Are your speakers designed for your listening taste and hearing ability?


It occurs to me that speaker manufacturer’s and designers in many cases design their speaker ( and its subsequent sound) to the expected ’typical’ buyer. IME, a lot of high end speakers are designed to appeal to the consumer who has a certain amount of ’hearing loss’ due to age! This might sound odd, but I think that there are a lot of a’philes who have reached a certain age and have now two things going for them..1) A large enough wallet that the expense of the speaker isn’t really the issue and 2) a certain amount of high frequency hearing loss. This circumstance leads to designers and manufacturer’s bringing out speakers that are a) bright, b) inaccurate in their high frequency reproduction and c) not accurate in their reproduction across the frequency spectrum ( some may be tipped up in the highs, as an example). My impression is that a certain technology catches on--like the metal dome ( beryllium or titanium, as an example) and the manufacturer sees a certain public acceptance of this technology from the --shall we say-- less abled in the high frequency hearing dept, and the rest is as they say...history. Your thoughts?
128x128daveyf
All speaker designs are compromises. Every last one of them. Considerations are as many as there are speakers, even within the same brands and their line ups.

Choose the one that sounds right to you and you'l be a happy camper.
'Nuff said.

All the best,
Nonoise
Most speakers have a significant roll-off in the treble in a normal listening room. Often starting as low as 5-6 khz. I'm not sure the speakers are necessarily the problem. The big problem, for me, is the "hot" recordings whare you try to create sharp voices in the studio that can't be listened to loud in a good system without tone controls or dsp.
I suspect most respectable audiophiles strive to improve their room acoustics over time, maybe even continuously, so whatever speakers they happen to be using would continuously change how they sound. Not to mention the speaker locations would need to be changing continuously as room acoustics warrant, and as tweaks warrant. It’s a very dynamic situation.
Its not just compensating for age. Most people will pick a speaker that has a tipped up high end when comparing 2 speakers back to back. The flat response speaker will sound muffled by comparison. At least at first. Its only after you get the bright speaker home do you find it gets fatiguing with longer listening sessions.

Same goes for speakers with a bass hump. I doubt you will be able to sell a Millennial a speaker without a 20 db boost under 150 hz.