what is grain???????

It is a useless audiophile term. It cannot be measured, two levels of grain cannot be objectively compared, two persons' assessments of "grain" will not be equivalent or comparable in any meaningful way. It has no scale or unit. The use of the term tells you precisely nothing about the item being described.

 

Grain in film does make some sense you can see two photos side by side and an ASA400 and ASA100 may look very different. The metaphor really does not translate well to audio.

 

There are few audiophile terms that are very helpful. Bright , distorted, noisy are a bit more helpful, you can measure noise, distortion and FR, but even so if someone says something is bright there is no guarantee that it has a FR that is anything other than flat, all you are getting is an impression and if you read Stereophile reviews, well..........

 

So you basically have two problems, what does someone mean when they say something is [insert term here] and can you trust that this judgment is close to some verifiable reality...and it does not help if many people say the same thing, many people describe the Banchmark DAC1 as bright, but it is utterly flat.

 

 

 

LOL, I was thinking of comparing it to write ups you see about wine, however a trained oenophile actually can taste things that can be measured to be in the wine.  Most wine writers are not trained oenophiles though.

There are likely as many definitions of "grainy" as there are people using the term.
Edited by b0ck3n - 7/23/11 at 12:18am

Next time you see someone using the word grain in a review you could politely ask them what they mean by grain, not what grain means as they might be tempted to just look it up

Some people associate the term "grainy" with the upper midrange being too loud or a lack of "resolution".

Define "resolution"

Distortion in the upper midrange can be described as grain. I've heard it called "gritty" too. It was more common on LPs that had recycled vinyl or inner groove distortion. It generally doesn't apply to digital. I suppose headphones or speakers could be described as having grain, but they would have to be pretty crappy headphones or speakers to have noticeable distortion in the mids.
Edited by bigshot - 7/24/11 at 12:03pm

This is how I'd describe it, and I hear it from plenty of headphones, especially dynamics.

This is what I think "grain" sounds like. If using Headphone speaker mode on a X-Fi soundcard with CMSS-3D activated. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=976ua3TQxFE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcB9faNrz_M

 

Something I usually associate with cheap gaming headset sound quality. It's difficult to put any explanation on it though. Lack of resolution and/or distortion in the upper midrange sounded like a quite reasonable explanation though. If also some1 has tried the SRS headphone surround implementation, that's a good example as well.

Edited by RPGWiZaRD - 7/26/11 at 11:34am

Yup.  Non-harmonic, nonlinear noise.  That's at least the impression I have.  It's a rarely discussed (scientifically) topic among us hobbyists past just comparing signal-to-noise ratios.

 

However, how do you explain this?

 

 

Look at the noise between the harmonic products.  Granted, this doesn't go much past 7,000 Hz and it only covers one frequency, but still...

I'm not sure.  I think its likely non-harmonic, but that it is correlated to the signal somehow.  Probably some kind of inter-modulation distortion.  As a physical system, I don't really think it would be properly captured by a signal that seems more suited to testing amps like what I think is going on at Ryu's site.

 

The funny thing is I don't think I'd hear grain from any of those 'phones on that chart.  I've heard the HE-6 and HD800 and I didn't hear any.  I've never heard the Lady Gaga but I do have an MTPG which is probably pretty similar but I don't hear any grain from that either.  Its as smooth as butter.

 

Maybe its that "cone break-up" thing that made Senn punch a hole in the middle of the HD800s driver.  I think a tiny DD like in an IEM won't have as much of that problem.  Its been a while, but IIRC the HD800 probably has the least grain of any full size dynamic I've ever heard.

 

While we're comparing driver tech, IME BAs do a great job here as well.  I haven't heard nearly as many IEMs as I have full size 'phones the few I've heard were grain free as well.

While discussing grain per your definition Maverick, I'd have to say I agree that the BA IEMs I've heard didn't have a noticable amount, and my stage monitor has none whatsoever that I can detect. My dynamic RE-ZEROs have lots of it, especially in the upper mids and treble, though it didn't really bother me until I got the BAs.

I've heard even fewer DD IEMs than BA IEMs.  Only two, I think (was the E2c a DD or a BA?) and the E2c was so long ago I don't really remember what it sounded like.  Especially, because it was before I was really into audio so I didn't analyze it or bother to remember the details.

 

The ES5 demo I heard was also amazingly grain free without smoothing over details like my SE530s do a little and the MTPGs do quite a bit.