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audioen t1_it6axyb wrote

Appreciate headsets for what they are: they have edge in producing much less distortion, their low end can hit close to 20 Hz, and there is no reverberation of a room to produce peaks and valleys in the frequency response due to booms and cancellations. Headsets simply are inherently very precise, but they are also unnatural compared to an actual sound that comes from a point in room.

Ultimately, it raises the question how to get best of both worlds. You want to control the reverb, but that is actually pretty costly, as it can involve placing multiple subwoofers, adding bass traps, placing acoustic foam panels and diffusers, doing room equalization with microphone, and so forth. Depending on your living setup, it can be unacceptable to design everything from acoustics first perspective. In fact, it would be best to have a dedicated room for music, whose geometry can be set up for great acoustics and which doesn't have to double as living space. So add cost of such a thing to the purchase price of great speaker system, I guess.

The barber shop DSP listening experience might be a decent middle ground here, where you'd have fake artificial treated room with directional sound constructed by computer simulation of a great listening room. Perhaps someone can come up with a transducer you wear under your clothes that then thumps your chest in tune of the bass to get the tactile feel.

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