I was in a discussion about Kef speakers and a room when I thought about something worth discussing with all of you, and that is that my observations are that the general desire for treble energy has changed a great deal over the past decades.
I want to be specific as I can. In the past a well-balanced speaker had a rolloff from 10kHz upwards. By 20 kHz this was usually severely down, and sometiems the rolloff started earlier.
As a result perhaps of the spec wars as well as better tweeters across the board, this rolloff is not as often seen in high end speeakers, it has almost vanished. The need we had to point speaker tweeters directly at our ear drums is no longer achieving the same musical balance, but also, a very "revealing" speaker now may have too much treble energy in a room.
Kind of makes me think a little about the trend in the late 80’s / 90’s for B&W speakers and ARC gear, how bright it sounded to me. Always in untreated rooms. Maybe the issue wasn’t the combination but that the gear hat outstripped the room? I imagine Abbey Road had much better acoustics than the average home listener, and perhaps it was that disconnect that drove me away from B&W then?
What are your thoughts, greybeards? Have you experienced this as well? Do you find that older speakers work better in your bare rooms?
