Describing digital audio

B

B. W.

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I don't know if I would consider myself an "audiophile", but I can say that I know what sounds better to me.

What I don't understand is how some audio geeks describe how equipments sound. Some people just seem to toss around terms (darkened, lightened, harsh, muddy, etc.). There doesn't seem to be a uniform method to explaining everything. I would assume (you know what they say about assuming.. :eek: ) that some people don't know how to put what they hear into words or just don't know what their talking about, while others can get caught in the mix.

How can audio really be described? How do you explain how something sounds better or worse than something else?

Edit: Well I guess the term "digital" shouldn't have been used, but I'd still like some input on my question.
 
Those words you mentioned above are actually good descriptors. Others include airy, live, bright, warm, smooth, clean and punchy. They relate to certain measurable properties of sound, but they're used when it isn't possible to measure directly. You can use a combination of these words to describe an amplifier, for instance, and some tend to be mutually exclusive.

There is really no defining better or worse, except when it comes to quantified measurements. Without measurements, you can only describe the qualities of sound, and you can't say that something is "better" or "worse" because of those qualities - you can only say that it has those qualities.
 
phide said:
Those words you mentioned above are actually good descriptors. Others include airy, live, bright, warm, smooth, clean and punchy. They relate to certain measurable properties of sound, but they're used when it isn't possible to measure directly. You can use a combination of these words to describe an amplifier, for instance, and some tend to be mutually exclusive.
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That pretty much answers my questions. Using plausible attributes of sound does make sense, but I guess my next question is: what exactly does dark sound, sound like for instance? Or live, or smooth..

It may be a problem with me personally, but certain words don't seem to (accurately) animate sounds for me.
 
Can you tell me what your music sounds like? A simple question..complex answer.
Or what type of feeling you get listening to your music..gettin out there now
Without a definition of the sound, then it's just noise..could be loud noise or screechy noise. Point is you don't have to be a geek..You just have to be able to commuicate what you are hearing.
 
It's not always that easy though because a lot of people confuse the terms or they use different terms that are not even accurate.

For instance:
Bright = clear.
Dark = muddy.



How many time have you read terms like muddy used to describe the sound of Sennheiser headphones and then read that Grado headphones are clear on that headphone forum?
 
Here's what I know...

Digital is used to describe this digital glare that you get with digital upstream sources. Digital sources include CD Players, DACs, SACD Players, that sort a deal...

Anyway, once you hear digital glare, you wont likely forget it.

For me, the one time I heard digital glare was when we A/Bed a top notch CDP with a top notch Turntable vinyl setup.....

Digital glare is this harshness to the sonic images.... a sort of sonic "sandpaper"... kinda grates at you, very subtle though. And definitely hard to tell in less resolute speaker systems.
 
Just listened to my system....

Even in full onslaught... DAC turned on, Class A biased on the Plinius, NOS tubes in the Cary preamp.... through the ML Summits even....

STILL... I hear very slight digital glare... and I only detect it because I know how the vinyl version sounded like. :(

It's a sad reality... I need vinyl.
 
I agree completely..The problem is the English language.
An example..the word "like" has something like;) 14 different meanings.
In my native tongue, we have 36 letters in the alphabet..get your head around that one....My brain stops a XYZ
Somebody said "defining music is like singing to food" Rolling Stone
I am correcting what I wrote..
Somebody said "writing about music is like singing to food" Rolling Stone
 
sdgserv said:
I agree completely..The problem is the English language.
An example..the word "like" has something like;) 14 different meanings.
In my native tongue, we have 36 letters in the alphabet..get your head around that one....My brain stops a XYZ
Somebody said "defining music is like singing to food" Rolling Stone
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Describing it may be difficult, and auditioning with a buddy and hearing the same phenomenon and trying to talk it out in words with regards to something almost tangible (the music reproduction) on hand may be the only way to truly get the message across from one person to the next.

Until that day comes, words and descriptors are all we got.
 
Your right..One on one is a great way to clarify the definition of what you are hearing. Over the Internet it gets a little muddy.
 
Just imagine what you feel like when you listen to music through a setup. Now imagine where you might hear the same sound reproduction. That is where the words come from. Its how you feel when you listen to it. Its the personal qualitative measurement of a quantifiable measurement that can be taken with recording instruments. A digital or solid state amplifier may sound harsh because it is super accurate and quantitatively it might produce very angular triangle waves on an oscilloscope. Some call tube amps warm because they aren't as fast and accurate as solid state and can dull the harshness compared to other amps.

There are a million variables as to how systems sound, hence why there are audiophiles. They are just the same as wine drinkers, cigar smokers, beer connoisseurs, ect., they feed on the subtle differences in sound and enjoy tinkering with the different perspectives in the audio world.

I personally lack the diction or experience yet to perfectly explain how different setups sound, but I can give a general idea. I have heard some great systems, I have a lot of experience hearing mine (of course), I can somewhat convey my experience. That is all an audiophile is: someone who can describe the quality of sound and who relishes in the experience of finding the perfect sound.
 
Well, there is something I sometimes use to describe sound to friends. I would play something and then ask them what is their opinion. They would say "It sounds normal to me". Now, I go, and play the same file, but converted to a lower vibrate, play it again. Now they're like "ahhhhhh ok". That's because now they have something to compare it to.
So I think that to describe sound you need something to compare it to. That's why people that listen to more different setups sometimes give the better answers.
You get what I mean?
Also, depending on each persons experiences, their words are going to be different.
 
That is the main point of this discussion. People hear very different things in the same piece of audio. Audio is subjective. The water gets fair deeper when people start using terms like bright, airy, muddy...etc. Althogh they can and are used to descirbe certain measurable qualities. Some peice I would say sounds bright might sounds muddy to sombody else becasue of what they have heard. A person who listens to a $50,000 tube rig is likely to hear different things then a kid who has never heard anything other then MP3. It is all in the person reference points. Adding these terms try to solidify something that is at it's heart is a subjective discussion based on the persons experience and reference points.
 
The best way to get a good idea of what these words mean is to go audition some stuff with people that have been around it for a while. You don't get true perspective until you HAVE heard lots of different components in a range of prices and technologies.

Most audiophiles have heard plenty of gear at plenty of different prices, so they can fairly reliably use these terms to describe a certain piece of gear to one another, but it doesn't work so well when someone hasn't heard a whole range of things to use as a reference.

When reading a review, whether online or in a magazine, the better reviews will use a similar product as a reference, maybe one or several, to give people an idea of where this new product stands.

Going out and listening to *live* music, depending on what music you like, can be the ultimate reference. Jazz and Classical music mostly as pop, rock, and electronic aren't going to sound nearly as refined when blared on overworked PA speakers in a stadium.

Like everything in this world, sound quality is relative, and to get a good measure and understanding you need to go out and experience as much as you can.
 
Audioguy said:
Some peice I would say sounds bright might sounds muddy to sombody else becasue of what they have heard.
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That's an interesting point. There is a certain degree of relativity with some of these terms. A term like "bright" relates to certain tangible qualities, but one man's bright may be another man's neutral depending on the range of material the listeners have experienced.

For that reason, it becomes very difficult to apply these kinds of brush strokes liberally, and even more difficult to believe that the painter knows what he's talking about.
 
And that's why I don't review gear unless I'm asked directly. I haven't heard enough to be qualified to describe exactly what I'm hearing. I've heard a handful of headphones, with the DT880 being the clearest, so when asked, that is my answer. But I'm sure there are other headphones that might have even greater clarity, and someone who knows will say I'm clueless as to what I'm saying because to him, the DT880's aren't that clear. I'm not wrong, I'm just inexperienced. =T
 
I have had the DT 880's for about a year. I can agree on a "clear sound" or I would call it a detailed sound. Somebody else might describe it as "detailed but lacking in the bass" That would make me think that it is all mid to highs..Not true..plenty of bass, but not a Senn bass.
The more I think about this word game the more difficult it really is. It seem like everything is based on a common ground, except I don't know what that is. It appear that the definitions are evolving, like a language.
 
sdgserv said:
The more I think about this word game the more difficult it really is. It seem like everything is based on a common ground, except I don't know what that is. It appear that the definitions are evolving, like a language.
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The biggest issue is that the semantics we use for word-play when describing how an audio component sounds is based on what we perceive it to mean in the first place, couple that with inexperience from the getgo (as we all were or still are at the moment) and you develop massive misinterpretations.

IF, ideally, someone let someone listen to a musical reproduction and said... this is what muddy sounds like, then I think the learner's definition of muddy is better grounded. However, if the learner merely reads on the internet that muddy means something smushy or slow, well.... it's up to the learner to work up his personal biases and his definition of smushy to come up with a concrete meaning for the word muddy all by himself.

And this is, IMO, the reason why people use the same words describing different aspects of the sound. There isnt a formal unifying language for audio, just a bunch of hearsay.
 
Pinipig523 said:
Here's what I know...

Digital is used to describe this digital glare that you get with digital upstream sources. Digital sources include CD Players, DACs, SACD Players, that sort a deal...

Anyway, once you hear digital glare, you wont likely forget it.

For me, the one time I heard digital glare was when we A/Bed a top notch CDP with a top notch Turntable vinyl setup.....

Digital glare is this harshness to the sonic images.... a sort of sonic "sandpaper"... kinda grates at you, very subtle though. And definitely hard to tell in less resolute speaker systems.
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Visit these guys much?

acousticsounds.com
 
Pinipig523 I noticed that you have a Squeezbox3..How is that?..I am just about to pull the trigger on one of those. Good quality? I am not going to ask you what it sounds like.. lol
 
sdgserv said:
Pinipig523 I noticed that you have a Squeezbox3..How is that?..I am just about to pull the trigger on one of those. Good quality? I am not going to ask you what it sounds like.. lol
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Squeezebox 3 is real neat actually! A poor man's Sonos system. Lots of freeware on the net because of its open source, but regardless, its stock performance is great.

Easy to use and easy to navigate. The Slimserver for your PC is great too... you can control the SB3 from your PC and it's quick enough to know when you added new songs/albums to your Slimserver-monitored folders.

I like it a lot... the sound is OK, I thought it was slightly better than the analog outs of the XFi, it wasn't a night or day difference but I thought it was quite audible.

When you add a superb DAC though, you begin to run with the big boys.
 
Pinipig523 said:
I should... I really must get into vinyl, but the cost is very prohibitive, man.

It's expensive to start, and the upkeep is costly too. A few more improvements into my system before I look into vinyl...
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Now you see why I got out of it. I mean come on, 30K for a turntable LOL? There are crap loads of places to buy them at fair/er prices and a $599 Thorens 170 turn table is worth every penny.

Start at a place like this.

http://www.soundstagedirect.com/?gclid=CK7vg4zz8osCFQi9VAodY2oPUw
 
Pinipig523 said:
Donnie,

When I get back home from my shift in the ER, I'll post exactly which TT I'm looking to get and the associated stuff I have to get to get it going...
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I'm sure you have something better in mind.
 
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