear is what you get.
Another interesting thing was to listen to electronic music with continuous tones that go low and then up high. He played songs that I was familiar with that had sweeps like this, and I had always heard them with diminishing and growing volume swells along with the sweeps. On his system there was no swell at all. The sweep was perfectly even. What I assumed was some sort of expressive dimuendo and crescendo combined with portamento was actually dead zones in the frequency response of my speakers!
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!)
See ya
Steve
