Some serious considerations here, that's good in itself. I agree it sometimes almost looks as if some unknown entity must decide on what a given person must fine right, but luckily in the democratic west people may decide for themselves what is righteous and not in music.
I agree there are speakers which are a lot more pleasing to listen to a digital piano to than others, and that it isn't a given that frequency range and well known-ness that makes speakers into the perfect monitors.
It interests me already since long what can be done with effects to make a certain sound impression, like a good movie soundtrack or a pop-song with exactly the right impact (according to the artist, who then of course must be serious about that). I know for sure there are hundreds of ways to fool people with various measurements, speaker setups, amp specs, and, as I thought about in the context of this here newsgroup, with all kinds of DSP. There are big differences between a FIR, IIR and FFT equalizer effect, as an important example. Many speakers will have their own smoothing, transient mangling, and medium term wave averaging (resolving transients transients into air pressure) effects, and I never hear any of these extremely fundamental issues mentioned in DSP, except that I know some pro stuff which acknowledges all those things.
Of course it's fine if you (digital or analog) mix some songs and announcements and effects together, listen to the results on your monitors, and know beforehand how their going to sound on your saturday night disco-system, I think that's nice working, but most of the major artists wouldn't be a fan of your software or equipment if that ends up as a unified audio sausage rolling out to the audience with no excitement or change!
Theo V. -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
