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The predominant preference is a flat on axis frequency response and a downwards sloping room response. Some of the art of acoustics and absolutely science is ensuring you can do both.

Pull back the curtain and it is not so much we prefer a downward sloping room response but that almost all mixing and mastering is done in rooms with downward sloping room response and somewhat flat on axis response hence it makes sense the home environment should match to sound "right". 

Here is the difference between what you guys are talking about and what I’m talking about. It is relatively easy to build a room that will give a flat room response at the mixing position tested on an expensive test microphone usually around $5k or so from a full range speaker that is playing back a simple full range sweep tone. I’m not talking about manipulating the speakers what ever they may be to produce a flat response or a slightly downward response, the curve is simple to create. Just plot the function then add or subtract the frequencies to produce the desired curve, that is a world away from what I’m talking about.

I mentioned it before but John Storyk said himself that flat studios sound bad, so he doesn’t build them he’s been the top studio designer for going on 40 years he used a lot of science to get his results but left room for art and creativity. This has so much to do with immersive audio a flat room is not a DSP flat room what you are really saying is I’m screwing up my wonderful speakers to fit my awful room with DSP (well some DSPs) Im in my second hour of tones for my "room perfect" DSP and it has a rating of 98% for my Yamaha or my Anthem DSPs it takes about 5 min at the most. I don’t know the Trinnov but I didn’t get one because they used a very old i3 processor and I knew that if the readings were so complicated why would they use such an old processor for a new technology. Anyway it is the goal to make a room that the DSP does very little and you like the sound. I was in perhaps the most hailed studio in the world and it was far from flat the studio nor the control room but no one can’t say that thousands of gold records billions of dollars and lots of beautiful music wasn’t made there. Good sounding rooms are not flat, if we wanted flat rooms we should simply print them with a big 3D printer and sell them as audiophile listening rooms that are acoustically flat, they would sound awful. Now if you guys do start printing "audiophile rooms" I want in on some of the profits, it was my idea first.

@donavabdear ,

We are not talking about different things. Not sure how many pages you need to go back, but I addressed this. DSP is to fix minor issues once you have everything correct already. You cannot fix the room response with DSP without breaking the on-axis response and you want a flat on-axis response over critical frequencies and declining off axis response.

I have not been in enough recording/mixing/mastering studios to say that they are all a bit on the dead side with a rising bass response, but, by virtue of how they are designed, they tend to be and I have been in quite a few.

So what would happen if you were exposed to a studio that didn't sound that way? You would think it sounds bad. There is a lot of conditioning at play here.

From a psychoacoustics view, the on-axis response does need to be accurate to properly portray positioning .... at least if a recording was made simulating human hearing. Without conditioning, what is the correct room response? It would be almost impossible to determine as you would need unconditioned test subjects. At this point it does not matter, we are where we are. A studio sounds the way it does somewhat by convention and we want our listening spaces to somewhat match that convention.

The other variable is the ratio of direct and reflected sound that is used to match that convention for room response. That allows a lot of latitude for personal preference.

+1

The predominant preference is a flat on axis frequency response and a downwards sloping room response. Some of the art of acoustics and absolutely science is ensuring you can do both.

I mentioned it before but John Storyk said himself that flat studios sound bad, so he doesn’t build them he’s been the top studio designer for going on 40 years 

This is where you are getting into the weeds, if you want a "Storyk Curve", build one, NP. Where is the link to the Storyk paper published in a peer reviewed journal citing his research?

Now, what DID you build? A "storyk curve", a "Harman curve", a "Lyngdorf curve". 

Hopefully not a "Titanic" curve. :)