What's your favorite (or most loathed) creative description?

[tsv_1]

Hey Guys... we've all been swimming (and sometimes drowning) in these various descriptive terms for years. Most of us have used/abused them as well. We seek to find meaningful analogs, often attempting to graft other sensory experiences to the audible world. Some have meaning, some are just pure horse kahkah. But how else to describe sound using words in a written format for others to read?

Here are a few that tickle my cochleae... love to "hear" some of yours as well

- "Liquid midrange"
- "Clinical presentation"
- "Authorititive bass"
- "Transcendent coherence"
- "Dissappearing speakers"

Cheers all!

 

[User211]

Describing Martin Logans as "transparent" sounding always makes me giggle, when it seems so closely related to the fact that the speakers themselves are indeed visually transparent.

"Subterrainian bass" - what does bass sound like under the ground?

"Inky black background" - WTF? Since when is anything audible associated with a colour? On drugs, these 'philes. And good ones, too, by the sound of things. Indeed, only last night I thought my system sounded a bit mauve, with pink overtones in the slightly yellowsh upper reaches.

 

[zaphod]

guy i know had "disappearing speakers"

unfortunately, the rest of his system disappeared with them as the thieves cleaned out his entire kit in one fell swoop.

one of my favourite love/hates is "colouration in the sound"

 

[RUR]

"Fast bass"
"PRAT"
"Veils were lifted"

are all near the top of my list.

 

[Speedskater]

On "transparent" sounding, Bruno Putzeys writes:

Originally Posted by ******
So you don't experience some of the opposite; That bad recordings start to sound even harsher and more grainy due to more transparency?

That sort of thing commonly happens on replay systems which try to "sound transparent". It's a bit of a terminology thing. Some people use the word to mean "you get a barrage of details thrown at you", others use it to say "can't hear it do anything to the sound at all".

The first kind of "transparency" is actually a euphonic wow-effect which you can create by dipping the frequency response a dB or two in two places (600Hz and 2kHz) and optionally adding a small bit of HF distortion in the electronics (e.g. using all power FETs and no feedback). That produces what reviewers would describe as "startling clarity" and indeed such a system tends to overemphasize some of the things that bad recordings do badly.

But in the latter case (true transparency), when a recording sounds mucky, you only get the exact amount of muck that was in the recording, not artificially enlarged by the magnifying glass of an overzealous loudspeaker.

I knew all of this in theory until recently when the pieces in my active speaker design really started to fall into place. I now know it in practice too These days I can listen to literally anything on my main system. I no longer need a ghetto blaster on the side to listen to second rate stuff and make it listenable. I hear precisely what the recording does wrong but it doesn't keep unnecessarily drawing my attention to it. I can just get on with the music.

 

[slowGEEZR]

I can appreciate the difficulty in trying to describe how a system sounds, so I kinda like the flowery terms a lot of writers use. One I never could get though, was PRAT. Doesn't that just mean speed linearity?

 

[JonFo]

I'm with Ken (RUR) on this one:

'Fast bass' is the term that drives me nuts.

a frequency range is low-distortion or it's not. Superman might be 'fast' but not bass.

 

[User211]

I'm with Ken (RUR) on this one:

'Fast bass' is the term that drives me nuts.

a frequency range is low-distortion or it's not. Superman might be 'fast' but not bass.

In theory, definitely. After all it is the slowest part of the frequency range in terms of Hz. However, it requires the greatest excursions from a driver. Quite simply, poor drivers, especially cone drivers with substantial mass and insufficient magnet strength/amp power simply won't track it properly and will sound slow subjectively.

Well reproduced LF can sound surprisingly fast. Just what I think - I might be wrong.

 

[tsv_1]

In theory, definitely. After all it is the slowest part of the frequency range in terms of Hz. However, it requires the greatest excursions from a driver. Quite simply, poor drivers, especially cone drivers with substantial mass and insufficient magnet strength/amp power simply won't track it properly and will sound slow subjectively.

Well reproduced LF can sound surprisingly fast. Just what I think - I might be wrong.

Is there such a thing as subjective objectivity?

BTW, Justin... what did Santa bring you? Or Father Christmas, Or Ruprecht the child abuser... or whomever leaves you lumps of coal and assorted whatnots each december the 25th...?

 

[Gordon Gray]

I can appreciate the difficulty in trying to describe how a system sounds, so I kinda like the flowery terms a lot of writers use. One I never could get though, was PRAT. Doesn't that just mean speed linearity?

Steve,

I believe it's pace, rhythm, and timing.

Gordon

 

[tsv_1]

Steve,

I believe it's pace, rhythm, and timing.

Gordon

Come on Gordon, you must have a few favorite (or not) terms of audio-endearment... care to share?

 

[RUR]

Quite simply, poor drivers, especially cone drivers with substantial mass and insufficient magnet strength/amp power simply won't track it properly....

Sure, but our goal, then, is to buy subs with only well-designed drivers and adequate amplification, no? Dunno if you missed it, Justin, but FOH, over @ AVS, wrote a very well-written summary of factors which affect good sub/bass performance and integration, which I posted here, and which addresses, among other things, the fallacy of small driver = "speed".

As they do for many attributes of sound quality, subjective terms abound for accurate bass. Turns out that the Acoustic Research Centre of the University of Salford (your neck of the woods, Justin), wrote an AES paper which endeavors to find common attributes of, and to create a common language for description of good bass reproduction. Entitled "Improving the Assessment of Low Frequency Room Acoustics using Descriptive Analysis", one can pay $20 to purchase and read the entire paper, or read a brief summary found here.

In some utopian world, we'd all be talking about things like measured driver distortion, FR linearity and decay times. These are the true descriptors of good bass performance.

 

[Bernard]

- "Liquid midrange"

Todd, for some reason every time I hear Marilyn Horne (an American mezzo) sing, I think of honey, so there's your liquid midrange
She does an incredible job on "Carmen".

I have a problem with "Palpable bass".

Does "fast bass" mean no overhang - it starts and stops quickly ?

 

[RUR]

Does "fast bass" mean no overhang - it starts and stops quickly ?

See, there's the problem, Bernard. I'm not even sure what "starts and stops quickly" means. I'll bet if we did a poll about the definition of "fast bass", we'd get multiple answers.

OTOH, I do know what linear FR, good decay and good integration with the mains sounds like.

 

[repman]

Euphonic, not sure I always get this one but I understand the reality of trying to use words to describe a sound can be difficult. I think for the most part reviewers do a pretty good job of getting their point of view across to a reader. I have auditioned gear that I read a review on and for the most part got what the writer was trying to put across to me.

 

[Gordon Gray]

Come on Gordon, you must have a few favorite (or not) terms of audio-endearment... care to share?

Organic. UGH!

Musicality, or connecting emotionally with the music works for me.

Or at its most basic "PFG"

GG.

 

[tsv_1]

Organic. UGH!

Musicality, or connecting emotionally with the music works for me.

Or at its most basic "PFG"

GG.

Indeed: "Organic"... I guess that means covered with dirt and very short-lived once harvested.

Here are some terms I'd like to see used more liberally when describing less than acceptable system performance:

"Fundamentally offensive", "Steaming pile of Sh!t", "Opaque", "Fractured", "Vapid", "Unlistenable" and "Satan's symphony of despair"

 

[RUR]

Here are some terms I'd like to see used more liberally when describing less than acceptable system performance:... "Satan's symphony of despair"

Shoot, that's the perfect description when I play this. :devil:

Oddly enough, it really shows off the fast bass in my system.






Especially when using Owsley microdots.

 

[beek]

Especially when using Owsley microdots.....Wow!


Pace? does that mean your a/c to the TT is low?

 

[bzr]

...blacker blacks....blahbl blah blah, seriously, who turned the lights out?