Pleasurably better, not measurably better

@erik_squires 

Thanks for that. I've noticed a lot of audiophiles who use extensive room treatments often leave the ceiling lightly treated or not treated at all. Some of them say they don't like it with too much absorption on the ceiling. Others might just be reticent to hang things on their ceiling. Do you focus on first reflection points when using ceiling  treatments? 

In regard to my post, while listening to headphones I wouldn't expect the ceiling absorbers to do much unless the headphones were very leaky and projected considerably more sound power away from my ears than towards them. 

@asctim Sorry missed that you meant with headphones!! Hahaha. :)

I think you can always deaden a room too much, but generally speaking I have found that room treatment works in the plane you apply it.  That is, if you treat the floor and ceiling it adds height to the image.  If you add behind the speaker and listener it adds depth.

I did a whole thread on first reflection points which was misunderstood I think by many readers.  I don't think room treatments work very well at all until you reach a certain critical mass.  If you ONLY treat first reflection points I can barely hear any benefit at all.  It is only when the room overall has enough treatment to quiet it down that the 1st reflection points matter.

No?  First, I don't believe that "accuracy" is really possible in a speaker/room combination outside of the original recording space, nor do I believe the engineers would have mixed to reproduce that space.  Next, if you look at the research undertaken by JBL and Harman over time, speaker makers and measurements were based on human desire, not energy time curves.  Those who misunderstand that always end up with systems far too bright and dry.

Lastly why should I care about accuracy if it isn't more engaging to listen to?

I'm not buying a telescope to measure the distance or size or material composition of a distant star.  I'm not buying a tool to help me measure the amount of chlorine in a pool.  I'm buying gear that makes me feel good.  At best I can achieve a system that sounds good with a wide variety of source materials.

Couldn't agree more with this, not to mention all the circuitry that music goes through in the recording process should definitely change the sound of the musicians in the studio.

I cringe when the word “accuracy” is introduced. The conversation tends to head towards simplistic measurements and goes off the rails.

For me, I need the gestalt right… conversations about accuracy tend to go to a few single measurements that completely miss the point. I have been a scientist and technologist for all of my life and when coming to carefully reasoned and logical conclusion based on all sorts of detailed data, I always ask my team, “does this pass the laugh test?”… if you look at the question… and the conclusion… does it make you break out laughing? As in, that is ridiculous! If so, go back to the drawing board, because there is something wrong with your premises. Ultimately science is about observation, then postulating possible causes and relationships, and if your theory doesn’t fit reality… it is wrong.

Anyway. Bring up accuracy, and typically over-simplified models of the world seem to get proposed and the whole conversation seems to go off the rails. So, I try to stay away from the word. I feel my system captures the gestalt of a musical performance… but I suspect measuring some simple parameters might say otherwise.

Measurements are definitely helpful. But what everyone experiences as pleasant varies. And what we call pleasant we tend to define as good as well. There the trouble starts.

I´d never expect anyone to like my prefered sonic signature.

When I bought my first stereo the shop owner told me he had sold an amp/speaker combination that was horrible to his ears, but the buyer was a professional cellist and the setup reproduced his experience as a player sitting in the orchestra very well.

„Pleasurably better“ – that´s a good term, because it´s asking to define what exactly is pleasurable. I also like the „euphony“, literally translated as „good sound“. We know euphoria and that it´s experienced in individual ways, so here´s an audio specific sister word.