Flat Anechoic Measured Frequency Response Speakers

Search Yahoo for "Listening conditions for the assessment of sound programme material" and the EBU article will come up.

I understand your suspicion re: the Toole research, but one thing that the EBU study shows is that there is much consensus about many of these issues. Take the off-axis response issue. EBU doc states "Frequency response curves measured at directional angles +10° and +30° should not differ from the frequency response measured on the main axis (directional angle = 0°) by more than the following permissible deviations:" ...and then it gives the data.

Also in that doc is the operational room response curve. What you find many designers doing is tapering the HF response of their loudspeakers about a dB or two starting at 16kHz or so (varies with designer of course) and with the absorptive nature of room furnishings that can easily translate into the desired curve.

Bob,

Teaching people what results to pick, then putting them in a test room to pick those results goes beyond just weeding out the hearing deficient IMO...

This is generally accepted to be simply good loudspeaker engineering.

Absolutely agree. Dr Toole's experiments helped demonstrate this to the industry..although I believe many designers knew this to be important.

It makes sense that a flat frequency response is a good starting point. I don't know if people will inherently like it better without training. I can't even do that kind of experiment on myself, because I've done the Moulton Labs training courses...

It is very easy to take a flat frequency response and alter it after the fact by dropping dBs wherever it suits you if you find you would like to accentuate parts of the spectrum. My understanding is that it is much harder to fix a signal that is inherently flawed.