Why EQ a sound doesn't change timbre?

[jancivil]

BTW, as a spin off,

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering...

Speaking of unreliable perception, for YEARS I believed it was 'after all the jets are in their boxes; and the clouds have all gone to bed' which the next bit doesn't follow really, so it doesn't really make sense

[Nowhk]

What about making this decoding/extrapolation easier to ourselves? If you find the colouration of a reproduction system annoying, only then there is an incentive to do something about it and scratch that itch. Otherwise you just live with it and apparently ignore it. Or you're just ignorant: not being aware there is an issue with colouration and something (other speakers, relocation, acoustical treatment of the room) can be done about it at reasonable cost / effort. Now you're in the realm of motivation, not perception.

And since there is not one ideal speaker that suits all of our needs (in a very broad sense) and fits any budget, we chose whatever we see fit for our own purposes given the budget we're prepared to spend.

So I would say that if we choose setups for "easily" decode stuff, what we have said about reverb above is untrue:

When you go to a concert and you listen to that song with the reverb of your favourite singer's voice added by the arena, winding up around you, do you ignore it? I don't of course, I "enjoy" it as well. Its like an FX at the end, not added by the mixdown but on playback.
The song seems to be ALSO this, "reverbered" by that arena. Do you disagree?

Me thinks not many people disagree with that.

Because than you are not "enjoying" the added color, being part of the whole song's perception, but you are still "filtering" it out. I'm not really sure of that. Yesterday I was to a concert, and I was dragged to the added reverberation of the hall... I felt it and lived it, as part of the piece. I didn't filtering it out as environment distortion, it was "part" of it. Doesn't this happens for you?

But EXACTLY THAT IS the explanation! We all have personal, individual, subjective, maybe even irrational needs, and no single speaker fits that to the extend it completely takes over the market.

Yes, but here we are not discussing of "selecting" what is important for us and choose to it.
As take a song, play on laptop and simply discard arrangement because what we need is just catch the lyrics. Or drive a car with 70hp because I don't care about performance at all.
We are talking about "distort" some "selected" aspects of it simply (because of the nature) using a medium. Its a different role. I'm not talking about "don't care about low range". But take care of it and realize every time it will manifest in different ways (boosted shape), and the way is choosed by me (the one who choose the setups).

Since you are in a different environment, the whole experience is different. Even with the same music, it's a totally different experience,

Go to youtube and compare some album tracks with their live renditions. Tell me what is the same and what is different. Then look up on youtube a video of a concert you have been to, and tell me what is the same and what is different in actually being there (nearly touch the artist, smell the beer) and the video recording.

I made it up you are suggesting (again) to me that the perception (made on every single experience) its not the "song" itself; the song itself is the recordings, and we consume it in different ways every time (which trigger different perceptions). If that's true, THIS is where my confusion is all about...! Is it? Mmm

Don't be silly. It's well known that volume messes up your whole perception. High volumes tend to distort that for this exact reason: increased intensity which then masks your ability to take it for what it really is.

Sure. But this is even more a confirmation that changing "medium" (which include the sub-aspects of alter volume/loudness/dynamics and such) change the perception of it

I prefer to experience it on something in between quite flat (Sennheiser 280s or Yamaha NS10) and totally consumer big bass big presence jobs.

What do you mean with "I prefer" here? That you enjoy more the sounding result (which color has part of it) or that its easily for you extrapolate the music itself (which will be "the same" listening to another setups)? Or neither the two?

I'm using Shure SRH440 phones, which give me more of the space

So Shure SRH440 "adds" somethings to the song (space), which you won't get with different setups. Right?

[Harry_HH]

BTW, as a spin off,

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering...

Speaking of unreliable perception, for YEARS I believed it was 'after all the jets are in their boxes; and the clouds have all gone to bed' which the next bit doesn't follow really, so it doesn't really make sense

Yours is even better, jets/clouds surely makes sense...

[BertKoor]

Sheez, then I don't know... and I think I don't care anymore as well.

Observe, draw your own conclusions. Got conflict? Resolve!
Whatever theory works for you, works for you!
You don't need to reach consensus with us.

[ghettosynth]

Sheez, then I don't know... and I think I don't care anymore as well.

Observe, draw your own conclusions. Got conflict? Resolve!
Whatever theory works for you, works for you!
You don't need to reach consensus with us.

Props for demonstrating an exemplary amount of patience!

[Nowhk]

Sheez, then I don't know...

Me too, I simply don't know
Thats why I asked it here, too see your opinions

Thanks for the huge effort and time spent to me dude

[jancivil]

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[jancivil]

BTW, as a spin off,

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering...

Speaking of unreliable perception, for YEARS I believed it was 'after all the jets are in their boxes; and the clouds have all gone to bed' which the next bit doesn't follow really, so it doesn't really make sense

Yours is even better, jets/clouds surely makes sense...

well, 'happiness staggering...' seems to follow the fake jollity of clowns, is why I said that.

this's been a real crowd-pleaser when I've done it as a country number

[jancivil]

It's well known that volume messes up your whole perception. High volumes tend to distort that for this exact reason: increased intensity which then masks your ability to take it for what it really is.

Not if what it really is is a loud fecking song.
Then it has qualities 'obscured' by being played on a laptop tiny speakers. Or even a more normal situation with less volume out of the amplifier.

IME, a really good mastering job brings as much of that experience in by the tiny speakers as can be squeezed out of the track.

I have experienced disappointment in my own music I shouldn't have because the transducer at the output end wasn't sufficient to get what's there; later, 'ok that's more like it'.
There is no simple truth here as you have of course noted.

[ghettosynth]

I prefer to experience it on something in between quite flat (Sennheiser 280s or Yamaha NS10) and totally consumer big bass big presence jobs.

What do you mean with "I prefer" here? That you enjoy more the sounding result (which color has part of it) or that its easily for you extrapolate the music itself (which will be "the same" listening to another setups)? Or neither the two?

See below:

I'm using Shure SRH440 phones, which give me more of the space

So Shure SRH440 "adds" somethings to the song (space), which you won't get with different setups. Right?

Compared to the flat reference, I would say that technically they may have done something to synthesize spaciality/reflection such as a room. It was astonishing, I chose something where I'd gone to great lengths to get side and back-to-front effects but in phones I never heard it. It's in the mix, it's not 'faked', it's science. So, along with this 'more bass' seems part of this rather than just add bass or color an area in the bandwidth.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but, there's nothing in those headphones that will "synthesize spaciality/reflection." The techniques for simulating speakers on headphones are well known. Most likely you are experiencing the exaggerated stereo field that comes from destroying the way that we naturally listen to sources in the wild.

Those phones are closed back circumaural headphones so they are going to maximize the isolation effect to each ear.

To approximate speaker listening on sealed headphones you basically want to cross feed a small amount of each channel to the other but roll off the highs a bit and delay by a few hundred microseconds. That roughly gives you the sound of the speakers as if they were in an anechoic space, add a small amount of room reverb to make it sound a bit more natural.

An interesting track to get a sense of how obnoxious the difference can be with just a little bit of cross-feed is Norwegian Wood off of the Rubber Soul album. Listen to it on speakers, and then on headphones. If you take the time to set it up, it's interesting to listen to it on headphones while bringing in a small amount of cross-feed. You can set up cross-feed with almost any DAW, just route right to left from one channel to another and then put an EQ and micro delay on the second channel. Ideally you want to maintain constant level so you would crossfade between the channels, but it's not as critical as the delay and the channel swap.

[Nowhk]

Compared to the flat reference, I would say that technically they may have done something to synthesize spaciality/reflection such as a room. It was astonishing, I chose something where I'd gone to great lengths to get side and back-to-front effects but in phones I never heard it.

When you do the mixdown of your own song, you usually place "reverb FX" on the chain; you do this because it adds that fancy reverberation to your work. That FX will be considered as part of the work, and you "consume" it when listening to the final song. Light adjustment, and the impact is noticeable. Even if I'll hear it among 3 months.
(From perceive KICK to perceive KICK+REVERB)

Now jancivil, saying this, am I right if I say that particular Shure SRH440's reverb FX is added by the phone itself? And become part of what you are consuming using those phone?
(From perceive KICK+REVERB to perceive KICK+REVERB+REVERB)

[jancivil]

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[jancivil]

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[ghettosynth]

I'm sure the headphones are NOT *adding* 'reverb' to it. The point there is definitely not to do with that, it is that the work I know I did in terms of the spacial relationship between parts appeared more pronounced in these phones, the first thing I heard in them* astonishingly so (* which I chose to test for this quality). I have no idea really why this would be the case, except I ain't buying anything that would 'add reverb'; these advertise as 'enhanced' which I believe is the case, rather than flat - more to the point the brief discussion at had with the salesclerks, I knew these would not be flat like the Sennheisers - but in the same statement they claim 'more accurate', where more color is not 'more accurate' in the stricter sense but in the sense the music was to me more what it ought to be in my mind, maybe is the case.
I'm sure this has sorted nothing.

Perhaps not with the OP, but, what you report is a well known phenomenon of mixing with headphones. Stereo field is exaggerated precisely because of the isolation. With speakers, each ear hears both the right and the left channel, albeit at different volumes at slightly different times. With headphones, especially closed back circumaural ones, each ear hears only the right or the left channel. So, whatever spatial effects exist are exaggerated owing to the new difference in volume balance and the absence of time smearing from right to left.

Since directionality of sound increases with frequency, it's likely that the extended high range of those particular phones exaggerated the effect further.

As I mentioned, this effect is really obvious with Norwegian Wood off of the Rubber Soul album. It's so obvious with that track that people with no experience can hear it immediately. It's common across many recordings from that era though because the stereo mixes were often something of an afterthought.

[Nowhk]

I hear the kick DRUM vis a vis the room and/or ambient mics in the BFD3. Once it's in the music, in the mix I don't pay attention to it in isolation again. So for me it's not much a point of comparison.

In this case, may I ask you why spending time to mix/reverb on BFD3 your kicks if you don't pay attention of this effect during listening? What's the differences between raw stuff and mixed stuff if you ignore the color added by the mixing so?

Here I can hear two different kind of sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKELodcHIxo
The difference is the color added by the mixing. You don't care/benefit/enjoy/pay attention to this color?
I think I've misunderstood you