Bright High End Speakers = Bad Room?

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. 

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.

The second point is that this area of the frequency spectrum is the peak of the ’intelligence’ read for the human ear.

men use it to tell where the threat is coming from (directional, closeness) in the jungle scenarios, etc. Women use that frequency spectrum a bit differently, they use it to tell the difference between the cries of children, re health, etc. They use it to understand the sounds of the very very young.

so men can be excited by peaks in that area of the spectrum, and women will be powerfully turned off and agitated by it, in all the wrong ways. men think it is exciting and invigorating, in some critical ways, and women think of that sound as someone killing or torturing children.

So if you want spousal harmony...as an audiophile in a shared space....it is easy.

Put in the effort.....and .....Don’t go there.

~3-4khz, no peaks, no resonance, no honking, nothing but a clean slight/subtle dip.

When a speaker does the screech thing, it is usually screeching in the mentioned frequency area. I personally won’t even go into the given room at an audio show, I can hear it from outside the door. This is also the top range of the ear canal resonance range areas.

Things are a bit conflated in this (canal resonance vs hearing peaks vs intelligence reads), but it is notably real. Whatever we build, or make, we make absolutely sure this peak area of importance does not exist as a problem.

And that is how you help get the other 50% of the human race into the audio world.

Note that the most favored ’high slope required’ mid-bass drivers start to go nutty and slurred in this area of the frequency range. I would not touch any of those drivers with a barge pole. It leaves you down to about maybe a dozen or less drivers that actually function correctly - in the entire world of available drivers.

the market aim is flat FR.

this is too bright for my taste. even in a untreated room, i dont find the highs gets tamed enough.
and a flat FR in a well treated room is too bright for my taste as well.

the solution is either eq, or try to tame the HF response with resistors if you have a 4 binding post.

if you look at the AN-E measurements, its no wonder so many love that speaker. its flat from 100hz to 1000hz, then from 1khz up to 8khz its down 4db in comparison. this gives a much smoother sound.

Excellent Teo. Duke is right on. Having a TACT room control device I can analyze the in room frequency response of any loudspeaker and devise target curves to give the speaker any response curve I want. I can load 9 different response curves and switch back and forth between the nine.
A flat in room response curve is not just bright. It is way too bright and will make anyone with normal hearing wince, even kenjit. I can not relate this to the speaker's anechoic response curve because I do not know it.
I tested Watt/Puppies at a friends house. They are a very easy to listen to loudspeaker and seem to have fine detail. They were very popular among the press. Measured, they were down 10 db at 20K and had a 2 dB dip centered on 3K. One would have to believe they were intentionally designed this way. When I made them flat they were painful. 
Then there is the problem of volume. Our hearing sensitivity changes with volume. Refer to this link   https://www.kmuw.org/post/loudness-and-fletcher-munson-curve  So, a speaker that sounds balanced at 80 db will sound bright and bass heavy at 90 dB. Conversely, a speaker that is balanced at 90 dB will sound honky like a table radio at 80 dB. What this means is that any system has only one right volume at best. If you have  loudness compensation you have two right volumes. All this pertains to each individual recording! Without loudness compensation each recording has one right volume level. With loudness compensation you have another "right" volume at a lower level. 
By bouncing back and forth between the 9 different compensation curves this can be easily demonstrated to anyone except maybe cleeds. 
The TACT demonstrates that this can be managed in the digital domain using dynamic loudness compensation. It can be programmed to hop from one loudness compensation curve to another based on volume so no mater where you set the volume control the music sounds exactly the same which is very spooky. So now I have the unit programmed with two compensation curves both down 6 dB at 20K, one flat through 3K and another with a 2 dB notch filter centered on 3K for edgy recordings. Both  have 4 different volume levels. This takes up 8 presets. The ninth I keep perfectly flat for demonstration purposes. The dynamic loudness compensation has an on and off switch so I can play all 9 presets with or without loudness compensation. I always keep it "on." The different volume levels are so I can keep the TACT up against it's maximum digital volume depending on the volume of the source material. This helps to maintain maximum digital resolution (bit depth). 
TACT of course is out of business and no other unit on the market has this capability yet. Hopefully that will change before my TACT dies. 
None of this applies to strictly analog systems. As I have mentioned before I run my ARC phono amp into a Benchmark ADC so I can input it into the TACT and take advantage of it's magic. Nobody thinks running the turntable strait analog sounds better. Once you are in numbers you can do virtually anything to the signal without any increase in distortion.
Being able to modify the frequency response of the signal any way you want is a great way to learn what happens if you do this, that or the other and I am sure more units that can do this will be forthcoming from companies like Anthem and Trinnov.

I wish I could bold this in 100 point font. THIS!!!    Volume has an enormous impact on perceived tonal balance, far more than almost anything. I think I may even make a topic about it!

mijostyn1,269 posts11-01-2019 2:11pm Without loudness compensation each recording has one right volume level.