That's what I'd ask as well. I understand the terms as they can apply to music, and perhaps there's even a bit of it in some electronics, particularly if there's any processing involved, but then we're talking about amplifiers.
We can wax poetic all we want about amplifiers with good timing or amplifiers with sweet treble or amplifiers with a deep soundstage, but with nearly a 100% success rate, you can troll the person saying these things with a bed sheet and a 3 way switch..and have them claiming amplifier B is the one with better treble resolution than amplifier C...when it was amplifier A playing the whole time.
I mean...if people have the same success rate with this stuff as they do with guesswork, then...why even bother trying to put names on stuff, it just seems silly.
DrDyna
On page 3 of this thread, I spoke about the limitations of A/B testing and gave an illustrative example. Psycho-acoustics and mnemonic testing show clearly the brain's ability to fill out and smooth over defects as necessary to get to the essence of something. Perversely, the more capable the brain is at distilling facts to their core meaning, the more likely that person will be made a fool of in one of these tests. Stuff doesn't have to exist in the quantum realm to be weird.
On page 3 of this thread, I spoke about the limitations of A/B testing and gave an illustrative example. Psycho-acoustics and mnemonic testing show clearly the brain's ability to fill out and smooth over defects as necessary to get to the essence of something. Perversely, the more capable the brain is at distilling facts to their core meaning, the more likely that person will be made a fool of in one of these tests. Stuff doesn't have to exist in the quantum realm to be weird.
Exactly!
These days, way to often. audio is described like someone trying to describe a color by saying it's "eventful".. etc.
What does does an ambiguous term mean? Absolutely nothing.
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The trouble is, every now and again just about everyone hears really great audio - so, you want to try and describe that experience, to somebody else, in some meaningful way. Just saying, well, it had lower distortion than most of what I normally hear, is pretty dull, dry, not very informative; so, you use somewhat emotive terms to try and convey the sense of what you heard ...
........and therein lies the problem..
You can say that a cake tastes "good"...."flavorful" etc but it you don't have/know the exact ingredients necessary to reproduce it, what good are those ambiguous terms?
I have asked this question many times and have not received an answer, from any of the directionality brigade, same with hook up wire used in amps...is this catered for.
Sorry but no.
Pace, Rhythm and Timing are adjectives which describe Music itself.
Whether it's live or reproduced is irrelevant.
If somebody uses those terms to describe something else, only result will be to create confusion.
Doubly so if we already have perfectly good and accurate words to describe that "something else", be it frequency response, distortion, SPL, gain, phase, whatever.
Triple so if no "translation table" is posted defining what does each of such misused words exactly mean.
Now we are talking
My gripe here is not with that, which can and does happen, but on the words used to describe them.
Cool, so you used an extra piece of equipment to "delay the woofer by about 3 meters" .E.G. - A couple of months ago my buddy D.S. and I wanted to play a joke on the audio techs at work. We screwed with the system they use for background music in the shop. We delayed the woofer by about 3 meters. Sounded a real hot mess - way out of time. They never noticed.
To boot you had to selectively pick part of the audio signal (whatever the woofer reproduces) , delay it, bring it back and mix it with the rest.
Look at all the trouble and extra equipment you had to go through just to get that delay in the reproduced sound.
My doubt is: can you name just one Hi Fi amplifier of the kind we are talking about which has such a poor slew rate that bass gets delayed by 3 meters?
I mean by itself, not by extra equipment.
Fully agree, but there are some VERY poor choices, one of the worst being PRAT, the main culprit is that it uses terms applied to something that is also Music related, but in an entirely different area.
Example: if I am comparing amplifiers A and B , it is acceptable that I write, for example, that amp A sound is creamier than B's , crunchier than B, smoother than B, etc. because such terms can be considered "poetic" and clearly are not Technical terms, nobody will ever understand that amp A is covered in a thick layer of whipped cream, sprinkled with fresh crunchy popcorn and that covered in a smooth layer of chocolate mousse or whatever, BUT if I use "PRAT", lots of confusion arise.
This very thread is an example.
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JMFahey
The adjectives "creamier" and "crunchier seem to fall mostly in the timbral accuracy description but also in the PRaT category. I say this because an audio system that reproduces the signal with harder edges is likely to sound crunchier and one that is more forgiving in those two categories will be creamier. My point is that there needs to be a framework to correlate what we measure to the end result of the sound we hear. You cannot build this framework without first describing comprehensively the categories of these sonic attributes. In my opinion, the two descriptions you submitted are not comprehensive and are likely to be described better by my audio postulates but I am open to any other set of descriptions that can say in words everything we can hear.
Hiten
On the contrary, those three postulates can be common to both. Indeed, they should be the universal attributes to everything we hear.
JoeDJ
I don't believe that is so. My postulates are the ingredients of what we hear and the recipe is the ratio mix of all three. I never said you couldn't come up with other ingredients to do the same thing. If it happens that another member can offer a better set, great. I'm all about consensus and this framework wont happen until we can agree on the ingredient descriptions.
The adjectives "creamier" and "crunchier seem to fall mostly in the timbral accuracy description but also in the PRaT category. I say this because an audio system that reproduces the signal with harder edges is likely to sound crunchier and one that is more forgiving in those two categories will be creamier. My point is that there needs to be a framework to correlate what we measure to the end result of the sound we hear. You cannot build this framework without first describing comprehensively the categories of these sonic attributes. In my opinion, the two descriptions you submitted are not comprehensive and are likely to be described better by my audio postulates but I am open to any other set of descriptions that can say in words everything we can hear.
Hiten
On the contrary, those three postulates can be common to both. Indeed, they should be the universal attributes to everything we hear.
JoeDJ
I don't believe that is so. My postulates are the ingredients of what we hear and the recipe is the ratio mix of all three. I never said you couldn't come up with other ingredients to do the same thing. If it happens that another member can offer a better set, great. I'm all about consensus and this framework wont happen until we can agree on the ingredient descriptions.
I don't think that was the point of the story at all. It was more that even gross "problems" may not be noticed by many listeners, if they don't notice such glaring issues then what is the chance that they will notice subtle effects
Tony.
.....
My position is..... for example..... that one can not get good "sound stage" if they the do not even know how to achieve it as the term is so ambiguous and meaningless.
However the average consumer unschooled in good audio is positive that they want it........ whatever "sound stage" is.
As pointed out by others, there are real definable parameters and terms used to define and achieve accurate audio that the avenge consumer used to be aware of.
What happened is shady electronic companies gradually began using ambiguous marketing terms as they were embarrassed to publish real meaningful/relevant specs and those terms have now become the norm for the most part .....except for high end components.
The average dumbed down audio consumer will tell you for example that they absolutely do not want a " flat" response for their system/ room acoustics as they think "flat"just means "lifeless"
.
However the average consumer unschooled in good audio is positive that they want it........ whatever "sound stage" is.
As pointed out by others, there are real definable parameters and terms used to define and achieve accurate audio that the avenge consumer used to be aware of.
What happened is shady electronic companies gradually began using ambiguous marketing terms as they were embarrassed to publish real meaningful/relevant specs and those terms have now become the norm for the most part .....except for high end components.
The average dumbed down audio consumer will tell you for example that they absolutely do not want a " flat" response for their system/ room acoustics as they think "flat"just means "lifeless"
.
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I would like to say that IF I ignored subjective listening, which includes the effects of 'voicing', I would have been run out of the business, at least a decade ago or more.
You HAVE to listen to the listening opinions of other serious audiophiles, when they have a good set of ears. It is like test driving a car and getting driver feedback from experienced drivers. Who says that the computer put everything in exactly the right place. How can you measure 'comfort' for example?
I have had to do two amp redesigns over the past 20 years, because they failed the 'listening' test, yet did just fine on paper and with actual measurements. IF I had ignored my critics, and not made subtle changes, I would not be a noted designer today.
Now, the next thing to discuss is: What does make a difference, when normal measurements fail? (to be continued)
You HAVE to listen to the listening opinions of other serious audiophiles, when they have a good set of ears. It is like test driving a car and getting driver feedback from experienced drivers. Who says that the computer put everything in exactly the right place. How can you measure 'comfort' for example?
I have had to do two amp redesigns over the past 20 years, because they failed the 'listening' test, yet did just fine on paper and with actual measurements. IF I had ignored my critics, and not made subtle changes, I would not be a noted designer today.
Now, the next thing to discuss is: What does make a difference, when normal measurements fail? (to be continued)
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