I spent a couple of hours in the dentist's chair last week.

And all the time I was listening to a soft-rock stream on a little Sonos speaker that he had in there. And after a while I noticed that the speaker was delivering the bass parts with a clarity that you'd hope to find on a "How to Play Bass" recording. I mean, it was unbelievable. It was like being in a room with a bass player sitting and playing parts. Perfectly clear and perfectly even and perfectly executed.

And after a while I noticed that the tone of the bass and even the playing of the bass was the same on all the tracks, ranging from 50 years ago to maybe 20 or 30 years ago. All the various records sounded like the same guy with the same gear at the same time.

And after a while I noticed that the mix was pretty much the vocal, and the bass part, and almost nothing else. Any other instruments only showed up when they were a distinctive part of the sound of the hit.

And I realized that it couldn't be a frequency response thing because there weren't any bass resonances. All the bass notes were clear and even. And when the song-critical other instruments needed to appear, they appeared.

I conclude that there is some funny business going on here.

Of course there is.


audioforce

Novocaine is a hell of a drug

Yeah, I can't help but notice how it really brings out the "bass clarity", while allowing other parts to be audible only when they are important and needed.


audioforce

Did you opt for the gas by chance?

Those speakers have a room tuning mode. Obviously has some DSP going on, probably multiband compression on the low frequencies and maybe some side channel attenuation.

Do they also come with a tiny person inside that detects when important, distinctive musical parts start playing, so that they can be turned up?

I want one.


cheers,


audioforce

Sorry yeah, so LF compression, side channel attenuation and tiny person.

Don't forget the tiny person needs feeding otherwise distinctive musical parts start to not be turned up.

Ahh well, there's always a catch, huh? : )

But I might still get one.



cheers,


audioforce

Sounds like whatever the dentist gave you would work well at raves.

Not for nothin', but I wasn't the OP. Just commenting. But yeah, I guess it would.


cheers,


audioforce

The sonos do something to the low end. Quite impressive really. We have two Sonos5 and they sound as full as they need to be for passive listening.