‘Who Stole the Bass?’

For a minute I thought you were going to have a rant about the European Fisheries Policy - this is the Padded Cell, after all 

Interesting article, that largely echoes my views and experience. Picking on Martin Colloms’ critique of the article, quoting: “Midrange is where we live, where we speak, and...if that is wrong, it doesn't matter if other areas are perfect”, that applies to clarity of speech - however music contains a lot of information n other parts of the spectrum that are important for enjoyment, at least to some of us. Yes, midrange is important, very much so for vocals, but I’d rather have reasonably good midrange with bass than perfect midrange with no bass, at least for the music to which I normally listen - and by bass I mean at the very least down to 40Hz, preferably much of the octave below, and capable of playing at realistic levels. And to me the mini-monitor approach just does not cut it. (They might with separate sub, if set up right, but the article was discussing them without.) 

Note that the article and letters are dated 1987 though!

Gavin B posted:

Note that the article and letters are dated 1987 though!

Not sure that the laws of physics have changed much in the 30 years since... Ditto human hearing (but individual people’s will have). 

Though of course technological work-arounds may have improved.

Martin Colloms started to get there.

1  The last place you want the low bass transducer is close to the point you want for the bass/mid and HF transducers; not only form the perspective of spherical radiation enhancement, but also for the coupling to the fundamental room resonances.

2  Sealed box speaker have a much lower LF fall off rate and can integrate better into some rooms (assuming adequate measures are taken to control the fundamental room resonances).

So maybe the room and speaker placement stole the bass, if ever there to begin with?