Flat frequency response

but can’t even get speaker design 101 right.

Can you please point us to speakers you have designed in the past? A write-up or measurements of them? Where did you take Speaker Design 101?  Is there a particular author /  engineer whose course or book on speaker design you are referring to?

That’s the sort of background I would expect from a post that claims speakers are not designed correctly.

My guess, based on your questions is that you have none of that background, but are interested audiophile who is trying to understand the meaning of frequency response measurements. 

Best,

E

Speakers with completely flat responses do not sound good. I have read articles from more than one speaker designer that attests to the fact that flat response speakers sound dry and lifeless. One sticks in my mind of a designer that could not decide between releasing his speaker which tested nearly perfectly flat or release it with great sound. In one case you sell to the specification people and in the other dedicated audio folks

This simply puts speakers in the same category as all other high end audio stuff. A simple measure or two does not characterize performance to the human ear. So, to design great audio equipment… the important, very time consuming part is human listening tests and tweaking to make it sound good.

A waterfall plot shows decay times describing the acoustics in that particular ROOM

roxy54

Thanks !

erik_squires

Where did you take Speaker Design 101? Is there a particular author / engineer whose course or book on speaker design you are referring to?

You make a good point. I have not seen flat FR as a design goal in any text. I should have put "Speaker Design 101" in quotes. My bad.

My guess, based on your questions is that you have none of that background,

Very cool you have that skill but IMHO should not be a requirement to have an opinion or yours would be the only response here, haha. With your design experience, I would be interested what you think about "1) Why is it so hard to achieve?"

Yes I do but I would rather example JA saying things like "That midrange deviation from flat will give vocals a nasal quality." Disclaimer: this is from memory, not an exact quote. I just used quotes for clarity.

But enough about me, back to the topic on hand, I am guessing your answer to "2) Does it matter?" would be no?

Theres lots to learn on the topic of frequency response.

Are you familiar with "The Harman Curve"? That could be a fun place to start!