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Treble and Tweeter trends over the past few decades

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?

erik_squires
erik_squires OP
16,064 posts
 

To expand a little... I wonder how much of the B&W 800 reputation translated to the consumer world, but lacking the studio acoustic treatment, ended up in a very lopsided idea of what reference sound should be like?

That is, if recording engineers were listening to B&W 800s that's great, but they had dedicated acousticians treating their rooms.  B&W never sold us a room, they sold us the speakers and this effect could very well have tilted what we thought neutral sounded like.

dekay's avatar
dekay
5,571 posts
 

My wide band Squawker's don't have tweeters attached @ the moment.

If you found 80's AR gear to sound bright have you listened to their 6H30 based offerings introduced around the turn of the century?

Now, that's bright, IMO.

 

DeKay

erik_squires OP
16,064 posts
 

Not AR, ARC. :)  Compared to CJ for instance, I found it analytical and lacking bass, ESPECIALLY when put together with B&W 800 series speakers.

dekay's avatar
dekay
5,571 posts
 

AR means Audio Research Erik.

I was able to compare their 6922 based preamps (2 of them) VS their new 6H30 based preamp around 2002, or so.

At the same audition we compared a BAT 6922 preamp to their then new 6H30 based preamp.

The crowd were ARC fans (I'm not) and the demo speakers were the then new Vandersteen 5.

What I learned with the "5's" was that on many, many, many recordings the Vandersteen 5's internal subs rarely made a difference, but when they did it was impressive.

 

DeKay

 

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