Well, it's the yardstick that matters, doesn't it? If the criterion is movie soundtracks, that's a completely different thing. Since soundtracks are completely artificial confections, there's really no reference at all, unless you work at Skywalker Ranch in California, and have ready access to their theater.
My yardstick is music coming from physical instruments recorded in a real acoustic space - I listen to plenty of German techno and various styles of world-music electronica, but that only seems to benefit from a system tuned to acoustical music. But that puts me in a small minority of audiophiles these days, and even further from the HT enthusiasts. Right off the bat I have to warn PFO readers that they probably won't agree with me, on musical tastes alone.
A musically tuned HT system has an interesting effect on movie soundtracks: no, it doesn't sound like a movie theater, but the symphonic parts of the soundtrack come to the fore, which intensifies the emotional parts of the movie. The explosions and other completely artificial parts of the soundtrack aren't as harsh, raucous, and irritating as the theater experience, but that's a plus, not a negative. I don't need to hear the breakup of a titanium diaphragm that's been digitally boosted by 10 dB in the 8~15 kHz region and pumped through a 1-kilowatt Class AB/G amplifier; no thank you.
Background explanation: Large-format (4") aluminum compression-driver diaphragms have their first breakup in the 7~9 kHz region; however, aluminum went out of use in the late Seventies due to much higher playback levels creating problems with fatigue cracking and a high rate of failures in the field. Aluminum was replaced by titanium, which is fatigue-resistant but unfortunately has the first breakup an octave lower, around 4 kHz (for large-format diaphragms). Around this time, Altec multicell horns were replaced by constant-directivity horns like the Altec Mantaray and the JBL Bi-Radial, which require substantial (around 10 to 15 dB) of HF boost to deliver flat response at the listener position. Amplifier powers increased from the 60 to 100 watts in the vacuum-tube days to 300 watts by the Seventies to multi-kilowatt levels today. (During the same time period, the source changed from discrete six-track magnetic to mono optical, a brief period of stereo optical with matrixed surround, to the discrete multichannel lossy-compression digital used today.)
Net result: When you go the theater, you are listening to titanium-diaphragm compression drivers that are driven very deep into the breakup region by heavy equalization and powerful amplifiers. The ideal solution is replacing titanium with beryllium, which is free of breakup until you reach 15 kHz or higher, and more durable as well. But ... large-format beryllium diaphragms cost around $700 to $1500 each, while titanium is around $150 each. Digital projectors and 3D are something you can see on the screen and advertise, but nobody cares which diaphragms are used. The conversion to beryllium, if it happens at all, will probably take a while.
Further note: No, digital equalization cannot undo diaphragm breakup, except in the gross sense of offsetting power loss through the addition of more driving power. The active-feedback systems used in advanced subwoofers only work as long as the loudspeaker diaphragm moves as single piston; once it starts to break up, the feedback cannot correct for it, and may instead go unstable. (You don't want to be around when that happens.)
My yardstick is music coming from physical instruments recorded in a real acoustic space - I listen to plenty of German techno and various styles of world-music electronica, but that only seems to benefit from a system tuned to acoustical music. But that puts me in a small minority of audiophiles these days, and even further from the HT enthusiasts. Right off the bat I have to warn PFO readers that they probably won't agree with me, on musical tastes alone.
A musically tuned HT system has an interesting effect on movie soundtracks: no, it doesn't sound like a movie theater, but the symphonic parts of the soundtrack come to the fore, which intensifies the emotional parts of the movie. The explosions and other completely artificial parts of the soundtrack aren't as harsh, raucous, and irritating as the theater experience, but that's a plus, not a negative. I don't need to hear the breakup of a titanium diaphragm that's been digitally boosted by 10 dB in the 8~15 kHz region and pumped through a 1-kilowatt Class AB/G amplifier; no thank you.
Background explanation: Large-format (4") aluminum compression-driver diaphragms have their first breakup in the 7~9 kHz region; however, aluminum went out of use in the late Seventies due to much higher playback levels creating problems with fatigue cracking and a high rate of failures in the field. Aluminum was replaced by titanium, which is fatigue-resistant but unfortunately has the first breakup an octave lower, around 4 kHz (for large-format diaphragms). Around this time, Altec multicell horns were replaced by constant-directivity horns like the Altec Mantaray and the JBL Bi-Radial, which require substantial (around 10 to 15 dB) of HF boost to deliver flat response at the listener position. Amplifier powers increased from the 60 to 100 watts in the vacuum-tube days to 300 watts by the Seventies to multi-kilowatt levels today. (During the same time period, the source changed from discrete six-track magnetic to mono optical, a brief period of stereo optical with matrixed surround, to the discrete multichannel lossy-compression digital used today.)
Net result: When you go the theater, you are listening to titanium-diaphragm compression drivers that are driven very deep into the breakup region by heavy equalization and powerful amplifiers. The ideal solution is replacing titanium with beryllium, which is free of breakup until you reach 15 kHz or higher, and more durable as well. But ... large-format beryllium diaphragms cost around $700 to $1500 each, while titanium is around $150 each. Digital projectors and 3D are something you can see on the screen and advertise, but nobody cares which diaphragms are used. The conversion to beryllium, if it happens at all, will probably take a while.
Further note: No, digital equalization cannot undo diaphragm breakup, except in the gross sense of offsetting power loss through the addition of more driving power. The active-feedback systems used in advanced subwoofers only work as long as the loudspeaker diaphragm moves as single piston; once it starts to break up, the feedback cannot correct for it, and may instead go unstable. (You don't want to be around when that happens.)
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Interestingly that's exactly where modern S-D converters suck most, as they have 6bit DACs.
