)
If you call terms like "bright", "hollow", "dry", "forward", "tubby" and "loose", "incisive" and "warm" as having value, then I absolutely and most strenuously disagree. They have no value. None. Not a little, and not even an iota. There is absolutely NO assurance that another person will hear the same thing the same way, and no assurance that another person will correlate what they hear with those words. There is also no assurance that another listener will use the same words, or anything like them, in an attempt to describe their experience.
The ability to transfer information that is useful is what makes the word "description" meaningful. How many times have you seen two people talking, and one said, "It's cold outside!", and then the other walked outside and returned, saying, "What? You're nuts! It's nice out there!"
The same with "hot" food. One person may say, "This burrito is hotter than hell!". The person alongside them might taste it and say, "Huh? Whaddya mean? It has a little flavor, but it's not hot."
Or take wine. One person says, "This wine is fruity, with a forward nose and authoritative body." The person after them would taste the wine and say, "Yecchh! This tastes like horse urine!"
All this confusion could have been avoided by using a little bit of correlation or reference to something objective.
In the instance of temperature, if the first one would have said, "It's 55 degrees outside" then the other could have correlated that to their own experience.
In the instance of spicy food, if the second person would have asked, " Do you mean like Pace Picante medium or Pace Picante hot, or even hotter than that?" then there could have been a correlation.
In the case of the wine, if even the most basic of descriptions were used, such as, "I like sweet wines" or "I like acid wines," the misunderstanding would never have happened.
Allow me to modify your statement.
"To even make the case why descriptions should be relevant at all to a listener, you will have to at some point correlate "How It Sounds" to measurements, which will mean adopting objective references."
The point I'm trying to make is that subjective descriptions between two people without correlation is not only without any value, but it's even worse than that; it can give the absolutely wrong impression to another person and cause them to condemn (in their own mind) the subject of the description.
Even in a person's unspoken mind, which is the only instance of subjective description being accurate, they might listen to two or three different speakers and formulate totally different descriptions compared to the people listening next to them.
Let's say someone gets a chance to listen to ..... oh, let's say a bookshelf speaker .... they might say, "OMG! Two months ago MattHooper said this had loose bass and forward mids, but I think it's totally fantastic! This is what I've been looking for! I wish that had understood what he had meant! Now I regret buying those Flammis Model XYZ speakers! I could have saved money and had a speaker I liked even more!"
Wouldn't it be better to describe matters along the lines of, "Yeah, this speaker sounds insufferably bright to me. It has a 3 dB plateau from 2 kHz on up. Do you hear it that way?" Or maybe, "This speaker sounds really incisive; it has the same bass/midrange imbalance as a Klipsch, and I like that." Then the other person, having heard Klipsch speakers, could relate. They could look up Klipsch measurements, and would know what to look for in the future when they saw other brands' measurement charts. They'd want to do that because they had heard the Klipsch sound, and they HATED it.
So no, .... no, no, no no and NO! Subjective language, which is un-quantifiable (and unreferenced), has no value. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. None. Not a bit. The occasional occurrence of subjective language being of value to some person here or there is purely accidental, and not predictable.
And something that is unpredictable, especially unpredictable when you really need to depend on it, is useless.
But heck ..... you can try to change my mind!
Very true
Very good writing , thanksI certainly understand the "oh dear."
If this were the official KEF LS60 thread I think such a conversation could be too much distraction. But this being a separate thread, and "how it sounds" being invoked in the very thread title/OP, it naturally invites the subject. (Sorry...
And yes I agree with your summary. The severe aversion to and disavowal of subjective description (of sound) as meaningless/useless can only be made, it seems to me, by people who have never had to work in the creative end of content production. The idea that subjective description is bereft of worth is disproved every day, all day, in such industries.
Where did you come up with that 70% 30% story?Very good writing , thanks
Our listening to music and what we like, are also very subjective. Only about 70% of the sound, how a loudspeaker will sound for us , can be measured . 30 % is pure subjectivity, and free for the listener to judge and have opinions about.
This should be perfectly clear for every intelligent person.
This is just one example how useless opinions are no matter how many agree or disagree. This speaker has so obvious flaws that one can even hear them in a YouTube video. Yet there a many people who claim these speakers are the best since sliced bread. No thank you.Why would people interested in say a 6000$ speaker just scan these pages for information?
I did go through the whole internet twice for information for more than a year before I brought my current speakers. I knew I would not have the chance to hear them without traveling 1000km from my home, and while waiting for a good deal popping up I had plenty of time to collect information.
They sounded very close to what I had expected, even better than I had hoped for. The only thing I was a little bit afraid of was how they will perform at low volume, as they are not highly sensitive speakers, but they are okay with that as well.
I know what I like and don't like when it comes to speakers, and I pay extra attention to things real-life users don't like about them and why they got rid of them.
Just reading measurements will never give me as much information about the sound characteristics of a pair of speakers, the same goes with just reading a handful of user reviews. Therefore with a big investment like this, it’s much better to read everything you can find about the product.
I have never seen it happen where a great number of people have the opposite idea of the sound character of a pair of speakers. And if something unlikely happens that just one or two people have something to say about the speakers, they are most likely not that good. Or I wait until more people had experience with them.
www.audiosciencereview.com
With “scanning these pages” I thought you meant ASR in specific, that's why I said “Why would people interested in say a 6000$ speaker just scan these pages for information?”, and by that I meant “Why not scanning the whole internet for information“ when you're at it.
Amirm have stated this if I remember correct. I think its spot on .
Show me.
After all, Amir wrote that :O If I remember correctly, it also applies to headphones.
This is also both mine and I guess also goat76:s way of buying speakers. I would never buy a loudspeaker only by measurements - never. One has to listen for real how it sounds at home or in a store to really know If its good enough.This is just one example how useless opinions are no matter how many agree or disagree. This speaker has so obvious flaws that one can even hear them in a YouTube video. Yet there a many people who claim these speakers are the best since sliced bread. No thank you.
GR Research LGK 2.0 Kit Speaker Review (video)
Video review of my recently tested GR Research LGK 2.0 DIY Kit speaker. There is bonus content here including recording of the sound coming out of the speaker and some additional graphs (which were also added to the text review):
My advice: Use measurements (objective reviews) to preselect your speakers so you don’t spent money on a dud and then listen at home for your self. If in doubt, return the speakers. But don’t listen to some blabla of internet “experts”which have different preferences and which certainly have different rooms. But hey to each it’s own.
www.audiosciencereview.com
Personally , I think measurements can tell you about 70 % of how a loudspeaker will sound . Not more.
, that you can write on this forum.
