Powered speakers show audiophiles are confused

@thespeakerdude 

I spend enough time arguing

+1 (+10) 🤣

@o_holter I just searched a measurement of the MA-1 amp and the figure they arrived at was 10.5 ohms output resistance. There are very few speakers that will not experience a huge change in their output frequency response with this amp. You have become accustomed to or just like this change to the sound so I would not expect anything else to sound at all similar without an equalizer.

@donavabdear there are two types of speakers that match best with tubes. Constant impedance speakers (Magnepan), and high impedance 16 ohm speakers of which there are not that many any more. There are boutique brands I am sure someone here is up on. What these speakers do is remove most of the character of the tube amp. Somehow that seems counterproductive. Similarly an active crossover with a tube amplifier would be remove most of the tube amp character as would a room correction system.

I could argue the elevated room response in the upper bass lower mid that is preferred would be a perceptual effect of tube distortion. Distortion is least masked at these frequencies due to increasing sensitivity of hearing but from tubes mainly pleasant so there can be a perceptual loudness bump.

@thespeakerdude Last night I worked on my Genelec system, I changed wiring, moved some equipment around and changed some setting on DadMan which is the patch bay for ProTools, I played a DVD and was amazed I did something accidental and my Genelec sub came alive, I did your suggestion of combining my big JL Audio subs with that system but they didn't work well together. Last night after I put everything back together the Genelec sub shook the house like it ought to, and now  that system sounds like it should.  In your experience with speakers why are the subs so important, now everything sounds dialed in the sub changed everything the Genelec speakers always did a great job at imaging of course but now they sound so much more musical, the important ambiences I have also sound much better simply because of he sub. What is the technical reason why the low frequencies make the mids so much better. I added a JL Audio under my dest for my Elacs and it made a world of difference, I knew it would I just don't know why, I bet you do.

@donavabdear ,

I am mainly standing on the shoulders of others answering that. That is deep into psychoacoustics. From a basics, 20-160Hz is 3 octaves, so perceptually nearly as wide as 160-1.2KHz, though we don’t hear well down at 20Hz, however, still 2.5 critical octaves of music. Also basics, who knows what your system was like without the sub tuned properly. So into the psychoacoustics:

The most recent research w.r.t. the importance of bass is around timings, i.e. getting into the beat of the music. If the bass is lacking, we literally cannot "get into it".

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1402039111

Interestingly enough, this "getting into the beat" even extends down to subsonic frequencies, https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01535-4

I can remember reading papers that surmised that the physical experience of bass, not just the audible experience probably helps us with the aforementioned timing and getting into the song.

That is not the whole question you asked though, you also asked why good bass makes the mid-range perceptually better. There are two (maybe 3) factors here. One is basic psychoacoustics; conditioning, adaption, and expectation. Is that 1 or 2? We have an expectation of how something should sound, and because of that, our hearing adapts to match our expectations, but it is imperfect. Our brain is trying to fill in the missing bass, but screwing up the midrange while doing it. That is when it is missing. When there is excessive bass, the bass is muddy, or there are peaks in the bass, again, our hearing adaptation tries to make the most of it, which can impact the mid-range perception, but add to that peaks in the upper bass that should not be there will mask mid-range sounds especially if coupled to higher distortion. This is especially true in the the mid/upper bass.

Finally, we get into music theory where a proper bass response forms a correct tonal balance / timbre which gives the perception that the mid-range is correct, and effectively it is when viewed as proper harmonic ratios with the bass ..... which is pretty much the same answer as the last paragraph, but taking a different view.

@donavabdear , from your description of musical, it sounds like your Genelec system now being musical is perceptually warmer?

… Paradigm for instance has Canada pumping in lots of money because they are partnered with the government for acoustic research giving Paradigm an unfair advantage against other speaker manufactures. 
…

The Canadian is not running a “fairness in competition” for speaker manufacturers… and they can do what they want.

They would not (and should not) disadvantage themselves.