GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: The Sound and How We Hear It

Post Subject: An audio DicPosted by tuga on: 11/9/2008

Let's first try to go over some concepts to see if the both of you are speaking the same language (from Sphile's glossary):

coloration
An audible "signature" with which a reproducing system imbues all signals passing through it.

distortion
1) Any unintentional or undesirable change in an audio signal.
2) An overlay of spurious roughness, fuzziness, harshness, or stridency in reproduced sound.

musical, musicality
A personal judgment as to the degree to which reproduced sound resembles live music. Real musical sound is both accurate and euphonic, consonant and dissonant.

dull
Lifeless, muffled, veiled. Same as "soft," only more so. The audible effect of HF rolloff setting in at around 5kHz.

dynamic
Giving an impression of wide dynamic range; punchy. This is related to system speed as well as to volume contrast.

neutral
Free from coloration.

timbre
The recognizable characteristic sound "signature" of a musical instrument, by which it is possible to tell an oboe, for example, from a flute when both are sounding the same note

tonality
In music, the quality of an instrument's tone, often related to the key in which the music is written. In audio, mistakenly used in place of "tonal quality."

tonal quality
The accuracy (correctness) with which reproduced sound replicates the timbres of the original instruments. Compare "tonality."

transparency, transparent
1) A quality of sound reproduction that gives the impression of listening through the system to the original sounds, rather than to a pair of loudspeakers.
2) Freedom from veiling, texturing, or any other quality which tends to obscure the signal. A quality of crystalline clarity.

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I find most systems people call:

musical to be bland and lifeless (all sounds the same and pretty undynamic)

transparent to be bright and overwhelming in detal

euphonic to be as syrupy as an eggnog...

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