Quote from: MuppetFace on February 05, 2013, 12:10:37 PM

"What is comes down to is that a neutral system will be the most flexible with the most recordings for most (but not all) people."

See, this makes sense to me.

Me too. That's what I have been trying to do with my speaker rig for years. Couldn't put it into words. I think it's also why a friend of mine who is a drummer, has never quite liked the sound of my system.

Has he actually defined what he thinks is 'wrong' with the sound?

Yes. One more try!

Quote from: Ringingears on February 05, 2013, 03:18:20 PM

Quote from: MuppetFace on February 05, 2013, 12:10:37 PM

"What is comes down to is that a neutral system will be the most flexible with the most recordings for most (but not all) people."

See, this makes sense to me.

Me too. That's what I have been trying to do with my speaker rig for years. Couldn't put it into words. I think it's also why a friend of mine who is a drummer, has never quite liked the sound of my system.

Has he actually defined what he thinks is 'wrong' with the sound?

Hey mate, glad to see you.

Yes, to paraphrase," the sub bass doesn't rattle the windows enough, and I can't feel my chest cavity move." In other words he likes a few dB's more in the lower Hz range than I. Personal prefs, but makes too much of my collection boomy and unbalanced. For me. Then again, I have passed my hearing tests, and I don't think he has ever had one.  Perhaps too many dB's for too long. 

Rabbit, thanks for that.  You'll have to forgive me as I'm about to babble on for a while. Your post makes me reconsider something I've given a lot of though to in the past when i've struggled to put into words what I am hearing, what I like or dislike.  It reminds me of racing motorcycles... kind of...

There are some riders who can take a bike on the track, do a few laps, come in and explain to the mechanics exactly what the bike is doing in detail.  They know how to tell them what is going on in the same "language" that they use, which lets them quickly make changes to the bike.  The same rider can go out again and tell them if the changes had any effect, if they helped, or if they hurt.  These riders are extremely valuable to teams trying to develop bikes.  It lets them test new gear and settings quickly.  These riders are NOT always the fastest riders.  They may know how to explain how the bike is reacting, but that doesn't mean that know what to ask the mechanics to do to make it better!! 

Sometimes the fastest riders can do the same thing, but just as often they are CLUELESS when it comes to understanding what the mechanics are doing, or how to explain what they are experiencing on the track.  Worse yet, some truly talented riders can make due with HORRIBLE bike settings and still get around a track really fast.  This all makes the job of setting up and improving a race bike really difficult. 

So factory teams can afford to have both guys... the fast guy and the test rider.  Great if you can afford it, but still somewhat flawed.  Every rider is different and will want a bike set up for his own style.  So your test rider can help, but sooner or later you need to be able to work with the other guy to really dial things in.   

I, unfortunately, was not on a factory team.  In fact, other than help from friends I was left as my own mechanic.  So this meant I needed to learn how to tell people what my bike was doing, or what it wasn't doing, in a way that they could help me to tune it.  And while I'll never be as good at it as a factory test rider (and we won't go into the fact that I certainly will never be "the fast guy") I was able to learn the skill well enough to start tuning my bike well enough to be competitive. 

In my audio journey I'm seeing a lot of similarities. 

I've played with musicians who struggle to read music or discuss music theory but are amazing artist.  I myself have always been a strong technical player, but have only lusted after the ability to truly jam. 

As I've grown interested in improving my listening gear I've learned a lot, and I have a lot to learn.  I found myself learning, slowly, that I don't know how to really explain what I'm hearing.  That know the difference between something approaching neutral and something I like may be very different.  That often I didn't understand what exactly what I was hearing was telling me.  I needed to get to a point where I understood how to have that discussion that would let me learn how to make the right changes to improve my listening experience.  I was/am learning more about how to listen, what to listen to and for, and how to interpret and discuss what I'm hearing. 

One of other cool similarities between racing and this hobby is that "the fast guys" are always willing to help you out... I don't have to know it all, I just need to learn enough to discuss and learn from them.

I'll quit while I am ahead... sorry if that's a little out there and off topic!

I really hadn't thought about what frequency the kick drum was. Makes a lot of sense.  When I go up to his place he has his system running through an eq and the lower end is always bumped up. It may be he is used to hearing the drums from his prospective as a player. He also owns a set of electronic drum pads and listens to them through headphones, which may have changed the way he prefers his sound system.
 The speakers I tend to like are ones that I read later on are used in the mixing studio. My current ones are Dunlavy's which apparently are favored by some because they can balance the mix so the base and drums don't blow you out on your home system. I'm not sure if they are neutral, but they do not seem to make one instrument or the other stand out, unless it was mixed that way. They go from 20,000 to 20 Hz, but don't energize my room like a subwoofer. The funny thing is when he brings a CD to my house that his band has made, he always remarks that he can hear the mix better than when he was in the studio.  I like them because I feel I am hearing whole of the music and the parts at the same time. If that makes sense.  I think I use my speaker rig more as a reference when listening to headphones than other headphones. Maybe that is why I like the most current version of the LCD-2 and I'm not a big fan of Beyers.