John Atkinson's thoughts on the New Vandersteen System Nine from LA Show

A more hyped treble only does one thing to someone with no hearing loss - make them run out of a room.

Great 100th post Prof, lol.  I would love to sit and talk audio with you as well as enjoy music.  I agree with so much of what you are posting.  I too have gone from liking 'vivid' speakers etc.. to a more coherent speaker, but I still need a harsh piano key to give me the percussive as well as the actual note with it's true decay.  That can and is being done by great speakers.

-- "A more hyped treble only does one thing to someone with no hearing loss - make them run out of a room."

That's the type of..sorry to say...blinkered... approach to the subject that I was talking about. That's simply wrong, as plenty of speakers with a peaky or rising treble appeal to many with normal hearing.

For one thing: it's not for nothing the classic "smile" equalization curve was so often favored among young people with stereos (certainly was when I was growing up).

Another: generally the hearing loss that occurs with age is an attenuation of the upper frequencies. The presence-region emphasis that tends to make more vivid sound lies within the frequency range still audible to even aging people.  So you don't need hearing loss to hear - or prefer - a lift in the presence range.

@jwm  

JV is known for this in Absolute Sound. Every review the product brings out things he's never heard before

Not sure what i see as the problem here. I always thought the essence of this hi-fi pursuit was to hear more of what the original artist and engineering team intended? My experience has always been that hearing more is better. Now this is not to say that sometimes an emphasis on a certain frequency range will suddenly spotlight something you have not heard before. For example with the addition of super tweeters in my system I became aware of the noise of piano action on many recordings. As I worked with the system and dialed back the tweeter (shifting x-over from 10KHz to 12KHz) it's still there but no longer so up-front (and arguably annoying) -- so the over emphasis was wrong but I still learned from being exposed to the detail

Another example -- opening the door to my room (into an adjacent storage room) freed up the bass and without the room being overloaded as it was before all sorts of detail becomes apparent (not just the ultra low bass) -- would I want to go back -- no.

So I would hope that as JV makes incremental improvements in his system he hears more/differently and adds to the sonic portrait he had before -- certainly been that way for me, and not in the slightest emetic