MattHooper
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Thanks Geert. I appreciate the perspective you are bringing, and also what you are looking to achieve.
I think there are two issues entangled here:
1. How any particular sound is perceived by a listener, the subjective impression, and then communicating that.
2. Trying to make a term more technical, by directly relating it to specific, limited, measurable phenomena.
Both are valid ways of communicating about sound. #2 would obviously be even more specific if it could be agreed upon (e.g. if there were some specific, measurable distortion we'd agree to call "grain," even if it didn't necessarily produce that impression for every listener).
As to #1:
Sure, you may call it "hazy" and since subjective impressions are imprecise we would be on the same page. Which I think is good enough.
However "hazy" does not actually capture what I perceive. "Hazy," like that picture, implies to me a sort of obscuring that leads to a softening of the image and texture. Whereas I perceive an added coarseness to the sonic texture. Just like the grain in those photographs both obscures, homogenizes the clarity, while coarsening the texture of the overall image. So "grain" still to me is the most accurate description.
But, in this realm if you listened and called the effect "hazy" then we are mostly on the same page and that's much better than nothing.
(BTW, as a sound engineer, if I were to replicate my perception of what room reflections are doing to the timbre of recorded instruments, I wouldn't just add short reflections from a reverb, I would mix in what is known as "room tone" (literally recordings of empty rooms, the "air" tone as captured by a microphone, which we use all the time). Many room tones, which amount to a very quiet low level "rush" of apparent air, have this type of "grain" I'm talking about, and slightly overlaying it on to a recording would help get at what I'm hearing.
Anyway, I'm sure we've both gone as far as we can, and want to, on this one, so thank you!
I think there are two issues entangled here:
1. How any particular sound is perceived by a listener, the subjective impression, and then communicating that.
2. Trying to make a term more technical, by directly relating it to specific, limited, measurable phenomena.
Both are valid ways of communicating about sound. #2 would obviously be even more specific if it could be agreed upon (e.g. if there were some specific, measurable distortion we'd agree to call "grain," even if it didn't necessarily produce that impression for every listener).
As to #1:
Staying with your photography analogy; your auditory system does not has the resolution to hear sound reflections in the way your eyes can see grain on a photo. So 'cleaner' and 'more pure' yes, 'grainy' probably not. The same goes for hearing the decay of a speaker. As an analogy, this is what reflections and decay would do to a picture:
![]()
I would call it hazy. As a sound engineer you would emulate this effect by adding reverb, which are ... reflections.
Sure, you may call it "hazy" and since subjective impressions are imprecise we would be on the same page. Which I think is good enough.
However "hazy" does not actually capture what I perceive. "Hazy," like that picture, implies to me a sort of obscuring that leads to a softening of the image and texture. Whereas I perceive an added coarseness to the sonic texture. Just like the grain in those photographs both obscures, homogenizes the clarity, while coarsening the texture of the overall image. So "grain" still to me is the most accurate description.
But, in this realm if you listened and called the effect "hazy" then we are mostly on the same page and that's much better than nothing.
(BTW, as a sound engineer, if I were to replicate my perception of what room reflections are doing to the timbre of recorded instruments, I wouldn't just add short reflections from a reverb, I would mix in what is known as "room tone" (literally recordings of empty rooms, the "air" tone as captured by a microphone, which we use all the time). Many room tones, which amount to a very quiet low level "rush" of apparent air, have this type of "grain" I'm talking about, and slightly overlaying it on to a recording would help get at what I'm hearing.
Anyway, I'm sure we've both gone as far as we can, and want to, on this one, so thank you!