The Raw curve is basically very good for a speaker in a room. The Room Perfect curves, though better still aren't up to professional standards. I'd be pulling my hair with that boost at 40 hz. With a Stereo 4 0r 5 band Klarke Techniq or two mono UREI, parametric Eq, you really could get a much better curve. Like I say I'm flat with in a 3db envelope between 25 and 4000 hz. I maintain a little wider envelop with a 3 db centered down slop to 10,000. Then I roll off another 3 or 4 db to 18 KHZ. Current systems are controlled with digital processors to with in 1 db. Personally I don't like automated systems. Preferring to choose the curve to meet the room and the loudspeaker system selected. With some speakers like Bozaks that tend to be a little warm, you want a flat woofer response. While with speakers like the ML and XR series, 1 or 2 db boost might be more to my liking. The current woofers using ports, I would have to experiment. Basically the 290's are dry and I would prefer that 2 db boost to be below 70 hz. Altecs and Horn loaded JBL and Klipsch Heritage speakers like my Bozaks need to e kept almost perfectly flat below 250 hz. Because of using horns I would put a 2 db dip in the range they cover and then start the 2.5 to 5 Khz roll off depending on your listening choices.
The one thing we haven't talked about is the room. The environment your speakers are located in. How much of the sound you are hearing initially is the first wave front arrival and how much is the reverberation of the room. Line arrays, especially the 290, should present a very accurate first wave to just above the mid/woofer crossover frequency. And the frequencies below are so influenced by the room taking your measurements at the sweet spot are OK. But the ear is really influenced by early arrivals as frequency rises so as to be able to discern directionality, or where the source comes from. So I check the out put of the speaker at 4ft, too. Just making sure the early sound from the speaker is correct, too. If it is not I tend to message the response to get an average of the two. And this is what Room perfect does in a more sophisticated way, But I want to be in control of the averaging. A db or two in the 250 to 5000 hz spectrum can really change the over all sound of a recording. Though I am not a trained professional musician I can appreciate what they listen for and most of the time its different from what the rest of us do. They want that first wave to be very accurate and they can listen through the sound of the reflections. I am easily influenced, and is why I don't like point source speakers. I want horns and prefer line arrays. That said you can have to much of a good thing. Big highly directional horns, from EV, Altec, or JBL aren't my thing either.
The advantage of having a really controlled frequency speaker response is it not only to control the accuracy of the spectral response but with speaker designs that were made with great care the corrections also reduce the timing errors. Which is something Room perfect is suppose to do, too. and is very important, in fact, fundamental in getting an accurate mental picture of the performance.
That said, As Don Davis , Altec and Syn-Aud-Con, use to say if you can't get the timing issues right its better for the listening experience to be way off with your driver Alignment. Thats why people have accepted Klipsch Heritage speakers. The fact their drivers are not coherent has the same effect as room properties reflections being different at different frequency bands. And remember like Bose, Paul was trying to produce an illusion of a real performance. Not the accuracy of the illusion the recording engineer and producer heard in the studio.
Remember folks this is all smoke and mirrors, so don't think the image we try to create in our homes is to be Gospel. Its not, we are trying to accurately reproduce an illusion.
Of course there are exceptions. Folks who make Stereo recordings with a single stereo mic located to capture the performers first with a hint of room thrown in can be just down right scary when reproduced with line array speakers in a soft room. No illusion there folks. I have made any number of those recordings. Norad band, US Navy Band, Barbershop finals, and my favorite Steam engine recordings. Pipe organ, Dixie land Band, Brass and string quartets and Quintets, Pianos and harps were on the list, too. UP 8444, SP 4449 flying buy at 75 mph at 110 db is a real thrill. And there is absolutely no way of producing the roar of 8444 as she glides by a crossing a 10 mph try ing to accelerate under full throttle while you stand at almost arms reach. There just aren't that many woofers in one room to shake the earth/your room and body. My favorite engines are 611 and 1218 of the N&W. So smooth, perfect mechanical machines with out a stray sound out of place. No clinks, Clanks, bangs, knocks to distract from that wonder full sound of a big steam boiler producing that raw energy to be applied to cylinders driving pistons connected to rods turning massive 80" discs of steel to propel almost a million pounds of machine down the rails. When I play those sounds on my system and it brings back those memories, what more could you ask a system to do?
