@RoryAlsop: honestly, I don't care at all about marketing and money in music, in general :) So I don't worry about it

@AJHenderson loss of clarity/definition from WHAT! Thats the point :) How do you know you are listening to somethings different from "original" if you never catch "original" (since every components introduce distortion, and you are not the author of the brain) :) a guess?

I put it in another way: if "color" added by two speakers/enviroments its so "tiny" and not important for listening, why I should use this amazon.it/AKG-3458X00010-K812/dp/B00IAKEORC/… instead of this amazon.it/gp/product/B00I3LV0B6/… for listening (and not producing) music?

they only differs on "color" (i.e. noise and harmonic distortion) I guess

they are able to catch every human frequency range

yeah, frequency response differs, but only in a way that it will pump/cut some bass/mid freqs, nothing more! the difference in prices its just by the color they introduce (or don't introduce) I guess.

I can understand some will remove the "background noise" (which human can perceive and "isolate" as different "timbre"). thats ok

but as before, im talking about noise that will "attack" (edit) partials of the sound (change the amplitude of some partials)

@paizza you don't. Well, that's not 100% true. As AJ mentioned previously, if you know what your speakers/headphones do to colour the sound, then you compensate for it.

You need to realise that there is absolutely nothing in the music domain that is fixed and has rules. This is one of the must subjective areas there is - you can't assume 'science' will give you what you need. It's 'artistic' and 'interpretive'

@paizza you can compensate for that in mixing - if your speakers have a strong roll off below 1kHz (for example) then you can boost those frequencies accordingly

Changing amplitude of partials is one of the easiest things to do with an equaliser

Well, rythym is fixed

Part of envelope and texture also

The "Borders" (colors) vary

Of course i dont talk about different perception for each people

As i said thats not argumentably :)

We are bio different, lived different experiences and such

What I m talking here is my perception of a single track

It seems that i can catch some common elements (pattern) listening it to different environments. You said this right?

i.e. you never think to it (the song) as a "final" product (in both listening and producing stages), but to a product that will manifest its own peculiarity due to the environments you will play it

like a person with its own character but that react differently in front of different kind of persons (such as your boss, mother or your girlfriend)

@paizza listening to known sources

you don't learn a room with something you don't know. You play a known track or several known tracks to learn what sound the room imparts

then you can work backwards from there

that's why when you're setting up a room for live sound you don't adjust the EQ with a song you don't know. You play a recording or have the band play a song that you are familiar with the particular version of

(ie, only have the band play if you know what THEY sound like when they play it

or if they trust you for artistic direction of the final mix)

@paizza yeah, things like brush strokes on a cymbal are going to be largely lost in a lot of environments. It just goes with the territory. If it's significantly important someone hear that, you either make everything else get quiet or you make it louder, but if you want it subtle, some people won't hear it

@paizza then there is also the fact that even if you don't know the exact coloration, for your own listening it doesn't really matter. As the saying goes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". If the music sounds good to you it doesn't really matter if the musician would listen to it and think it sounded like crap

people get different meanings from art, sometimes counter to what the artist intended

the experience of art isn't so much getting what the artist intended as it is getting what it means to you or what you like about it

as long as you enjoy a piece, it doesn't matter if you enjoyed it for what the artist intended

even if it may be interesting to understand both, and if you want to understand both, go to a concert where the artist has control of the presentation

@paizza to a large extent I would say there isn't a reason. It's the same thing I was saying about not recommending SE-535s to most people. At the end of the day, you only get your moneys worth out of speakers if you are able to pick up the subtle elements

a cheap set of speakers won't have fine detail clear even if you know what to listen for. It won't drastically impact the sound, but if you want to hear that fine detail, you need something that can reproduce it

it isn't that the music sounds substantially different, just that there is a richer feeling since the fine detail isn't lost, but it is still a minor difference

there are very large diminishing returns in high end audio gear

(and a lot of total BS depending on the manufacturer)

@paizza yes, this

@paizza and this

@AJHenderson this is what I dont get (as write above). What do you mean by "details"? Technically speaking, music is make up by frequencies (harmonics/partials and so on... how said before). Even cheap speakers can reproduce all freqs between 20hz/20khz. So why do you should miss some freq (thus details of sound)? The whole spectrum will be played. Some partials would change its amplitude (more/less due to the quality of the speakers), which means "change", not "miss" details.

@AJHenderson here i get what you are saying :) yep, for example, if i listen to a kick that doesnt punch on my usual system (which I know it can punch hard) means that the kick itself is crap and not as good.

But you are talking here with of "high-level" of patterns recognition. I agree in this terms that all works by experience and hearing.

What I was talking about was "texture" of sound of a low level of patterning. In this terms, I asked why a texture play "the same" within my mind knowing that physycally (since partials changes) it should change. Maybe the brain "resolution" is limited

And editing some partials within a fixed range (i.e. 2 or 3 db each, even if any speakers would distort them less) will produce the same sounding result in the brain

Such as not be able to catch a sound if its shorter than 60 ms (which we just get as a click)

@paizza the "details" is fine variations in sound. For example, hearing the impact of brushes on a cymbal buried beneath the rest of the band. If the sound reproduction isn't extremely precise, the actual impact of the brush strokes will be distorted or lost. It is a minor piece of information relative to the whole, but gives a richer feel

a visual comparison would be like the difference between 1080p video and 4k. You know what you are looking at in both cases, but in one case there is more detail

good sound reproduction is the same way, but with a distinction that most of the population don't have very good ability to distinguish detail

it isn't that the frequencies aren't there, it is that the speaker is unable to produce the fine variations in pressure

so if I have a speaker making a very loud sound, adding a tightly controlled small vibration for some other portion of the sound is difficult

cheap speakers can't do it, more expensive speakers generally can

if they are actually worth the money

the issue is the inertia of the speaker relative to the power of the coil

and the flexibility of the cone

physically producing the appropriate changes in pressure is hard when trying to be extremely accurate

and not being accurate could mean that small details aren't actually reproduced as as the momentum of the cone doesn't change in time to actually produce the proper pressure change