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> Third, audio quality is deeply subjective, and what sounds good to my ears may sound like total garbage to yours. Interesting article (audio processing shoul

by jurf 29d ago

> Third, audio quality is deeply subjective, and what sounds good to my ears may sound like total garbage to yours. Interesting article (audio processing should be a standard OS feature), but I wish we'd stop doing this. Speakers were never subjective (unlike earphones), they’re supposed to be flat – “equalised”. At least if you want to hear the thing as it was mastered. I think it just hurts consumers in the end, as it validates snake oil in the form of various ”enhancements”, like image processing on TVs. It makes stuff really hard to compare and much easier to sell shitty hardware. Not that I’m opposed to improving shitty hardware with software, – quite the contrary – it’s just the murky subjectivity that irks me.

doubled112 29d ago
The definition of sound quality tends to change between people. My definition is pretty much the same as yours here, but I know quite a few people who hate listening to music on anything with a relatively flat frequency response.
- jurf 29d ago
  I wonder how much of this comes down to marketing… I keep coming back to Posy’s “Desirable Nonsense” video [1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/B_8HDPBfvHI https://youtu.be/B_8HDPBfvHI
SomeoneOnTheWeb 29d ago
Why would speakers be any different than earphones? Botu are subjective ; I personally hate flat eq. I've listened to numerous products, some worth thousands of dollars, and I'll always take some sort of slight bass and treble boost over flat eq. I'll even take a big bass boost over no bass boost at all.
- namibj 29d ago
  Earphones are forgoing the outer parts of your ears and skull. Speakers don't; a "good" speaker setup with eyes closed and no wind/perceptible airflow and no smell and truthful thermal radiation surroundings is effectively indistinguishable from the real place. Like, literally. It's not _possible_ with earphones because you can't not feel their presence without being numb on a good bit of your head.
  - deleted 29d ago
    [deleted]
  - LoganDark 29d ago
    Tangent, but I found that a bass shaker / transducer massively improved my speaker experience without requiring a subwoofer. I built the subwoofer first, but it would annoy everyone around me and it was really spotty depending on its location, the exact layout of the room, etc. Slapped a bass shaker underneath me and it really completes the experience without annoying everybody else.
- Giefo6ah 29d ago
  > Why would speakers be any different than earphones There are various "ideal" EQ targets for earphones depending on what your model of an ideal audio source is. They all start with a flat response speaker, from then you can model: - Two speakers right next to the listener's ears. (flat) - A single speaker 1 metre away in the x axis, in an infinitely-sized anechoic room. (free field) - Two speakers 30 cm away pointing to a plastic torso at a 90° angle, in a room with reverberations. (B&K/Harman) - A spherical room lined with speakers, point listener in the centre with no reverberation. (diffuse field) - An infinite wall of speakers 1 metre away in the x axis. (another method for free field) - etc
majormajor 29d ago
> Speakers were never subjective (unlike earphones) I don't think this has been true in my lifetime, at least. Some brands being known for "warmth" vs "brightness" is ages old, before the idea of audiophile earbuds was even a thing. At the extreme end, you can go back at least 40 years to see people with dedicated sub outputs and massively-oversized non-flat subwoofer setups.
- jurf 29d ago
  Sure but they’ve always been mastered with the same setup, so the bar has not changed. And anything flavoured will not work universally for all types of music or other kinds of audio (like voice calls are really hard to understand with bassy speakers).
  - ProfessorLayton 29d ago
    Mastering is done with the target in mind. There's tons of great videos by Masahiro Sakurai (Creator of Smash Bros.), one of which covers how they use typical household TVs to tune the audio/video for the game because relying on top-end audio/video equipment will result in worse results for the player.
- BoingBoomTschak 28d ago
  I know it's unintuitive, but that line of thinking is mostly wrong. Average sound preference converges towards neutral, cf https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/measure-loudspeaker-performance https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/measure-louds... But well, that's about sound itself, not all the other stuff like design that people may care about in a loudspeaker.
tgv 29d ago
Speakers, at least the great majority of them, are not flat. Can you not hear differences between speakers? Studio monitors typically aim for a flat response, but most barely make an acceptable approximation. And then we're not even discussing phone and tv speakers or the fact that a flat response for pure tones doesn't necessarily translate to one for complex sounds.
- jurf 29d ago
  Maybe I should’ve said “never meant to be subjective” – I meant the target.
redhed 29d ago
I have heard that audio engineer's don't necessarily master to a flat EQ because such a small section of listeners are listening with a flat EQ. Most are using car speakers, airpods, etc so they master it based on those expectations.
- perching_aix 29d ago
  In my understanding, this whole thing is basically 1:1 with color spaces in display tech, except with pictures/video you at least get to encode what you targeted, versus with audio, you don't. Is this incorrect?
  - redhed 29d ago
    Yeah that's pretty good way to put it, except I'd say the average person is using way better screens with smartphones than the quality of speakers/headphones their using.
- regularfry 28d ago
  Can confirm. When I was in that world we'd have a shitty boom-box on a shelf that got pulled out for exactly that purpose. But you'd always start from the studio kit and work down, never the other way.
ssl-3 29d ago
No speakers have flat frequency response. If that's the target (it usually isn't[1] even with very elaborate systems that include a great deal of DSP grunt, in my experience), then they all miss -- every single one of them misses. All speakers have resonances that add to the sound in ways that frequency response, alone, does not measure. All speakers also have imperfect dynamic response. All speakers have imperfect impedances, which can matter quite a lot to the power amplifier that drives them. All speakers have non-linear phase response. All speakers have different dispersion characteristics. All speakers then operate within acoustic spaces (like a room in a house) that introduce even more variables. [1]: https://professionalsupport.dolby.com/s/article/Dolby-Atmos-Music-Studio-Best-Practices https://professionalsupport.dolby.com/s/article/Dolby-Atmos-...
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]
- BoingBoomTschak 28d ago
  Plenty of exemplary (according to CEA-2034-A) loudpspeakers once you shop in the active category, including low THD/IMD at high SPL and optional phase linearization to lower group delay. Neumann KH 120 II: https://assets.sennheiser.com/assets/Frequency_response.svg/Zz1mYjY3OWJmMmU3YWMxMWYwODhkYjc2OGVlOGU5N2FlYQ== https://assets.sennheiser.com/assets/Frequency_response.svg/... Genelec 8351B: https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3dFPEuC54NYv52ad7J8cL5/dff1e805c3c53e9ed162a1619ef29b02/8351B_frequency_response.png https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3dFPEuC54NYv52ad7J...
  - ssl-3 28d ago
    Impressive. Really. I'll bet you a beer that if we had examples of each in a room and spent the time to iterate upon setting them up in the most-optimal of ways that can be concocted, and then went through all of the motions of doing controlled, equatable, blind A/B/X listening: We'd still find that we prefer one loudspeaker system over the other. And our preferences might not even agree, and that's OK. :)
    - 28d ago
regularfry 28d ago
Yeah, but speakers aren't the whole system. Even if you've got perfectly flat speakers, the room they're in won't be.

by jurf 29d ago

doubled112 29d ago

The definition of sound quality tends to change between people. My definition is pretty much the same as yours here, but I know quite a few people who hate listening to music on anything with a relatively flat frequency response.

jurf 29d ago
I wonder how much of this comes down to marketing… I keep coming back to Posy’s “Desirable Nonsense” video [1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/B_8HDPBfvHI https://youtu.be/B_8HDPBfvHI

SomeoneOnTheWeb 29d ago

Why would speakers be any different than earphones? Botu are subjective ; I personally hate flat eq. I've listened to numerous products, some worth thousands of dollars, and I'll always take some sort of slight bass and treble boost over flat eq. I'll even take a big bass boost over no bass boost at all.

namibj 29d ago
Earphones are forgoing the outer parts of your ears and skull. Speakers don't; a "good" speaker setup with eyes closed and no wind/perceptible airflow and no smell and truthful thermal radiation surroundings is effectively indistinguishable from the real place. Like, literally. It's not _possible_ with earphones because you can't not feel their presence without being numb on a good bit of your head.
- deleted 29d ago
  [deleted]
- LoganDark 29d ago
  Tangent, but I found that a bass shaker / transducer massively improved my speaker experience without requiring a subwoofer. I built the subwoofer first, but it would annoy everyone around me and it was really spotty depending on its location, the exact layout of the room, etc. Slapped a bass shaker underneath me and it really completes the experience without annoying everybody else.
Giefo6ah 29d ago
> Why would speakers be any different than earphones There are various "ideal" EQ targets for earphones depending on what your model of an ideal audio source is. They all start with a flat response speaker, from then you can model: - Two speakers right next to the listener's ears. (flat) - A single speaker 1 metre away in the x axis, in an infinitely-sized anechoic room. (free field) - Two speakers 30 cm away pointing to a plastic torso at a 90° angle, in a room with reverberations. (B&K/Harman) - A spherical room lined with speakers, point listener in the centre with no reverberation. (diffuse field) - An infinite wall of speakers 1 metre away in the x axis. (another method for free field) - etc

majormajor 29d ago

> Speakers were never subjective (unlike earphones) I don't think this has been true in my lifetime, at least. Some brands being known for "warmth" vs "brightness" is ages old, before the idea of audiophile earbuds was even a thing. At the extreme end, you can go back at least 40 years to see people with dedicated sub outputs and massively-oversized non-flat subwoofer setups.

jurf 29d ago
Sure but they’ve always been mastered with the same setup, so the bar has not changed. And anything flavoured will not work universally for all types of music or other kinds of audio (like voice calls are really hard to understand with bassy speakers).
- ProfessorLayton 29d ago
  Mastering is done with the target in mind. There's tons of great videos by Masahiro Sakurai (Creator of Smash Bros.), one of which covers how they use typical household TVs to tune the audio/video for the game because relying on top-end audio/video equipment will result in worse results for the player.
BoingBoomTschak 28d ago
I know it's unintuitive, but that line of thinking is mostly wrong. Average sound preference converges towards neutral, cf https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/measure-loudspeaker-performance https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/measure-louds... But well, that's about sound itself, not all the other stuff like design that people may care about in a loudspeaker.

tgv 29d ago

Speakers, at least the great majority of them, are not flat. Can you not hear differences between speakers? Studio monitors typically aim for a flat response, but most barely make an acceptable approximation. And then we're not even discussing phone and tv speakers or the fact that a flat response for pure tones doesn't necessarily translate to one for complex sounds.

jurf 29d ago
Maybe I should’ve said “never meant to be subjective” – I meant the target.

redhed 29d ago

I have heard that audio engineer's don't necessarily master to a flat EQ because such a small section of listeners are listening with a flat EQ. Most are using car speakers, airpods, etc so they master it based on those expectations.

perching_aix 29d ago
In my understanding, this whole thing is basically 1:1 with color spaces in display tech, except with pictures/video you at least get to encode what you targeted, versus with audio, you don't. Is this incorrect?
- redhed 29d ago
  Yeah that's pretty good way to put it, except I'd say the average person is using way better screens with smartphones than the quality of speakers/headphones their using.
regularfry 28d ago
Can confirm. When I was in that world we'd have a shitty boom-box on a shelf that got pulled out for exactly that purpose. But you'd always start from the studio kit and work down, never the other way.

ssl-3 29d ago

No speakers have flat frequency response. If that's the target (it usually isn't[1] even with very elaborate systems that include a great deal of DSP grunt, in my experience), then they all miss -- every single one of them misses. All speakers have resonances that add to the sound in ways that frequency response, alone, does not measure. All speakers also have imperfect dynamic response. All speakers have imperfect impedances, which can matter quite a lot to the power amplifier that drives them. All speakers have non-linear phase response. All speakers have different dispersion characteristics. All speakers then operate within acoustic spaces (like a room in a house) that introduce even more variables. [1]: https://professionalsupport.dolby.com/s/article/Dolby-Atmos-Music-Studio-Best-Practices https://professionalsupport.dolby.com/s/article/Dolby-Atmos-...

deleted 28d ago
[deleted]
BoingBoomTschak 28d ago
Plenty of exemplary (according to CEA-2034-A) loudpspeakers once you shop in the active category, including low THD/IMD at high SPL and optional phase linearization to lower group delay. Neumann KH 120 II: https://assets.sennheiser.com/assets/Frequency_response.svg/Zz1mYjY3OWJmMmU3YWMxMWYwODhkYjc2OGVlOGU5N2FlYQ== https://assets.sennheiser.com/assets/Frequency_response.svg/... Genelec 8351B: https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3dFPEuC54NYv52ad7J8cL5/dff1e805c3c53e9ed162a1619ef29b02/8351B_frequency_response.png https://images.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/3dFPEuC54NYv52ad7J...
- ssl-3 28d ago
  Impressive. Really. I'll bet you a beer that if we had examples of each in a room and spent the time to iterate upon setting them up in the most-optimal of ways that can be concocted, and then went through all of the motions of doing controlled, equatable, blind A/B/X listening: We'd still find that we prefer one loudspeaker system over the other. And our preferences might not even agree, and that's OK. :)
  - 28d ago

regularfry 28d ago

Yeah, but speakers aren't the whole system. Even if you've got perfectly flat speakers, the room they're in won't be.