thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
good - keep at it. - if you love it you'll never 'work' a day in your life... at more than twice your age, I bought my second pair of k+h monitors the year you were born (on my fourth pair now)...
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"plasticky" Neumanns?
- Thread starter dfuller
- Start date
What in the world does even mean? Study the measurements by Amir here on ASR.
That is true - and moreover, most do not care if their speakers are good.
- Thread Starter
- #64
When a subjective impression repeats again and again, it warrants study. And, for the sake of it, Amir's tests are not completely exhaustive. There are a fair few things he does not test for, IMD being one of them.
FWIW, I don't find my Neumanns have that character at all. I think they sound great.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
I previously asked you for some links/quotes/evidence of those "subjective impression repeats" that occur "again and again"...
do you have any? and if so, will you post links or reference them?...
- Thread Starter
- #66
These are all on discord servers. Let me dig it up.
Attachments
I'm relatively confident that most of speakers I've heard have a character of one sort or another and I could identify which is which (blind) to a high success rate. I think it is all just a case of finding which is most pleasant/least unpleasant to your ears. All of these characters I could probably give names too, depending what I hear i.e boomy, tizzy, plasticky, dull and so on.
For naysayers, I imagine there is some continuity among terms people use and the faults of particular speakers. I mean, who argues over the term boomy. Why is boomy acceptable as a term, but plasticky isn't. If plasticky was found the describe something repeatable about sound quality, could it be accepted into the audio lexicon then?
No idea about whether Neumann's sound plasticky or not though, sorry OP.
For naysayers, I imagine there is some continuity among terms people use and the faults of particular speakers. I mean, who argues over the term boomy. Why is boomy acceptable as a term, but plasticky isn't. If plasticky was found the describe something repeatable about sound quality, could it be accepted into the audio lexicon then?
No idea about whether Neumann's sound plasticky or not though, sorry OP.
Why is it that when audio engineers say something like this it warrants study? This is basically like me as a software engineer saying a framework or language sucks because the vibes are off, and then a few people start repeating me. The assumption would be that we're joking.
No normal technical profession takes you seriously if you can't even articulate your criticism in a way that uses commonly understood, precise technical language. But in audio I can invent any random term and repeat it a lot and then when other people start repeating me I must be on to something? That makes no sense at all.
If there's something to this the onus is on the claimant to prove what it is and why it's there. If you can't do that how are you even a qualified professional in the first place????
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If there is something that is noticed that is described as 'plasticky' and it is noticed by several people, then it may warrant investigation, to see if it is something attributable to some character or defect, or just some kind of mass delusion. Difficult to say at what point it becomes worth the time to investigate - how many people would you need to agree on the descriptor?
Still, you are ruling it out on the basis you don't like the language used, but your position is no more correct. These people might have a point (about some character trait they are hearing), even if they cannot articulate it in the (precise) way you would prefer.
Still, you are ruling it out on the basis you don't like the language used, but your position is no more correct. These people might have a point (about some character trait they are hearing), even if they cannot articulate it in the (precise) way you would prefer.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
thank you..
Sgt. Ear Ache
Major Contributor
Given a speaker that has (relative to a whole bunch of other really great speakers) some fantastic measured performance, but happens to be a visually "plasticky" speaker, forgive me if I am suspicious of sighted subjective assessments of that speaker describing it as sounding "plasticky."
If these are all from the same community, it is no wonder they use the same words to confirm each other.
We are primed by what we read, if we read something we start to hear it, it's human nature. That's one reason why this kind of report is useless - the more open the term for interpretation, the more useless it is. It's like a horoscope...
HarmonicTHD
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I bet I will find 1000x more quotes on the Internet claiming that the earth is flat. Would that also warrant a study?
- Thread Starter
- #74
They're not. Two different ones that don't have much overlap.
Ricardus
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Congrats. A new term was coined!
Ok, then maybe ask them for measurements, maybe this could shed a light on what they disliked and what they meant.
lowkeyoperations
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This is typical a fairly common response at ASR used to dismiss listening.
In those comments I certainly understand the sentiment along the lines of “I have no idea how to set compression on Neumanns”.
What measurements will determine the extent to which a studio monitor can help you identify clearly the differences in compression settings?
Well, I meant it in a way that I don't know what those comments mean. If I had a measurement that showed specific problems, I might be able to deduce clues as to what might have been bothering the person.
For example, I once read a review of a KH310 where a sound engineer called it "boomy" - I strongly suspect she simply heard a room mode there.
Therefore, I think you can only understand subjective listening reports if you see both the Spinorama data and the measurement on the LP.
Then the subjective reports can certainly contain helpful additional information that one would not have recognized from the measurements.
Listen to them yourself. This is completely subjective.
