There are even some that prefer "dark" speakers
.
Man, I was hoping to find a second use for this:
Micah, someone's personal preference for it doesn't lessen the inferiority of an object.
I agree with you, John, on 90% of your posts... but I think "inferior" is going a bit far.
There are nothing
but subjective choices made throughout the recording, mixing and mastering stages of producing media. And though I agree that general neutrality
should be the goal in most cases, the reality is that there
is no "standard". From where mics are initially placed through the final mixing and mastering, hundreds, if not thousands of subjective decisions are made by engineers.
If there are no "standards" in producing the material, there really can be no "standard" in playback. Even speakers which are (admirably) flat in an anechoic chamber are going to have different responses in different rooms in different seats.
And, though I agree with you in having electronics which have ruler-flat frequency responses and reproduce and amplify a signal without change to any attribute other than gain, I have to disagree that a speaker that a person terms "warm" is "inferior".
"Less accurate", I'll give you. But "inferior", as Micah pointed out, is not true if the speaker has the response that the designers had intended and the listener finds pleasurable.
Otherwise, I might as well call a red car "inferior" to a blue one.
