[johnsojs]

What exactly does that mean.

 

[biggstuu]

kinda like when wine snobs say a wine is full bodied but agile, doesnt mean squat, they make shtuff up to sound important, best way to judge speakers is to listen to them for yourself.

 

[MRL]

It is considered bright if its any color lighter than say Cherry!


Sorry but this had been hashed here a zillion times.. Please do a search on bright. Sorry about the pun but I could not resist for other viewers......

 

[Cowclops]

While many terms that uneducated audiophiles use are nothing more than gibberish (as biggstuu hints), bright and dark do actually have real world implications. Basically, if someone says a speaker is bright, it means it has a more exaggerated high range. Keep in mind, some people may think speakers with no high frequency response at all are "neutral" so to these people, NEUTRAL speakers may sound bright. The only way to understand is to listen to as much good equipment as possible.

 

[Bondmanp]

The "brightness range" is the octave between 4kHz and 8kHz. A "bright" speaker will produce ample output in this range. That is not necessarily a bad thing, unless it excessively emphasizes or exaggerates this range. Many listeners find that excessively bright speakers are fatiguing to listen to and often "glare" - meaning that loud passages in this range will make the listener wince or even experience pain.

 

[Ja Phule]

Quote:

Originally posted by Bondmanp The "brightness range" is the octave between 4kHz and 8kHz. A "bright" speaker will produce ample output in this range. That is not necessarily a bad thing, unless it excessively emphasizes or exaggerates this range. Many listeners find that excessively bright speakers are fatiguing to listen to and often "glare" - meaning that loud passages in this range will make the listener wince or even experience pain.

This is what I interpret when I hear the term also.

 

[Grond]

Tweeter and crossover distortion can sometimes be mistaken for elevated treble response.

 

[heath1066]

Bright is what speakers are when they are out of stock, or acompetitor's line. If they are in stock, they are "detailed."

 

[Peter Duminy]

Quote:

Originally posted by heath1066 Bright is what speakers are when they are out of stock, or acompetitor's line. If they are in stock, they are "detailed."

Perfect use of sonic adjectives heath!

 

[MRL]

heath1066......Laughed my butt off!!!! good one.

 

[Scott Tucker]

Go and listen to a Klipsch set up. Many people consider them to be "bright." I tend to think they are just very good at producing the higher frequencies that other speakers may not handle as well. Bottom line is to listen to as many brands/types as it takes to find what sounds good to you.


Scott

 

[intence]

After giving this some thought, I was thinking that it shouldn't be difficult to measure these terms quantitatively (but of course i'm not expecting anyone to do it this way).


It wouldn't be too hard to measure what the freq. response of a piece of music or test tones would be when recorded or when output from the the source (CD/DVD player). Then take the measurements again when the sound is output from the speakers.


Comparing the two graphs, bright could simply be when the high range output of the speakers is higher than the otuput on the actual recording. Dark would be excessive bass, or lack of high range from the speakers.


Just a thought ... but audiophiles tend to do this by ear and not by measurements, so it's anyone's guess what they really mean. Something that's bright to one person may sound dark to another, not too mention that most humans start losing their hearing in the upper range as they age, so presumably older reviewers would find speakers to be less bright simply because their hearing in the upper spectrum may be less sensitive.


I also don't buy this nonsense of combining a "bright amplifier" with "dark speakers" and vice-versa to achieve neutrality. IMHO the purpose of audio equipment is to faithfully reproduce the material as it was recorded, anything that tampers with this is adding noise to the system. Even if we may think it sounds better, it's still noise since it wasn't intended to be on the original recording.


In the end it all comes down to what sounds good to you, and what you enjoy listening to. Who cares what some reviewer says.