Striking a balance between musicality and resolution

I always specified in all my posts  that any acoustics controls must be done according to the chosen system (then according to a specific source, gear design etc) and according to listener location and ears biases and history (with, if possible in the best case,  inner ears measurements and HTRF) ..

Why?

 Because great Hall acoustics can be architecturally  thought off a-priori  without any musical instruments in it or speakers , small room acoustics in the opposite  will win to be treated and put under mechanical control or with DSP  for a specifically chosen system and not another one, for one pair of ears,the owner not for a crowd...

 Then your answer do not attack my claim about  the sound of your system i affirm is good (through mine ) but lack room control (mechanical or DSP ) ...

Thats all ...

Because you had no acoustics treatment and no mechanical control of the room or / and DSP you seems to have no idea, and do not care about it, how your system so good it could be, lack about this necessary  pairing between any system at any price at any quality level and a dedicated room where it will be embedded into as " sound source" (dac+amp+speakers) ...

Anybody can purchase speakers and amp etc even if modified by the user and improved, the job is not completed without mastery of room acoustics. Period. 

Those who contradict this are captive of a living room or of marketing or ignore basic facts in acoustics.

 I posted about your system videos because it is evident you dont care about acoustics unlike me...

A system is only so good it could be if the room is tailored made for it and your ears if not it is  an half job; for small listening room dedicated to one user especially, acoustics passsive treatment+active mechanical &/or DSP is mandatory for ultimate optimal S.Q . for any system at any price...

It is the only thing i learned in the last 20 years in audio here and elsewhere ...

I respect you  system design competency. But everyone reading this thread must know that acoustics matter as much as system design...

@mahgister no one said that acoustics treatments don’t sometimes yield positive contributions. All contributions to the sound can be made better individually and that is what most people do. I am not most people and I’m using my knowledge of sound reproduction, acoustics, and sound perception to approach the task in a different way, which I consider a smarter way. It is not a good or bad , black or white, or binary proposition. Acoustics tuning and the use of acoustics treatments can be done right if properly implemented by someone knowledgeable.

I’m going to do the same thing that I do with others and disarm you right here and now. Here we go so you can see how much I know about the concept of room acoustics:

1. If you know anything about room acoustics and sound perception you know that the room does not make any sound in and of itself. The room must be excited by a sound source, in the case of home audio systems the source are the speakers. The speakers are the source of the acoustical excitation of the room.

2. Each sound source excites the room uniquely based on it’s radiation pattern, which is dictated by the speakers design’s polar wave propagation and the room’s geometry.

3. The source excitation of the room various by its spectral content and scale.

4. Room acoustics can be optimized based on the source characteristics and relationships with the room’s boundaries.

5. Therefore you can optimize room acoustics for a particular source, with it’s unique radiation, spectral and scale parameters, to a particular room geometry, and to a particular spatial layout between the speakers and the room’s boundaries boundaries. It is this very unique arrangement that can be optimized and every deviation, whether is volume level or music type will be a perturbation away from optimal.

Based on the above, you cannot optimize a room’s acoustics in and of itself, any optimization must be done from a system’s perspective, factoring in the source and ambient characteristics & spatial relationships, and subject to derating from optimal by a number of factors including the temperature and humidity in the room. There are so many factors involved that when you speak of optimizing room acoustics and psychoacoustics, I just chuckle because you have no idea all that is involved and how source dependent the room’s acoustical response is. Room acoustics are a function of the excitation source.

I could go on but hopefully that gives you an indication of what’s involved and how improbable and impossible universal room acoustics optimization are.

@carlos269  

Don't keep a dog and bark yourself in audio means let a pro help with sound treatments. I did. There are also ideally sized rooms making those all important zig zags of the waves zing. Robert Harley's "The Complete Guide To High End Audio 6th Edition." helped me gobs.

Carlos you are on a tear and I/others may not agree with you but it's cool. Who knows? And Today is pitching.

Hark; a song comes to mind. Mose Allison did a nice cover.

"Please don't talk about me when I'm gone." By Sidney Clare 

Please don't talk about me when I'm gone
Oh honey, though our friendship ceases from now on
And listen, if you can't say anything real nice
It's better not to talk at all is my advice

We're parting, you go your way I'll go mine
It's best that we do
Here's a kiss I hope that this brings lots of luck to you
Oh makes no difference how I carry on
Remember, please don't talk about me when I'm gone

We're parting, you go your way I'll go mine
It's best that we do
Here's a kiss I hope that this brings lots of luck to you
Makes no difference how I carry on
Remember, please don't talk about me
Please don't talk about me
Please don't talk about me when I'm gone

@wsrrsw can we hear what the professional acoustic tuning accomplished? Make an audio recording of the same song/track of one of the many that I have shared and let’s hear how it sounds. You don’t have to record with a phone if you don’t want to and you don’t need to share it over YouTube either. Showcase the sound of your room and your system and let us hear what the professionals did for your sound. Put your best foot forward and let’s have a listen.

@carlos269 

The sound of your test bed room is evident in your recordings.  If you would post a video that also has a YouTube line feed we could get a better idea of how much.

I listened to your Blue Monk, and while I didn’t find the equivalent line feed, none had the "flavor" of your room and they had more low end.

This gives an idea of what my system and room do to the sound.  The floor bounce and furniture remove bass at the sweet spot and the camera catches this.  You also hear the liveness of the room, which is quite large and considered by most as an acoustic catastrophe.

Other than the pleated blackout blinds, there is no room treatment.  The recording is an SACD played on an Oppo-95 through a 23 year old Yamaha RX-Z9 RECEIVER in "Pure Direct" mode though the pair of my "Merman" speakers.  There is no sub, eq, or other room correction, either electronic or physical being used.  The recording was made using a Nikon D750 DSLR in the approximate sweet spot.  The interior volume is close to 5,000 cubic feet.

In this case I had the crossovers set with the "brilliance" turned on and you can hear the "edge" that it adds.  Still, it is certainly possible that the SACD is not the exact same mix, as the "official" mix presented on YouTube as often happens.

https://youtu.be/BZXtV_056Jw 

And this what one should be comparing it too.  It doesn’t matter what you are listening on so long as it is of quality.  You are not listening to hear what the system actually "sounds" like, but rather how it differs from the line feed.

https://youtu.be/4ttfcrg-Yow

@toddalin when you wrote that the “line feed” versions that you found on YouTube had “more low-end” did you mean to write that they had less resolution, low-level & inner detail, and nuance than my audio recording of Blue Monk? The relative arrangement, in all my systems, between the listening chair and speakers is designed and implement to minimize the room contributions so the low frequencies room reinforcement is not part of my room sound “flavor”. 

Here is the “official” line feed on YouTube of Blue Monk for comparison to the audio recording  of the same recording streaming on my tTest Bed system.

Yes, it is rather unfortunate that general purpose microphones struggle to respond to the lowest frequencies but yet, one of these recordings makes your toes tap & sounds exciting, at least to me, while the other one sounds dull, lacking inner detail & nuance, and monotoned by comparison:

Blue Monk (Official YouTube line feed version)

Blue Monk (Test Bed system)