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Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?

In our thirty years of professional audio system design and setup, we keep on running into two distinctly different types of sound and listeners.

Type One: Detail, clarity, soundstage, the high resolution/accuracy camp. People who fall into this camp are trying to reproduce the absolute sound and use live music as their guide.

Type Two: Musicality camp, who favors tone and listenability over the high resolution camp. Dynamics, spl capabilty, soundstaging are less important. The ability for a system to sound real is less important than the overall sound reproduced "sounds good."

Are there more then this as two distincly different camps?

We favor the real is good and not real is not good philosophy.

Some people who talk about Musicaility complain when a sytem sounds bright with bright music.

In our viewpoint if for example you go to a Wedding with a Live band full of brass instruments like horns, trumpts etc it hurts your ears, shouldn’t you want your system to sound like a mirror of what is really there? Isn’t the idea to bring you back to the recording itself?

Please discuss, you can cite examples of products or systems but keep to the topic of sound and nothing else.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
128x128audiotroy
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audiotroy OP
3,817 posts
 
Seanheis,

Your statements are simmpy not true, a speaker system can't add or subtract information the information is there you are not able to hear it due to masking effects of the speaker due to either limitations of the drivers, crossover slopes, crossover implementation of both. 

If a driver starts to roll off at 15khz you will not hear a 20khz tone or it will be reduced in amplitutude so it will be burried. You could call that speaker system musical because it has reduced energy in the high frequencies which will make you more aware of the upper midrange and lower treble frequencies. 

Most well designed loudspeakers strive for a relatively flat frequency response no engineer strips out "natural harmonicss," the fact that "natural harmonics would be an integral part of the signal it would be impossible to strip anything out. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
johnk's avatar
johnk
1,975 posts
 
   Such a narrow minded line of thought so if your into musicality your flawed if into type 1 your gold. Poster seems to not consider that those who may enjoy musicality might also like massive dynamics accuracy detail clarity or high SPL they also never use live music as a reference in his narrow view its one way or the highway.  Post uses faulty logic and is  Splitting the inability to see the dichotomy of both positive and negative aspects of our thoughts, usually associated with how we think about people. Everything is either all good or all bad – there is no middle ...
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
Micro and macro detail imperative to get the emotion of reproduced sounds.  What is musical to some, may not be musical to others.  There have been so many great posts in this thread about that already.  

A great speaker will give you all the detail that it is fed and it can still  be highly 'musical' for lack of a better term.  Why can't a speaker give you the emotions of a YoYo Ma playing Kol Nidrey while still being able to give you the bite of a horn section.  I honestly have never had 'hurt ears' from a brass section.  Honestly, live music shouldn't ever hurt your ears, unless it's over amplified rock or something like that.  

I was a drummer before the MS and my ears never hurt after any session I can remember.  Even the strike of a triangle shouldn't give anyone a headache when heard live.

Forget which poster said make a recording and play that back to see how the system sounds.  I love that.  We used to do that all the time in the studio with the Revox Reels.
seanheis1
627 posts
 
Most well designed loudspeakers strive for a relatively flat frequency response no engineer strips out "natural harmonicss," the fact that "natural harmonics would be an integral part of the signal it would be impossible to strip anything out.

In this case I was speaking of amplifiers that strip out natural harmonics with too much negative feedback. 
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Negative feedback cannot strip harmonics and this can be easily measured. If anything, negative feedback widens bandwidth and lowers distortion. Improperly used can lead to Transient Intermodulation distortions (TIM), that add brightness to the sound (higher order odd harmonics).

On the other hand more distortions without feedback can make amp sound more vivid, pretty much the same way as distorted guitar (a lot of harmonics) sounds more dynamic than clean Jazz guitar at the same loudness. Sound that is "warmer" than neutral has even harmonics added by an amp. Adding even harmonics might sound nice but reduces clarity.
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