Exactly. Set aside the comparing guitar effects to allegedly HiFi equipment sound nonsense,
Uhm..it's not nonsense. What magic dividing line are you drawing between the legitimacy of describing sound in one case vs the other? (Hint: there is no legitimate line....describing sound is describing sound, whatever the situation).
the conveyed response is always a kind of personal word salad.
Or..it's an indication someone doesn't have a facility with, or interest in, communicating in non-technical language.
It may not be "the other guy's problem." ;-)
I work in the real world, where informal communication about sound is possible, useful, necessary. I suppose some have the luxury of ignoring such facts...though I think the objections will still be inconsistent given how the same people routinely communicate information informally all day long.
Call me when the audiophile crowd members independently agree on sound definitions. Not holding my breath.
But to communicate you don't need (or most people don't need) to have EVERYONE agree on a distinct terminology. You just need to be able to get the gist of what any individual (or group) is trying to describe! If that weren't the case, nobody could ever describe anything new in their experience!
Now there is lots of terminology used by audiophiles. For instance if my audiophile pal has two speakers and describes one has having "tighter, more focused imagining" but the others "more diffuse imaging but a sense of a more expansive soundstage" I know what he means, what he's conveying. Whether you do or not. (And when I hear his gear...yeah...his descriptions tend to be accurate).
And we don't even need to already have in place specific terminology to describe something. That's why humans routinely put different words together to create new meaning or convey ideas and impressions! In my sound design work I'm continually confronted with discussions for "how something should sound" for which there is no simple agreed on terminology per se - for instance the sound design for a new alien or alien ship or some supernatural realm or whatever. So we put different words together to convey what we mean, and we get the job done. If I took that stance that I could ONLY understand what anyone was trying to convey IF they put it in measurements or IF they could point me towards some already established dictionary of terminology, and that otherwise "It's all just word salad that means nothing and I can't understand it..." then I'd be fired. Because, you see, plenty of people would replace me who CAN understand what is being conveyed. This is what happens when you really want to understand what someone is communicating, rather than finding ways to dismiss imprecise language as meaningless or useless.
There really must be something about the engineer-mindset running through this forum, given how common this discomfort with informal descriptive language is, particularly about sound.
So for instance, let's take some segments from a speaker review. Here's an old one by Gordon Holt/Stereophile, for the Spendor BC1. Some of his descriptions:
"Let it first be said that this speaker does have shortcomings, not the least of which includes a tendency toward mid-bass drumminess and a mild but sharp peak around 12kHz, which adds a subtle hissing edge to the sound of massed violins. Above about 12kHz, the high end falls off rapidly, resulting in a perceptible deficiency of airiness."
Note that that he not only mentions measurements, but explains "how it SOUNDS" - especially helpful for someone who may not know what the audible consequences of, for instance, the 12kHz frequency peak and decline would have for music played through the speaker. If the subjective terms of "mid-bass drumminess" and "subtle hissing edge" and "deficiency of airiness" really leave you baffled...just can't picture at all what Holt is describing....well..ok...but I think is more likely about a certain individual reader than it would about the ability of language to communicate aspects of sound to others.
Also:
"Its assets include truly remarkable reproduction of depth and superb imaging and scale (footnote 2). Instrumental placement remains stable across the stereo "stage" between the speakers, and there is no tendency toward that U configuration where center instruments sound distant and vaguely imaged while flanking ones are definite but crowded toward the sides."
Again, if you truly have not experienced the type of differences in presentation he is alluding to among different speakers - e.g. the U-shaped impression of imaging/soundstage, then I guess you won't get what he is describing.
If you read those descriptive parts and truly just throw up your hands "I just can't really imagine or understand what he's trying to get across" then...well...I guess descriptive language for sound ain't your bag, and yes, you personally require more precision to be comfortable. That doesn't make it nonsense for others, though.
