Bright High End Speakers = Bad Room?

@teo_audio 

That curve is about what I normally do with digital eq to "tame" my loved ATC 150asl somewhat. Maybe up to 4db around 3,5 khz where they cross to the tweeter. Except for a flat response in the bass.....

Can't really agree that most pro monitors are especially exaggerated in the highs (above 8 khz). Maybe they are just not rolled-off and a little more direct in their dispersion. Most often they have controls to take down/roll-off the treble. NS-10 of course very special. Made only to work with the mids.

Teo_audio wrote: " I find that the most natural and comfortable to listen to speakers are the ones that employ some subtle version of "The BBC Dip"."

Agreed - a bit of dippage centered somewhere between 3 and 4 kHz does seem to correlate with long-term fatigue-free listening.

One way of seeing the BBC Dip is "inverting the Fletcher-Munson peak", as atdavid so eloquently described it.

But here’s another way of seeing it: The BBC dip is right smack where the bottom end of most tweeters is, where most tweeters have an off-axis pattern flare. The result is a net excess of energy in this region (the off-axis energy perceptually adds to the on-axis energy), and the BBC dip is one way of addressing that.

One day I was curious about whether the BBC dip would be subjectively desirable if there were no off-axis energy flare to compensate for. My designs are constant-directivity over much of the spectrum including that region, so I dialed in some gentle dippage centered between 3 and 4 kHz. What I heard was educational to me.

Yes the speaker became more forgiving, but the harmonic richness was degraded. There was something obviously missing relative to having smooth response through that region. The loss of something quite desirable - timbre and texture and a natural-sounding richness - caught me by surprise.

So while the BBC dip does invert the Fletcher-Munson peak, I have come to believe that its primary raisin d’etre is to compensate for that off-axis energy flare at the bottom end of the tweeter’s range. And if that flare isn’t there, ime the BBC dip would be a step in the wrong direction.

One thing that peak in the Fletcher-Munson curve DOES tell us, in my opinion, is where the stakes are the highest.

Duke

Duke,
That is an fantastic post!
I had a feeling the general "view" may have also been tied to typical tweeter emission, but did not feel confident enough in what the "typical" speaker was in this community to suggest it.

I always put effort into room treatment and response trying to achieve flatness which could be why I am not a fan of the dip since I have addressed excess energy already.

Professional studio techs check their mixes on several different speakers.  The goal here is to provide a pr9duct that "translates" the artist's music to there listeners.  A "good mix" or "master" will "translate" well on different systems.  i have found that the recordings I really am moved by manage to "translate" well on a number of different systems from by car audio, a modest compact system as well as my attempt at putting together a "high end" system  There are no perfectly "flat" or "neutral" speakers in existence and if there were, that "perfect" speaker would sound different in different rooms and with different components. The pros put a lot of effort into perfecting the acoustics of their rooms and still, no two rooms sound exactly alike.  Put together a system that "translates" the music not only to your ears but to your heart and soul.  Trust your ears and your heart and ENJOY THE MUSIC.