The sound of tiny speakers i.e. TV, etc

[PhilB]

I don't know where I"m going with this, but,...

I"ve recently notice that some sounds designed for small speakers sound better but also shittier on bigger speakers.

To whit:

I use a little digital recorder (these used to have micro-cassettes) to record stuff that occurs to me away from home. The funny thing is....it sounds 'pretty good' when played back on it's tiny speaker. obviously greatly limited by it's tiny size, but hey, certainly not WORSE than I would expect.

Then if I play it through regular speakers - yikes!!! the f'n thing is compressed and gated, not completely naturally, and sounds strange - all these attacks and releases of sounds all f'd up. What the heck happened? How can it actually sound BETTER on the smaller speaker!

no kidding.

Example #2:
Today I hooked up yard sale tuner and Bose 2.2 speakers (hey, it's what I can afford in that room) to the television. I throw it together. My son starts watching our movie...I have to go help the wife with the computer...anyway, I only have time to notice - hey, this sounds BIG and WAY better than the little (stereo) tv speakers. richer, deeper, fuller, better. of course.

Later on tonight, I'm listening again. Not just dialogue and explosions from Harry Potter IV earlier. this time it's real t.v. commercials with music, etc. Guess what. It kind of sucked! Basically, the low end seemed REALLY compressed, and it just got kind of annoying and/or fatiguing to listen to. Kind of like those heavy bassy pumping ghetto massive speaker I'll hear at a stop light from the car next to me. sucks. Obviously the bass response on the litle speakers never revealed the suck of mixing for TV (I guess? that's what's going on).

I'm thinking of minimizing the low end or just turning down these annoying speakers - whatever. I was just surprised how much it sucked on bigger speakers!

pb

[dach]

your tiny speakers are only allowing you to hear mostly mids and not much of the lows and highs.... so things like low bass, the boom of explosions, the edge on voices, sheen on cymbals, noise & hiss, etc will all be de-emphasized. As far as your micro recorder goes, it will sound similar on the bigger speakers if you get rid of most everything below 350 and have nothing above 3.5K

Most tv commercials sound horrible anyway. Most program material is not great either. Remember, in music, stuff that has usually been arranged not to have clashing frequencies, compression is used to balance individual and program levels... but in post, where there are the sounds of "real" life, ambiences, background noise, ect, the job is to make the dialog "understandable" in a variety of listening situations while making everything else captivating... ie: loud...(not real)... the processing used even by most radio stations (people who deal with sound) is extreme... some tv stations and broadcast companies use ridiculous amounts of processing in order to cram as much stuff up the pipe while still being fcc compliant... the problem is even compounded by giving users of tv sets the ability to change their sound with onboard limiters, loudness curves and tone controls. Those that have a home theatre and no idea how to set it up are doomed. I might add that the Bose speakers probably do not help the situation either.

certainly not the best explanation but hope you get the general idea.

[brandondrury]

I think you summed it up quite perfectly!

Brandon