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Audiophilia and its discontents

kemmler3D

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I have to translate people's informal language - sonic requests - in to actual results all the time.
I think this is why you get more out of subjective language than many of the EE types around here.

Subjective language is useful so long as you (feel you) can translate it into quantitative adjustments or measurements with an acceptable success rate. In your work you've done this so often that it doesn't seem very hard to you.

I think you should likewise take people at their word here when they say something like "crunchy" is literally meaningless to them. They may be exaggerating a bit, but without any experience trying to translate between subjective and objective, it may seem like a total black box to them. If your entire audiophile life has been spent in an engineering context, you really might not have any sense of what "crunchy" might sound like.
 

syn08

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If your entire audiophile life has been spent in an engineering context, you really might not have any sense of what "crunchy" might sound like.

Ok, I’ll take the bait: and how does “crunchy” sound? How do I differentiate a “crunchy” sound from, say, a “bright” sound.
 

MattHooper

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Ok, I’ll take the bait: and how does “crunchy” sound? How do I differentiate a “crunchy” sound from, say, a “bright” sound.
Well, this is all about trying to convey things in words, what we do with other people lots of the time. (Maybe, in fact, some people actually don't have as much interest in or facility with putting impressions in to language...?...)

Crunchy is typically used to invoke a sense of texture, not necessarily frequency response (though one could say a certain frequency range sounds "crunchy").

You should be familiar, through experience, with the sound..or the feel..of different textures. For "sandy" think of running your hand through the fine grains of sand, or letting sand drop in a funnel from your hand in to a pile. The fine grain produces a somewhat smooth almost slightly hissy timbre.

Compare that to "crunch." Think if you had a bowl of...ok...Captain Crunch cereal...and you reached in grabbed a handful and compacted them. That's going to produce a different granular sound than the fine grains of sand, right?

Now, admittedly if we are talking about audio equipment, I can't remember the last time I heard a speaker with a "crunchy" distortion. But if someone described upper midrange distortion in a speaker as sounding "crunchy" rather than, say, steely or sandy, I'd have a general sense of the textural sound they are trying to convey (maybe that's because I can think of how I'd manipulate a sound, e.g. with certain plug-ins, to get a more "crunchy" sound. For instance running a sound through a Lo-Fi pluggin and manipulating the sample rate/sample size/anti-alias....).

Would you have a problem imagining what someone meant if they heard a "crunchy" distortion coming from a speaker?

BTW, guitarists have been using "Crunchy" for a long time for certain types of guitar tone:


What is a crunch tone? This is a tone that has been pushed into overdrive. Classic Rock songs use crunch tones as their main rhythm sound. This is best described as a distorted rhythm.

A crunch tone will have more sustain than a clean tone but less than an all out lead or distortion sound.


 

olbobcat

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Let's hypothesize a bit. Let's say I'm well familiarized with sound of accoustic instruments played in various spaces thanks to attending live acoustical events throughout my life. Now let's say we have a recording of accoustic instruments that was carefully recorded with realism in mind and then only minimally altered in mastering with huge crest factor. Now it would seem logical to me that I want my system reproduce it without any blemish if I want to retain the intended realism, I don't want any imd, thd, emphasis on any frequency etc. Now when all that is achieved and what I hear is consistent with what I'm familiar, then I'd say my system is natural and accurate or at least it can resolve what is natural and accurate.

This view of mine also highly challanges many audiophile indulgences:
Vinyl doesn't sound natural or accurate to me, I don't remember my music having cracks, clicks, pops, noise etc,
Tubes with high distortion are the very anathema of realism for me, how can I call a tinted lens as accurately showing real color?
I have seen a lot of live music, mostly non-acoustic. So what is realism for me would be more of a pro-PA sound. I once read that what was used as a studio monitor in a particular era makes a difference. Not going to hear it the same as they did recording it without a speaker that is close to what they were using.
 

kemmler3D

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how does “crunchy” sound? How do I differentiate a “crunchy” sound from, say, a “bright” sound.
Like @MattHooper says, you generally start with comparisons to things that are literally crunchy. Leaves, cereal, overcooked tortilla chips. When those things make a sound, they tend to have a common character, so you'd look for something like that character in the speaker's sound. My guess would be that it's badly distorted or crackling intermittently.

As for bright, well, that one's hard, because it's mostly defined by convention, but if you consider the sound effects typically used in TV and movies when something is bright, they are uniformly high-pitched and either have a ringing or sizzling/noise sound. So you'd expect the sound of the speaker to be more biased towards those frequencies, i.e. treble.

Might be a reach but at least that's how the thought process works for me.
 

kongwee

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Many people who play instrument know you could never have a hifi sound close to live. You choose musical instrument for playability and timbre. Why not SET with horn that you wanna rush home and play music?
 

kongwee

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People who play musical instruments are poor judges. They have very little idea how their music sounds to an audience. To find out, they must listen to a recording.
All you need is to record on phone and listen how good you play. You don't need 8361 to know. Player have no control on how their playing project to the audience. They are not sound engineer.
 

MattHooper

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If that's what you wish to do, then go ahead. No one is stopping you. You .... or anyone else ..... can listen to an SET and horn (and enjoy it) as much as you desire.

Other people would rather try their best to listen to the music on the recording. It's a personal choice. :)

Jim

While I believe I understand the point you are making - also inferring from what you have written elsewhere about people listening for gear coloration rather than the music - there's more than a whiff of the old Audiophile Purity Test implied there. "I'm in it for the music - YOU are in it to hear the gear!" (Not judging..but, yeah, kinda judging...because everyone knows this should be All About The Music).

Most people listen on gear that is pretty colored - very few music consumers using Revel or Genelec or any of the transducers revered on this site. But that doesn't mean they aren't "listening to the music." Nor does it imply the same for any audiophile who has chosen the system he likes for his music listening pleasure. I mean, anyone on this forum may have a pair of speakers, or have a situation where they prefer a slight shelving of, say, high frequencies in certain area, that makes the sound generally more agreeable. Does any deviation at all from neutral therefore entail "this person isn't listening to the music, he's listening to the gear?" That would seem to me to be a strangely judgemental take.

Who are we to judge how lost someone is in their music when listening? An ASR member may, for instance, be more distracted by some frequency anomaly in his room, than any "normal" music listener, and then be compelled to spend time measuring, discussing measurements on forums, fiddling with sub crossover points etc, trying to alter the sound. Many members here spend a lot of their time and thinking on extra-musical aspects of the hobby! So, again...that glass house and all, if we are trying to imply others are more interested in extra-musical stuff than "we" are.
 

olbobcat

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Correct!

Take a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's First Symphony, for instance. The orchestra has a string section. In the string section are violins. Although those violinists know very well how the violin sounds to them, they don't know how the strings sound to the audience. Even worse, they have hardly any idea how the whole orchestra sounds to the audience. That's why an orchestra has a conductor, and why the conductor is placed center and slightly above the plane of the orchestra.

And THAT is the sound that an audience hears, and a listener hears off a recording. THAT is the sound listeners (later) judge to be an accurate representation of what they heard in the concert hall; not what the string section heard, and certainly not what that single violinist heard.

So the sound that a listener judges to be "live" is a sound that the violinist never hears. They can't hear it. And the sound that they "know you could never have ..... close to live" is a sound that an audience never hears. The recording engineer never hears it. Maybe the conductor hears it, and maybe not.

We can't hear what they hear, and they can't hear what we hear. That's why they are a poor judge.


Jim
I would think most types of live music would have similar problems.
 

Ported

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I think it's transducers either end of the chain that are still even now very lacking (mics and speakiers)+ the psychoacoustics which allow the human ear in amoungst a bunch of musicians to hear everything precicely, energetically and well separated. Put 2 microphones in the same spot.. record then play back .. all of a sudden the reverberations of the room seem most apparent and not everything is in balance etc. The job of the sound engineer is to then plug the gaps as best possible... Multiple mics, choice of mike's and distance etc. Then maybe altering dynamics to keep certain things in the mix.

I did read an article (can't find the reference right now) where folks are working on measuring sound waves just by looking at them in some form of electromagnetic way rather than them having to move a diaphragm of some sort in order to be measured (recorded). I have high hopes for a step change for one end of the chain if the comes to fruition.
 

egellings

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I think it's transducers either end of the chain that are still even now very lacking (mics and speakiers)+ the psychoacoustics which allow the human ear in amoungst a bunch of musicians to hear everything precicely, energetically and well separated. Put 2 microphones in the same spot.. record then play back .. all of a sudden the reverberations of the room seem most apparent and not everything is in balance etc. The job of the sound engineer is to then plug the gaps as best possible... Multiple mics, choice of mike's and distance etc. Then maybe altering dynamics to keep certain things in the mix.

I did read an article (can't find the reference right now) where folks are working on measuring sound waves just by looking at them in some form of electromagnetic way rather than them having to move a diaphragm of some sort in order to be measured (recorded). I have high hopes for a step change for one end of the chain if the comes to fruition.
I am not experienced in audio recording at all, but I suspect that a mic can be a far more accurate transducer than a speaker can.
 

krabapple

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deja vu all over again


Moderators, maybe just tack this thread onto that one, if we must blather on some more about it.
 

fpitas

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Evidently, this is the winter of our discontent.
 

kemmler3D

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We can't hear what they hear, and they can't hear what we hear. That's why they are a poor judge.
I'm going to guess most professional musicians have more time spent in the audience of concerts in their genre than the average listener, even if they can't hear what the audience does while they're playing. So I think they *could* be a good judge of a recording if they keep the two modes in mind.
 

syn08

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Well, this is all about trying to convey things in words, what we do with other people lots of the time.

Exactly. Set aside the comparing guitar effects to allegedly HiFi equipment sound nonsense, the conveyed response is always a kind of personal word salad. Call me when the audiophile crowd members independently agree on sound definitions. Not holding my breath.
 

MattHooper

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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.
 

kemmler3D

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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!
QFT. As long as you understand what's being said to you right now, whether or not anyone else agrees on specific terminology is less relevant. In @MattHooper 's case, he may have one client who means "distortion" when he says crunchy, and another one that means "more lower treble", as long as he knows what they mean, it's still useful / usable communication.
 
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