Audiospeak Dictionaries....suggestions requested
From stereophile, most used adjectives:
eponymous: name on the box is name on the gear
black: absence of white
From stereophile, most used adjectives:
eponymous: name on the box is name on the gear
black: absence of white
Audiophool: One who purchases Tube-O-Lator op-amp lacquer to make them sound like tubes, then $200 harmonic knob lacquer to go on their $500 Silver Rock wooden knobs that create "positive vibrations", then plug their system into a Rhodium plated cryogenically treated power outlet to make the power cleaner, then claim the system sounds amazingly better, but who has never done a single blind AB test, and refuses to understand the "placebo" concept. You try to resist telling them how much better the system would sound if they just listened to it standing on their head . . .
Well there is this, a relatively comprehensive list from Moon Audio, don't consider my linking it as any sort of recommendation:
https://www.moon-audio.com/pages/audiophile-terms-guide
I generally avoid people who talk about audio extensively in these terms and don't brand it as opinion. Audiophile speak is often nebulous and hard to relate to something quantifiable. I am still struggling to relate acoustical measurements in my room to what I think I am hearing and still haven't figured out the language.
https://www.moon-audio.com/pages/audiophile-terms-guide
I generally avoid people who talk about audio extensively in these terms and don't brand it as opinion. Audiophile speak is often nebulous and hard to relate to something quantifiable. I am still struggling to relate acoustical measurements in my room to what I think I am hearing and still haven't figured out the language.
From J. Gorden Holt (RIP)@ Stereophile
Sounds Like? An Audio Glossary
Sounds Like? An Audio Glossary
https://www.stereophile.com/reference/50/index.html
Sorry, I thought this was a humorous post ("black: absence of white")- and thought it would be more fun to create our own. Unless you are forced to review a piece of equipment, a person describing how something sounds to them is like describing how "blue" looks to them. Sure, we can apply words, and even agree on them, but it does not really translate because the experience is so uniquely relative. I have high frequency hearing loss and tinnitus, but music still sounds beautiful to me. What I'm hearing and thinking is beautiful may be awful to you. (Probably why I still like germanium amps even though they might roll off at 8Khz.) Is this about being up on the latest lingo or having the most expansive knowledge of the technical terminology? What does "holographic" really mean to you?
The visual terms are meant to be analogies, and they can actually work pretty well. This lingo dates back to the 1940s.
I challenge somewhat that they can work pretty well- if you have a group of people with very similar hearing and experience, with a very similar shared context, that have listened to many different systems together, and exchanged detailed conversations together about the exact differences, they may be in sync. Otherwise, for a random group of people, you might say "Oh- listen to the shimmer and sparkle on those cymbals, and the dynamic and airy quality of the strings" and everybody looks at each other and nods. However, what I think of when hearing a word like shimmer or sparkle may be completely different than what they mean to another. Maybe with my hearing loss, what I associate with those terms is completely different than you, as you may be talking about something I cannot even hear. Throw a teenager in the mix with "factory new" hearing ability and all bets are off. I remember growing up I thought my cheap plastic stereo system sounded pretty good, then I heard one better, and another better still, each time thinking it sounded really excellent. Eventually I got up to equipment that was reasonably good (though probably still dog crap to those with megabuck$ to spend), and realized in looking back I was wrong, because I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about before now because I had no context for comparison.
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Over the decades, I have become one of the 'whatever makes you happy' crowd. Indeed, our personal experience with hearing , let alone the expectation bias that we all have, creates different or even no opinions (you know, don't know, don't care). I seem to have an unusual perspective for modern things that says something sounds better if it weighs more. Yup, everything that I build weighs a ton and that makes me proud. Makes me happy.
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Some quotes from https://www.harman.com/documents/audioscience_0.pdf
"it turned out that most people, most of the time,liked and disliked the same loudspeakers.Still, there were differences in the way listeners performed.While most were remarkably consistent in repeated evaluations of the same product, some others changed their opinions of the same product at different listening sessions. Those people could like a product during a listening evaluation, writing verbose descriptions of praiseworthy characteristics, and then, during a later test in which the same product appeared, the results would be dramatically different, with detailed notes describing intolerable problems.When this puzzling behavior was examined, it was found that the explanation lay in the hearing performance of the individuals. All of these erratic listeners had hearing loss.Listeners with relatively normal hearing tended to be quite consistent in their judgments from session to session.This important observation is paralleled by another, perhaps even more important one: that groups of such listeners closely agreed with each other. In other words, viewed in the broad perspective, good sound quality is not a matter of individual taste."
"Listeners with hearing loss not only exhibit high judgment variability, they can also exhibit strong individualistic biases in their judgments."
"Probably the single most apparent deficiency of novice listeners was the lack of a vocabulary to describe what they heard.Without such descriptions, most listeners found it difficult to be analytical in forming their judgments, and to remember how various test products sounded."
"it turned out that most people, most of the time,liked and disliked the same loudspeakers.Still, there were differences in the way listeners performed.While most were remarkably consistent in repeated evaluations of the same product, some others changed their opinions of the same product at different listening sessions. Those people could like a product during a listening evaluation, writing verbose descriptions of praiseworthy characteristics, and then, during a later test in which the same product appeared, the results would be dramatically different, with detailed notes describing intolerable problems.When this puzzling behavior was examined, it was found that the explanation lay in the hearing performance of the individuals. All of these erratic listeners had hearing loss.Listeners with relatively normal hearing tended to be quite consistent in their judgments from session to session.This important observation is paralleled by another, perhaps even more important one: that groups of such listeners closely agreed with each other. In other words, viewed in the broad perspective, good sound quality is not a matter of individual taste."
"Listeners with hearing loss not only exhibit high judgment variability, they can also exhibit strong individualistic biases in their judgments."
"Probably the single most apparent deficiency of novice listeners was the lack of a vocabulary to describe what they heard.Without such descriptions, most listeners found it difficult to be analytical in forming their judgments, and to remember how various test products sounded."
I would add that to hearing loss itself, hearing perception plays a role. That in fact, has been the sum of my listening/hearing since birth. My brain simply does not translate well, that which I hear. Most of my youth was confusing, as I could barely understand what people said. My hearing then was fine, but the translation that sound was not. Music, at least that which was instrumental was a saving grace to me, and I lived by all that I heard.
Now later in life where hearing loss is a reality, music still hangs on but is good some days and bad the next. What I have notice for most of my life is how little that people listen... to anything around them. I was always the one who said, "Did you hear that?"
Now later in life where hearing loss is a reality, music still hangs on but is good some days and bad the next. What I have notice for most of my life is how little that people listen... to anything around them. I was always the one who said, "Did you hear that?"
I fully understand, and agree with both the audioscience article, and what lxnay is saying about the difference between hearing capability versus perception or translation.
I definitely agree that my hearing loss, more specifically my tinnitus, will definitely dramatically change how I perceive a system or a particular piece of music day to day. One day a certain speaker will be grating, and intolerably fatiguing, and I may need to keep the volume low or just not listen that day. Others, I can crank it up, and find the same speaker tolerable or even pleasant. Being a logical and empirical data-driven ex-engineer (can you ever be ex engineer?) I understand this fully, so I design my experiment to address this- I listen to an array of system components over the span of days, or even weeks, listening to many different test tracks across both the good and the bad, and form a well considered consensus rooted within the context of the population of equipment.
I also fully agree that the vocabulary is essential, in helping to define the concepts that will not only guide our listening into particular details but to also be able to quantify to each other. My focus applied more to how the vocabulary is used- it is really only useful in an absolute comparison between system A and B within the same environment. Two people standing side by side as you AB- "this system sounds more transparent than the other. This system provides more detail in the high end" and you may agree even if your individual perceptions are radically different from each other. This is almost never the case. Most often it is used to describe the experience had by one person to another with no other context. For instance I can read a glowing and highly detailed review of a set of speakers using all of the known vocabulary. To a different person with the same relative experience and hearing ability, perhaps the in-person experience with the speakers will bear some resemblance to the expectations that the review formed in their head. Usually, it will not.
I definitely agree that my hearing loss, more specifically my tinnitus, will definitely dramatically change how I perceive a system or a particular piece of music day to day. One day a certain speaker will be grating, and intolerably fatiguing, and I may need to keep the volume low or just not listen that day. Others, I can crank it up, and find the same speaker tolerable or even pleasant. Being a logical and empirical data-driven ex-engineer (can you ever be ex engineer?) I understand this fully, so I design my experiment to address this- I listen to an array of system components over the span of days, or even weeks, listening to many different test tracks across both the good and the bad, and form a well considered consensus rooted within the context of the population of equipment.
I also fully agree that the vocabulary is essential, in helping to define the concepts that will not only guide our listening into particular details but to also be able to quantify to each other. My focus applied more to how the vocabulary is used- it is really only useful in an absolute comparison between system A and B within the same environment. Two people standing side by side as you AB- "this system sounds more transparent than the other. This system provides more detail in the high end" and you may agree even if your individual perceptions are radically different from each other. This is almost never the case. Most often it is used to describe the experience had by one person to another with no other context. For instance I can read a glowing and highly detailed review of a set of speakers using all of the known vocabulary. To a different person with the same relative experience and hearing ability, perhaps the in-person experience with the speakers will bear some resemblance to the expectations that the review formed in their head. Usually, it will not.
For me, I find very little be comparatively black or white, but the appreciation that lies between. These sorts of topics are most appreciated by me. Not so much of numbers, but the biological experience that we tune into. How many times have you hated an album on the first listen, just to switch your steps on a dime in the other direction?
Exactly. I don't usually switch on a dime, but over time. An album, just like a pair of speakers needs to wear in, in this case wear into the gray squishy matter- once the album becomes familiar it sounds so much smoother and I can discover layers and elements I never had before.
Has anyone else noticed this- After not listening to any music for a few days, you can turn on a fairly crappy system, and it actually sounds OK, maybe better than you remember. Then you go to your "reference" system, and be surprised at how much better that sounds, (and remembering what really good sounds like) then go back to the crappy system and it now sounds like garbage? Maybe this is an indication to me how much my gray squishy computer is processing and compensating for what my ears want to hear and cannot. I frequently have to go back to my reference system for a reference point, and AB if I can to really tell the differences.
My wife, who has much better hearing than I (fewer rock concerts, power tools and firearms) will listen to my different systems and she says she really can't hear much of a difference. She does not understand why I make such a big deal and gush about some new speaker or DAC.
@wparks -- some women have awful music hearing, but they can instantly hear you brain whirring when you are "eyeing" another gal younger than they.
That audio glossary is a hoot. I was given a copy when I visited Ed Dell, the owner of Audio Amateur and a close friend of J Gordon.
It has glossary entries like:
"Casette - a small caset".
"Accuracy - the ultimate objective of an ideal sound system, which everyone claims to want but nobody likes when he has it"
"Ghettoblaster - A portable stereo radio/cassette player, by means of which insignificant people make their presence known by annoying everyone around them"
I could go on and on. Great sense of humour.
Jan
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I guess that is why I did not get it- I don't have the book. Sounds like great fun.
Yes- my wife can detect any aberrant thought while it is happening (she is quite psychic that way) but also complains why it is I obsess about watching my favorite movies in high def (blu-ray at least), saying it's all the same and makes no difference. Seems she is happy listening to music on her phone, and watching VHS . . .