“She’s also a very keen listener (she got that from me) and picky about sound quality. In some ways she’s pickier than I, a lifelong audiophile, am.* This really limits choices!”
Just curious, this can mostly be appreciated so purely with Classical and/or Jazz. I that the case? :)
I asked this question sir because even with an equalizer the frequency response of the drivers/speakers themselves can be optimal or not depending on the music type and ranges. Those that are killer for jazz, classical, or normal rock sometimes can be “crunchy” and distort when listening to super low frequency bass output of Rap and Hip Hop because their range is not low enough for the bass levels. So the frequency rang of the headset is just as important as the equalizer. Frequency ranges have to be matched to the music source type also. I have had to use one set for one genre, and another for a different genre to get proper clean accurate representation...
My daughter and I both listen to a very wide range of music, including but not limited to classical (and other orchestral music), jazz, “acoustically driven”, and other acoustic (”non-electric”) music. Probably 50% of what I listen to is rock, and of that, much is 70’s style progressive rock, but I go a lot of other places regularly, too. :-)
This does not include that I almost subconsciously for a very long time now, simply listen to vocal characteristics of most unamplified human speech around me.
I would disagree with you slightly about classical and jazz music. IMO, in many ways, the human voice, in various settings all taken, presents the most difficult challenges of all. That’s partially because humans as a species have been so well “trained” to analyze it — (time frame dependent on your opinions about human history.)
Its true that most people don’t use that ability fully. But we all use most of it a lot. It helps us recognize different voices in a crowd, for example. (Funny story about same at the end of this post.) Or, badly altered voices, such as on a telephone.
I can readily build a subwoofer more than sufficient to accurately reproduce (except in large spaces) the biggest challenges classical music (at least before 1900 or so) can throw at it. (An exception being the 1812 Overture, but cannon are not a real “classical instrument” to anyone but Russians, I would argue.) And, granted, you’d have to give up several cubic feet in your listening room and be able to afford a very powerful amplifier. High frequencies are even easier. But, accurately reproducing the human voice naturally to the degree humans can detect flaws (or their absence) is VERY tough. (The then chief engineer at Scan Speak, and I, once upon a time had a great conversation about this, discussing their then premium 6-1/2” “woofer-midrange”.)
All this analysis of music reproduction requires a good listening room, of course. You can’t get there without that. :-)
Now, that all said, my daughter does have education and training and playing experience in a small orchestra, plus we’ve gone to some concerts involving larger, competent orchestras, in good environments. So, she has real musical training in addition to more direct experience with real time classical music than I do. (But perhaps not more as an audience member.) I have more critical analytical listening experience with audio / hi-fi systems. As in: “Hmmm... I think there’s some cone body breakup around 2400 Hz. What’s that waterfall plot look like?” She might say a headphone sounds “crunchy” in the midrange, while I would likely refer to odd order distortion. Given listening in a familiar environment, with known (and wide ranging) quality source material, I can usually estimate the response curve of a loudspeaker system and be pretty close. She can’t do that, except in a very general way. So, we somewhat “don’t connect” sometimes on the tech side of it. She might fit in with some of the old high end reviewers who would come up with terms like “chocolatey” sound. Huh?
Of course, with time, I can gain translation.
A funny story: A former boss of mine once ran a company that produced loudspeaker cones. They had a new material they were excited about, and sampled some cones to Peavey, who had begun (for a few years at that point?) manufacturing some of their drivers, such as the “Black Widow” series. Peavey’s feedback was something to the effect of “good durability, but it’s not gnarly enough.” (”Gnarly” was the Peavey guy’s actual word used.) My boss to be was stumped, as in “Huh?”. How should his company alter the formulation of the cone paper to be “more gnarly”? (Strangely, with more connection to actual musicians, I might have been able to at least point him in a general direction, but whether or not he’d be closer to Peavey’s desire, after several new samplings, is anybody’s guess.)
Ditto for classical. I was once confronted with: It (new driver) sounds really good overall, but, the trombones don’t sound brassy enough. I related this to my boss (an older and “more conventional” engineer who’d become completely busy with management), who paused, and then said (paraphrasal): “Well... Like... What the hell do you do with that?” My reply was “**Stronger expletive** if I know...” (Pause) “Dive deeper into analyzing the old driver, I guess...”. I never figured it out and the prospective customer ran into financial trouble anyway. My best guess(!) B4 I was told our prospective customer was failing (and to desist efforts for them) was cone breakup that triggered some “nice” 2nd - 6th even order harmonic resonances.
FWIW, both of those “incidents” were triggered by the EPA forcing cone manufacturers in the USA to alter how the manufacturers made their cone bodies. :-(
Back to “listening training”: Lifelong experience counts! I have had the blessing (until recently) of always being a member of churches that had exceptionally good acoustics. My first house and “my room” at my parents before that were also unusually good in that regard. (Ok, @ the parents, low bass support was weak, so I built some fairly amazing - and big - transmission line speakers!) However, I’m NOT good at picking voices out of chaotic, loud environments. Riding around in jeepneys in Philippines with my wife, she could understand what the driver, way up front, was calling out. Between the accents and other noise around me, I couldn’t even tell it was the driver calling out the stop! So much for my “great ears”!