[50an6xy06r6n]

I don't think we need to go so far as to enforce a standard system, but I think we could use a wiki or sticky that helps people get a feel for what all these terms mean.

 

[Lunatique]

Well, you guys can look at it like this:
 
How serious you are about accuracy/neutrality in your audio gear, or how accurate you want to be in your understanding and discussion with others about audio, is a personal matter. Some of you are casual hobbyists, some of you are very passionate about music an anything related to audio, and some of you are aspiring composers/musicians, and some of you are professional audio people. But none of that has anything to do with the benefits of having a universal standard.
 
My ideal situation is when all of us use one standard, just like how all of us use standard English to communicate, or how writers and readers of books use the same terminologies when discussing storytelling and writing techniques, or photographers/camera enthusiasts all use the same terminologies when discussing picture quality and shooting techniques and cameras features, or movie buffs and filmmakers all use the same terminologies when talking about movies, acting, directing, screenwriting, etc.
 
For whatever reasons, audio is the only one where the hobbyists seem quite stubborn in adopting the professional standard of terminologies and communication methods. The argument that using standardized technical terms and being precise will kill the fun is unfounded, because if you look at movies, video games, books, photography, art, CG, cooking, etc, they all pretty much have the same terminologies used by both hobbyists and pros, and there doesn't appear to be any diminishing of fun. 
 
 

 

[tinyman392]

Quote:

Well, you guys can look at it like this:
 
How serious you are about accuracy/neutrality in your audio gear, or how accurate you want to be in your understanding and discussion with others about audio, is a personal matter. Some of you are casual hobbyists, some of you are very passionate about music an anything related to audio, and some of you are aspiring composers/musicians, and some of you are professional audio people. But none of that has anything to do with the benefits of having a universal standard.
 
My ideal situation is when all of us use one standard, just like how all of us use standard English to communicate, or how writers and readers of books use the same terminologies when discussing storytelling and writing techniques, or photographers/camera enthusiasts all use the same terminologies when discussing picture quality and shooting techniques and cameras features, or movie buffs and filmmakers all use the same terminologies when talking about movies, acting, directing, screenwriting, etc.
 
For whatever reasons, audio is the only one where the hobbyists seem quite stubborn in adopting the professional standard of terminologies and communication methods. The argument that using standardized technical terms and being precise will kill the fun is unfounded, because if you look at movies, video games, books, photography, art, CG, cooking, etc, they all pretty much have the same terminologies used by both hobbyists and pros, and there doesn't appear to be any diminishing of fun. 
 
 

My question to you is what is wrong with the way we specifically do things now?  You've listed one property that you say is too subjective, and all of a sudden, the whole thing is subjective.  You have to remember we are explaining what we mean by warm (whether it be rolled off treble or a slight increase in the upper bass).  What is specifically wrong with using sub/low-bass, mid-bass, upper/high-bass, low mids, mids, high mids, low highs, highs, high highs?  As you've already shown in your book, they are universalized and imply a specific sound range. 
 
The problem you have stated in your second paragraph when relating to other standards is that those are not subjective, nor are any of them based on senses...  For those that are (like English), the idea of tone, location, and placement can make the same statement take on two different meanings (similar to how warm can mean two different things).  For any science, naming techniques have been improved, but one thing can end up meaning two things.  Look at the following examples:

1. English
   I told you not to do that.
   
   Let's stress different words here:
   I told you not to do that.
   I told you not to do that.
   I told you not to do that.
   
   Depending on the tone used, and how it's read, along with location of this specific sentence, you can be blaming either the person, the action, or even both.  Who knows.  However, we do know, depending on location, and context, we can figure out whether the statement is neutral, blaming the person, blaming the action, or blaming both the person and action.  It all deals with context, the words and meanings are fixed ideas, true, however, a small skew like this can really alter meaning
2. Math
   The zero vector...  I hope you really enjoy this one.  Often called, and referred to as the zero vector.  By assumption, many will assume the 0 vector is a vector such that all the entries in such vector are "0".  However, a zero vector, as contrary to what it may imply can actually be <-1>.  Such that some vector A + <-1> = A given a set of defined rules (for example, if I define addition like this <a> + <b> = <a + b - 1>) for adding in a given vector space.  In this case, the <-1> vector is equal to the zero vector.  0 doesn't necessarily mean 0, but it's taken that it does. Both of these zero vectors are valid, but different at the same time.

 
Let's look at it from a different light, the actual jargon and language we use.  There is an infinite way to produce 20, just like there is an infinite amount of ways to say a message (like, "you are cool").  What's not to say there is an infinite amount of ways to say the headphones had punch?  With context, the precision is still there, and it's as accurate as the last statement.  Look at the following, they all mean the same thing:

1. The headphones provided a good bass punch.
2. The headphones provided a small increase in the mid-bass.
3. The headphones provided a small increase around the 100 Hz range.

All three of these statements mean the same just like:

1. 10 + 10 = 10 + 5 (2) = 10 (2)
2. You're cool = you're awesome = you're <insert synonym here>.

There is an infinite amount of ways to say something, it works in science as well as photography and any other hobby/technical area you look at.  Computer science (millions of ways to code the same stuff, I can think of at least 10 ways to do the "hello world" program in C++).  The output is the same, it's just how well it's done that matters. 
 
As for audio not having a standard, we have a standard.  Quite honestly, we do.  Look at the glossary and technical jargon we use, it's standardized.  We all talk audio when we say warm, lush, fluid, resonant, harsh, etc.  It is standardized and most people do use it.  However, it goes much further than that.  The technical jargon we have here is more like figuratively describing sound.  Thusly, any equivelent (synonym) for a given word will also work in it's place.  For example, resonant and harsh can mean the same thing (resonance as defined in physics is what we call harsh).  We can replace sibilance with "ch" and "sh" sounds...  We do have a standard, we also have other jargon that can be used in place of it.  For example, impact is just a special instance of punch while mud can be a special instance of both texture.  We have this in math as well...  We all know A^2 + B^2 = C^2...  However, no one remembers C^2 = A^2 + B^2 + 2AB(cosC).  We have established a universal standard, and it is, quite honestly, like every other universal we have.

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

My question to you is what is wrong with the way we specifically do things now? 

The main problem right now, is that there's a large portion of the community that is ignorant of what the terminologies really mean (both audiophile and pro audio terms), because they have no concept of what each terminology refers to specifically in frequency ranges or other measurable standards. Most use the excuse that "I'm just a hobbyist so I don't want to/need to 'learn' anything," and then never take the time to even learn the basics of frequency ranges and what each range actually sounds like (which is why I provided those links to frequency range/limited band examples). This then leads to the problem I talked about this the thread "Misconceptions of accurate/neutral": http://www.head-fi.org/t/564465/misconception-of-neutral-accurate#post_7634871 where there's a lot of misconceptions and misinformation and ignorance. 
 
So it's not that we don't have resources for information, standards, and education, but that a lot of people refuse to take the time to educate themselves properly. There's this mentality that being a hobbyist means you don't need to be informed or accurate in the way you communicate on the subject you're supposed to be interested in/passionate about, but these same people go on having endless misinformed/ignorant discussions in forums, which results in a huge pool of misinformation and misguided mentalities--ones that get regurgitated and passed around, infecting newer members. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[Eric_C]

Err, I don't know why there is a need for the average headphone-lover to be educated on the objective, professional terminology that forms the technical backbone of this hobby. My dad and uncles love wine, they like it enough to buy chillers to keep their wine, but they don't really know much about the science of wine-making. Sure, this opens them up to being misled at times, but I haven't once seen it mar their enjoyment of the hobby.
 
Why's the objective terminology need to be forced upon hobbyists? Can't we choose how technical we want to be when it comes to this? I mean, I'm happy to be aware of frequency ranges up to the point where I know that: 
20 - 20 KHz is what people can hear
<40 Hz (roughly) is where subwoofers come into play
And then for anything more technical, I'll just happily defer to people like yourself, Lunatique, who I know are more educated in these matters.

 

[tinyman392]

Quote:

The main problem right now, is that there's a large portion of the community that is ignorant of what the terminologies really mean (both audiophile and pro audio terms), because they have no concept of what each terminology refers to specifically in frequency ranges or other measurable standards. Most use the excuse that "I'm just a hobbyist so I don't want to/need to 'learn' anything," and then never take the time to even learn the basics of frequency ranges and what each range actually sounds like (which is why I provided those links to frequency range/limited band examples). This then leads to the problem I talked about this the thread "Misconceptions of accurate/neutral": http://www.head-fi.org/t/564465/misconception-of-neutral-accurate#post_7634871 where there's a lot of misconceptions and misinformation and ignorance. 
 
So it's not that we don't have resources for information, standards, and education, but that a lot of people refuse to take the time to educate themselves properly. There's this mentality that being a hobbyist means you don't need to be informed or accurate in the way you communicate on the subject you're supposed to be interested in/passionate about, but these same people go on having endless misinformed/ignorant discussions in forums, which results in a huge pool of misinformation and misguided mentalities--ones that get regurgitated and passed around, infecting newer members. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

So people are having trouble reading our figurative works (audio terminology is figurative for hte most part), so you'd rather state frequency ranges...  Frequency ranges will be just numbers to these people...  Numbers that mean little to nothing.  You can't force people to learn audio just like you can't force people to learn a 400 Math class.  It just won't happen.  You'll get the few who will want to learn, then you'll get those that would rather be ignorant.  You can't force a horse to do what you want.  If someone doesn't know what warm means, he doesn't care if there are two types of warm, so separate terminology won't help him with that either.
 
Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you that having a set of terminology is a good thing.  But we already have it. I say, just let the people who want to be ignorant do it in their own little corner.  The rest of us can clarify for people who don't wish to be ignorant any longer, and talk audio.
 
PS: I don't mean for any of this to be disrespectful in any way, I'm just voicing my opinion on the subject.

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

Err, I don't know why there is a need for the average headphone-lover to be educated on the objective, professional terminology that forms the technical backbone of this hobby. My dad and uncles love wine, they like it enough to buy chillers to keep their wine, but they don't really know much about the science of wine-making. Sure, this opens them up to being misled at times, but I haven't once seen it mar their enjoyment of the hobby.
 
Why's the objective terminology need to be forced upon hobbyists? Can't we choose how technical we want to be when it comes to this? I mean, I'm happy to be aware of frequency ranges up to the point where I know that: 
20 - 20 KHz is what people can hear
<40 Hz (roughly) is where subwoofers come into play
And then for anything more technical, I'll just happily defer to people like yourself, Lunatique, who I know are more educated in these matters.

 
Quote:

So people are having trouble reading our figurative works (audio terminology is figurative for hte most part), so you'd rather state frequency ranges...  Frequency ranges will be just numbers to these people...  Numbers that mean little to nothing.  You can't force people to learn audio just like you can't force people to learn a 400 Math class.  It just won't happen.  You'll get the few who will want to learn, then you'll get those that would rather be ignorant.  You can't force a horse to do what you want.  If someone doesn't know what warm means, he doesn't care if there are two types of warm, so separate terminology won't help him with that either.
 
Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you that having a set of terminology is a good thing.  But we already have it. I say, just let the people who want to be ignorant do it in their own little corner.  The rest of us can clarify for people who don't wish to be ignorant any longer, and talk audio.
 
PS: I don't mean for any of this to be disrespectful in any way, I'm just voicing my opinion on the subject.

 

While I agree with your overall sentiments, my reason for trying to promote awareness is due to the fact that in this type of hobby, a lot of money is involved, and I see many members making purchases based on incorrect information, inaccurate assessments, ignorance, misguided mentalities, myths, and so on. And when you have a large portion of the community who are ignorant and making recommendations, giving advice, reviewing products, etc, it will lead others astray and spend their money in ways that aren't necessary beneficial to them. 
 
See, if I didn't care about this community, I wouldn't give a damn--I'd just stick to pro audio forums and not participate here. But I'm doing what I can to help the community because I want to see it improve, which in turn will help more people make better decisions in their purchases. So many people don't have money to spend on the products they want in this hobby/passion, and many save up money to buy what is being recommended to them (unfortunately, often by those who are ignorant), and if I can help everyone out in my own way, it's the least I can do.
 

 

[tinyman392]

Quote:

 
 

While I agree with your overall sentiments, my reason for trying to promote awareness is due to the fact that in this type of hobby, a lot of money is involved, and I see many members making purchases based on incorrect information, inaccurate assessments, ignorance, misguided mentalities, myths, and so on. And when you have a large portion of the community who are ignorant and making recommendations, giving advice, reviewing products, etc, it will lead others astray and spend their money in ways that aren't necessary beneficial to them. 
 
See, if I didn't care about this community, I wouldn't give a damn--I'd just stick to pro audio forums and not participate here. But I'm doing what I can to help the community because I want to see it improve, which in turn will help more people make better decisions in their purchases. So many people don't have money to spend on the products they want in this hobby/passion, and many save up money to buy what is being recommended to them (unfortunately, often by those who are ignorant), and if I can help everyone out in my own way, it's the least I can do.
 

I see your stance now.  It's not exactly a standardized way to describe, it's that you want members to actually follow (and learn) the standards we already have (so they can learn a thing or tow as well).  Let me know how off I am on this.  It seems that your only problem is with the ignorant people   I will agree with the above then
 

 

[Eric_C]

I think the bigger problem is the hype machine we have going on here, in general. More than the language used to describe sonic signatures, we've got a terrible tendency to exaggerate improvements, and to misrepresent what components can do. Outboard amps, for e.g., are lauded for being able to "drive" headphones better than built-in amps. When pressed for explanation, analogies are frequently given (and I don't deny that I've been guilty of this too). But what should amps do? Whether internal or external, they should get headphones loud enough for them to listen to, while avoiding clipping, distortion, hiss and channel imbalance. That's pretty much it, right? But that's not what our reviews are wont to do, I'm afraid. 
 
I do think that people who are more likely to describe sound in the way that Lunatique proposes are less likely to hype up products when they give their impressions. But I don't think that the language a person uses is going to be the cause of it; a reasonable person could just as easily give a fair review of something without knowing or choosing to use more technical jargon to describe it.

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

I see your stance now.  It's not exactly a standardized way to describe, it's that you want members to actually follow (and learn) the standards we already have (so they can learn a thing or tow as well).  Let me know how off I am on this.  It seems that your only problem is with the ignorant people  I will agree with the above then
 

Quote:

I think the bigger problem is the hype machine we have going on here, in general. More than the language used to describe sonic signatures, we've got a terrible tendency to exaggerate improvements, and to misrepresent what components can do. Outboard amps, for e.g., are lauded for being able to "drive" headphones better than built-in amps. When pressed for explanation, analogies are frequently given (and I don't deny that I've been guilty of this too). But what should amps do? Whether internal or external, they should get headphones loud enough for them to listen to, while avoiding clipping, distortion, hiss and channel imbalance. That's pretty much it, right? But that's not what our reviews are wont to do, I'm afraid. 
 
I do think that people who are more likely to describe sound in the way that Lunatique proposes are less likely to hype up products when they give their impressions. But I don't think that the language a person uses is going to be the cause of it; a reasonable person could just as easily give a fair review of something without knowing or choosing to use more technical jargon to describe it.

 
Nail on the head, guys. That's pretty much the gist of it. 
 
My logic was that by proposing the pro audio standard, there's far fewer wiggle room for hype, inaccuracies, misguided mentalities, myths, and misinformation, because the pro audio standard requires critical thinking and proper analysis--not based on gut feelings or the very deceptive nature of placebo effects, but actual tests (such as double-blind comparison tests). And by learning about frequency ranges and using them in conjunction with popular terminologies, there would be no confusion at all what a person is describing. 
 
Yes it takes a bit of effort to learn, but it's not rocket science, and being better informed is better than being ignorant--especially if you are actually passionate about audio/music in general. A true connoisseur is one that's knowledgeable and informed. If someone wants to stubbornly keep the ignorant mentality of a very casual hobbyist, then that person might as well go back to using stock earbuds. Quality isn't limited to how much money you spend on products--it's also how informed you are in your purchasing decisions, and your ability to assess the gear you use/audition/buy properly, as well as how you help others in a community of people with the same interest/passion.
 

 

[alphaphoenix]

Alright Lunatique, I see the word "passionate" used many times.  Are you referring the music passion in making music or passion in listening music.  I believe there's a fine line in the sand between the two. I also think the "ignorant population" can tell the sonic difference between stock earbuds and $100+ IEM/CIEM.  Since most of the population are on the latter half of musical passion is lazy, myself included, why not have a few threads explaining the technicalities from your point of view and yes, dumb it down a little.  I'll sure be a pupil of your knowledge, and it would support your cause in reducing ignorant folks on this site.

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

Alright Lunatique, I see the word "passionate" used many times.  Are you referring the music passion in making music or passion in listening music.  I believe there's a fine line in the sand between the two. I also think the "ignorant population" can tell the sonic difference between stock earbuds and $100+ IEM/CIEM.  Since most of the population are on the latter half of musical passion is lazy, myself included, why not have a few threads explaining the technicalities from your point of view and yes, dumb it down a little.  I'll sure be a pupil of your knowledge, and it would support your cause in reducing ignorant folks on this site.

I meant anyone who loves music, period, regardless if they're just fans or audio pros. 
 
While anyone person off the street can tell the difference between really cheap crap and $100+ IEM, it means almost next to nothing, because even someone who knows absolutely nothing about headphones or audio can tell that difference too. People come to communities like this because they need informed opinions, recommendations, reviews, and discussions that will help them in their purchase decisions. So what happens when a large portion of the members are ignorant, and people are simply passing misinformation, hype, myths, and misguided mentalities back and forth? How do you think that's going to influence the people who come to such communities for help? What's more helpful--ignorance or knowledge? What happens when there are many products within the same price range for consideration, but hype and misinformation causes the person to buy one of the worse products out there, because the people recommending it just doesn't understand enough about audio to give good recommendations? You see why this is a problem?
 
As for learning resources, I've listed them in the first post of this thread. I don't know how many people in this thread actually took the time to look at those links and actually tried to learn something from them. It's not like those links are aimed at geniuses and veteran audio pros--they can be learned and picked up by anyone who simply has the interest and willing to spend a little time educating themselves.
 
 
 

 

[Joe Bloggs]

What, Lunatique--and have the amp and cables forums practically disappear the next day? Don't think it's gonna happen. :rolleyes: That aside, I listen to sine tones almost every day and still can't pin down the relationship of any given sonic quality to a specific frequency without the help of some serious spectrum analysis. I think terms such as “mids“ will always be terribly vague as long as you're listening for them plainly by ear in real music.

I can do better: I‘ve developed a methodology by which I can plot different headphones‘ frequency responses against each other just by playing sine tones through them and two parametric EQs in series. But 99.9% of the population simply won't have the interest let alone the knowhow to produce such objective measures in their comparative reviews.

Hell, when I consider that my methodology makes me practically speak an alien language to everyone else and have little to talk about in headphone reviews, sometimes even I feel a tinge of regret...

Speaking of which, the objective data for people to make decisions already exists for many headphones, they're called frequency response graphs, not many people interested in them though

 

[Brooko]

Actually - I think the frequency range picture shown on the first page is going to be very helpful to me - thanks Lunatique!  The thing is - I know a lot of the terms - but this diagram helps narrow down the frequency ranges.  It'll also help comparing headphone frequency graphs to the diagram - and using both to understand a little more the reasons why some headphones have particular traits.
 
It will definitely help me in future with any reviews - so thanks again.  Very good topic.

 

[alphaphoenix]

I understand your intentions, but part of the head-fi fun that's outside the realm of Sound Science is to try and buy.  For me, true musical passion is by ear, not sine waves or anything that can digitally manipulate the sound, for better or worse.  Headphones/earphones are the easiest to determine if it sounds great, good, or crap.  Those generic adjectives can be replaced with "properly termed, scientifically correct adjectives", but changes with the source quality, recording, and type of music genre, not everyone is going to create a "standard" of that as a baseline for every scenario.