This all makes the assumption that "ideal" is what the engineers say it is.
However, this is usually not true, as much of today's music is geared
towards the radio crowd.

--
Mark Zarella
zarellam at upstate dot edu


"muffbuster" wrote in message
...
Hi Joe,

I have to disagree with you here...

I'm not exactly a purist, but I am fussy about reproducing what's on
the recording.

And that's what you're actually buying... the recording. Your system
doesn't care about the mics, the room, or the recording equipment. It
only cares about what it's being fed... that is, the sound of the
recording. The artist has the control over everything that goes into
the CD and they should do their best to "capture" the essence of the
performance.

I'm far more interested in making sure that the recording sounds as
good as it can... based on making my system as close as possible to the
proverbial "straight wire with gain." Since speakers are not capable of
reproducing *exactly* what they are fed- especially in a car with its
problems with speaker location, eq is a "crutch" that brings us closer
to reproducing the recording...

Just my 4 cents worth.

smiles,
Jamie

In article , Joe
wrote:

True. Everything's colored, especially with today's synthesized mixes
and productions. The concept of "flat" really goes back to
reproducing a live sound without coloration.

Consider a trio - a drum set, an acoustic piano, and an upright bass.
The idea of "flat" is being able to reproduce the same sound from a
recording that you heard when the trio played live. This can only
happen if the microphones used for recording had an absolutely flat
response, the room acoustics were perfect, the position of the perfect
microphones was perfect, and the recording equipment itself had no
tonal effect on the recording. A virtually impossible environment.
So much for the purist's "true flat".