#1 - yup, and I still am that way! Crank up that bass! I like feeling the punch of the drums & bass guitar in music & movies. I just watched Jurassic World last night & it was awesome turning the sub up to "feel" the bass :thumbsup: And that's where it goes back to personal preference - some people want to replicate a studio-quality experience, which is fine, and others want the teenager-style make-your-body-vibrate experience. It's fine both ways & doesn't mean either one is bad, unlike what a lot of high-end audio posters & articles would try to lead you to believe.
#2 - yeah, that's another thing that bothered me about the 650's, they were TOO accurate. I didn't want to hear correctly reproduced sound, I wanted emotional sound that enveloped you. Like the difference between a 2.1 system with great bass & say cheap earbuds. I'm sure there's a lot of music out there that sounds great with a reference set of speakers or headphones, especially classical stuff & whatnot, but I mostly just listen to stuff on the radio & want some boom to it
I know what you mean, I like to have a meaty bass but not so much that it becomes rumble for rumble's sake. I like it to be well defined (or tight).
People that listen to Hip-Hop or similar styles know that a lot of the focus in the music is in the bass so it's meant to be cranked. Personally I feel all the frequencies are important and need to be represented in a balanced way.
The whole idea behind getting the reference/flat response equipment is based on the idea that you'd want to hear it as close to what the sound engineer/producer is hearing or 'intended'. And because when building a studio you want to have as little colour or variation from flat frequencies as possible for the purpose of being able to know that what the engineer is hearing is actually there and not a colouration.
So the Engineer and audiophile are kind of at cross purposes. Like you say there is nothing wrong with a little bit of colour to the sound signature of equipment at the consumers end if it's pleasant. It can add a little something and sound less clinical.
One thing most engineers will do is test on a variety of equipment to see if the mix they are making on almost "perfect" speakers translates well on the kind of equipment that people will eventually listen to it on.
If they mixed sound like people who like to crank their bass expect to listen to it, It would likely blow most people's systems. This actually happened to someone I know who after mixing some Jungle on robust studio speakers, blew several in his car minutes after seeing how it sounded there.
See, and that's where it gets tricky, because there is some merit in certain circumstances to cable quality. And even long HDMI cables come with built-in signal boosters these days. Like, you need shielded on long thin unbalanced audio cables, otherwise they act like antennas & get all kinds of interference. VGA on long runs tends to look like crap unless you get creative with the setup. So it's not like the argument for good-quality stuff is completely devoid of any usefulness, for sure.
Agreed, you shouldn't need to spend more than £5-£10 or $10-$20 on good lead, although I expect some companies will put their shoddy leads in that price range because they know what people look for.