| Speakers in a Dead Room
Hi Ethan, hope you had a good vacation.
This is a bit of a random set of points but I hope interesting.
I listened to quite a number of speakers some time ago. They were all in the same room. The room was very dead, extensive treatment. The was a lack of warmth in the room due to modal destruction in the 80Hz territory. I was shopping to replace my decades old monitors, Celestion Ditton 66's. 18Hz -40kHz, three way, dome mid. Auxiliary Bass Radiator. Very sweet but glue in the drivers was ageing.
I tried these-
Genelec 1030AM
Meyer HD1
K and H 300 D
PMC IB1s
ADAM S3A
Apart from the lack of warmth which I was well used to , and used to working around, they all sounded far too bright.
Interestingly, apart from the Gennies, they all sounded far more similar to each other than different.
Clearly the room was by far the biggest influence at this quality level, and maybe I don't like treble.
I treated the room more aggressively, bought the ADAM's because I could achieve a sound quite similar to the Celestions using the onboard Eq (Bass up, Treble down)
I am very happy with it now, although I really miss the PMC's bass, best I have ever heard. I should have kept them and biamped them to make it work.
Conclusion- a small treated room with a flat response speaker, does not sound good to me, nor does it translate to the outside world well.
B and K used to recommend a listening curve broadly speaking +3 around 100Hz,
-3 around 10KHz and falling.
I found that curve some time after I had tuned by ear, and strangely....
Now, it sounds beautiful in there. Visitors are stunned. I still find it a bit harsh due to the mode thing, concrete room, but work around it.
The translation is uncannily good. I am used to listening to mixes in three different environments before signing off, as a norm. I no longer do this.
DD |