Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Starting to oggle new gear

I found the satin to have about the same amount of reflection as the semi gloss. I could see how a full gloss would be more reflective though as that's what we have on our main floor media cabinet. It isn't as distracting as it might be on a pair of speakers especially since we have a large picture window opposite the speaker wall. The semi gloss really is the sweet spot. The difference with the satin finish for its overall "pop" was astounding. IMO it really makes it looks even more professional a finish.


Actually that is interesting. I looked through the relevant sections as well. Cherry picking the relevant sections is really all you need unless there is other info that is a must to understand the whole document, but in this case, pieces of various info are pooled together more as a discussion on the whole topic as listed by the title. I don't need to read the section on sound fields in a specific room to understand the section on listener preferences in a home theatre.

As written by Dr. Toole in the reference you provided (J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 63, No. 7/8, 2015 July/August); highlights/underlines added for emphasis:

Some Evidence of Listener Preferences in Home Theaters
Over the years a few investigators have attempted to identify advantageous room curve targets for small rooms. However the studies that the author is aware of have been compromised by a lack of adequate loudspeaker measurements and/or information about the room acoustics. No double blind listening tests appear to have been done so there are no trustworthy subjective evaluations. Consequently, the resulting targets can be challenged.

Research by Olive et al. [48] was distinctive in that the loudspeaker used was anechoically characterized, the room described [49], and high-resolution room curves measured. In the double-blind tests, listeners made bass and treble balance adjustments to a loudspeaker that had been equalized to a flat smooth steady-state room curve. The loudspeaker had previously received high ratings in independent double blind comparison tests, without equalization. Three tests were done, with the bass or treble adjusted separately with the other parameter randomly fixed, and a test in which both controls were available, starting from random settings. It
was a classic method-of-adjustment experiment. For each program selection, listeners made adjustments to yield the most preferred result.

In Fig. 14 the author has modified the original data to
separately show the result of evaluations by trained and untrained listeners. This is compared to the small room prediction from Fig. 13(a). The “all listeners” average curve is close to the predicted target, except at low frequencies where it is apparent that the strongly expressed preferences of inexperienced listeners significantly elevated the average curve. In fact, the target variations at both ends of the spectrum are substantial, with untrained listeners simply choosing “more of everything.” An unanswered question is whether this was related to overall loudness—more research is needed. However, most of us have seen evidence of such more-bass, more-treble listener preferences in the “as found” tone control settings in numerous rental and loaner cars.

More data would be enlightening, but this amount is sufficient to indicate that a single target curve is not likely to satisfy all listeners. Add to this the program variations created by the “circle of confusion” and there is a strong argument for incorporating easily accessible bass and treble tone controls in playback equipment. The first task for such controls would be to allow users to optimize the spectral balance of their loudspeakers in their rooms, and, on an ongoing basis, to compensate for spectral imbalances as they appear in movies and music.

The attenuated high frequencies preferred by the trained listeners stands in contrast to the preferences exhibited by those same listeners in numerous double-blind multiple-comparison loudspeaker evaluations. In those tests, it is the flat on-axis loudspeakers that are most highly rated... Is this a consequence of the different experimental methods: the different listener tasks?...Is a subtle but important difference awaiting an explanation.

A significant observation is that the results indicate a general preference for a steady-state spectrum that rises toward the low frequencies.

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All the highlighted points indicate that there is user preference in two primary ways; more bass and more treble. Most untrained listeners prefer more bass or "more of everything" yet trained listeners preferred an attenuated high end which was opposite the results of the blind tests of speaker evaluations where the flat curve came out as preferred.

I don't like heavy bass, but i do like the clarity of a bit of treble. As far as i know, i don't have any hearing damage and at least when i was younger, i could hear tones of 15kHz+ during my hearing tests. I don't like the harsh brightness of some speakers, sounds, song mixes, but i suspect i would be a person to want the tone controls to turn up the treble with some speakers a touch.