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From: daveb@rtech.ARPA (Dave Brower)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: A/B CD, Bose, etc.
Message-ID: <320@rtech.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 26-Apr-85 12:04:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtech.320
Posted: Fri Apr 26 12:04:03 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Apr-85 00:25:42 EDT
References: <1209@houxm.UUCP> <3626@alice.UUCP>
Organization: Relational Technology, Berkeley CA
Lines: 45

> Also, monitor speakers tend to be excessively bright, to compensate
> for the high-frequency hearing loss that comes from years of 90-db
> mixdowns.

Now hold on there!

By and large *good* studio monitor systems are not ``excessively
bright'' in and of themselves.  They tend to be more carefully
controlled than most listening environments because:

	o The room can be acoustically controlled.
	o Environmental EQ tends to be done to specified
	  curves, e.g., -3dB/octave > 2|4|8 kHz.

Nor do I think that hearing loss has a lot to do with the percieved
brilliance of playback in control rooms.  I observe that professionals
who are afraid of hearing loss (for good reason!) are VERY carefull
about protecting the instrument of their livlihood.

I offer the following theories for control room brightness:

	o The quiet room lets you hear more real high end since there
	  is less masking environmental noise.
	o The sources are first & second generation, and really have
	  high end to hear.

One of the things to observe in the progress from neophyte to aural
hedonist is that pilgrims tend to want more high end DESPITE THEIR
HEARING and musical taste.  Perhaps this is because:

	o Everybody ``knows'' thats where the ``interesting''
	  parts of the sound are.
	o They want to hear the ``interesting'' parts of the 
	  sound.

Now can we have some more A/B testing between CD players?

-----
JBL bookshelf speakers != *good* monitor systems
-- 
"That way looks nice.  But then again, so does that way.  I guess it
depends on where your're trying to go."  - Scarecrow in 'The Wizard of Oz.'

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