Hi Michael & Richard,

IME, speakers with flat FR have always sounded
better than those that
don't
have it.

That's really not true.

You missed the part about MY EXPERIENCE? IME
speakers with flat FR sound
better.

The response should smoothly slope downward into
the treble It's the presence of peaks in the
response that's the killer.

The 2 work hand in hand IMO. I want flat FR with a
nice smooth rolloff off
axis.


The problem here is that you are both correct, but are
talking about different things. Michael is talking
about the anechoic frequency response of a speaker, and
Richard is talking about the in-room frequency response
of a speaker at the listening position. The response
of a "flat" speaker will not be "flat" at the listening
position, but, ignoring the peaks and dips caused by
the room modes, it will have a downward slope from the
low to high frequencies.

If you stop to think of it flat response differs
from the way we hear
things. When she is playing in a symphonic ensemble
my daughters piccolo
sounds very loud. However it's actual output is
less then that of a
string
bass. The fact of the matter is that from the
standpoint of frequency we
don't hear things in a liner fashion.

The Fletcher-Munson "Equal Loudness Contours" apply
only to our ears, not speakers and microphones. We are
recording the sound as it occurred, not as we heard it.
If it is reproduced as it occurred, we will hear it
correctly even though we don't have "flat" hearing.
That is, we also would have heard the original
performance with our "non-flat" ears. I believe the
Fletcher-Munson contours really only apply when we are
listening at a different SPL than what we would have
heard at the original performance.

Regards,
Tip