A plea to the community--let's standardize the way we describe sonic signatures

[Lunatique]

I'm posting this thread in the hopes that the people who are the leaders in our community will consider making it a sticky thread, as I firmly believe it'll help many members, as well as improve the overall quality of our forums, leading to much more helpful posts and discussions. I should be posting this in the Sound Science section of the head-fi forums, but the problem is, posting there is like preaching to the small minority of already converted--it's useless. So I'm posting this in the full-sized and portable headphones sections, because that's where most members visit, and I could reach a lot more people who could benefit the most.
 
The point of this post is simple--there is no standard in how people are describing sonic signatures, so it's very confusing and contradictory when people either don't really understand how to properly describe audio characteristics, or people use the same word to describe very different things. This makes all the posts, reviews, debates...etc very chaotic and hard to reach any sort of real understanding between members.
 
What I propose is to have a set standard, such as a sticky thread, and this standard will be based on the most current and authoritative published materials on mixing and mastering from world-renowned audio engineers. If we all use the same standard, we could then know exactly what the other person is talking about, without any confusion or misinterpretation. This set of standards could be updated as necessary.
 
For starters, we need to make sure members actually know what bass, mids, and treble actually REALLY mean, because so many members do not understand and misuse these terms.
 
Here's a great primer on the frequency bands and exactly what audio information is isolated in each:
http://www.dplay.com/tutorial/bands/index.html
 
If you want to familiarize yourself with exactly what each frequency sounds like as a pure sine wave tone, this is a great place to listen to examples:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html
 
So instead of simply saying bass, mids, or treble, or the somewhat more detailed sub-bass, lower/upper-mids, and so on, we can talk about sonic signature in proper detail by describing the exact frequency range we're referring to. This will alleviate the problem of one person saying "the mids are too forward" and we have no idea what frequency range the person's talking about. "mids" can range anywhere from 250Hz to 4KHz, and without saying exactly where in the frequency range one is talking about, it's practically useless. Same with treble and bass--too many people have no idea what they're talking about when they use those terms.
 
There was a thread on head-fi a few years ago that actually listed a glossary of terms used to describe audio, and I'm surprised to see that it was not made into a sticky:
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/220770/describing-sound-a-glossaryhttp://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/220770/describing-sound-a-glossary
 
For those of you who are more visual, here's a very helpful chart that makes it extremely easy to describe sound in detail (taken from a couple of the books I own):

 

 
And finally, for those who would like to educate themselves on how to listen proper to audio information, these books will definitely teach you a ton about the secrets behind how audio professionals use critical listening skills, or to shape audio into the music we all love so much:
 
Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals, by F.Alton Everest (contains audio examples CD):
http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Listening-Skills-Audio-Professionals/dp/1598630237

 

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Second Edition

http://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Second/dp/1598632515/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
 

Mastering Audio, Second Edition: The art and the science

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Second-art-science/dp/0240808371/ref=pd_sim_b_4
 

 

[TheAttorney]

Ermmm, this has ended up in the Sound Science forum despite your opening line. Did a Mod move it?
 
Anyway, I agree with the general idea and I like the visual chart.
 
However, these relate only to frequency response deviations. Such things are the most obvious and easy to spot differences - and therefore the least interesting to me,
 
More subtle, but equally important IMO, are the differences in sound that are not directly related to frequency. Like sound stage, imaging, transparency. In the past, I've probably been as guilty as anyone in trying to describe sound in such terms, and the scope for variations in descriptions is vast. Such terms are more applicable to "neutral" components than have a near-as-damn-it flat frequency response - like amps, dacs and those long things that best not be mentioned in the Sound Science forum.

 

[Lunatique]

Well, at least I tried. I guess the people who lead this community have their own idea of what it should be, and my ideals are probably not shared by them. My main reason for trying to do this is because I've been frustrated by how uninformative and unhelpful many posts and discussions are in this community, due to their lack of basic understanding of frequency ranges and proper use of standard descriptive terms. This makes it very difficult to assess members' opinions of headphones, because I'm never sure exactly what they are talking about. Without using proper terms and frequency ranges, it's just a bunch of vague mumble jumble that could mean almost anything, and isn't helpful to anyone.

 

 

[TheGomdoRi]

It would be great if everything was standardized as you envision. Very ambitious and idealistic imho. As you point out, the vague mumbo jumbo is largely unhelpful to many.
However, I don't see it happening anytime soon to be honest.
Btw, where'd you get the cool chart lol

 

 

[Lunatique]

The color chart is from The Guide to MIDI Orchestration, by Paul Gilreath. Not useful to anyone here unless they want to become serious composers using today's cutting edge orchestral sample libraries and DAW's. The section on mixing/effects is somewhat universal (though still written in the context of orchestral compositions only), as shown by the color chart, but 90% of the book is useless to the members here, save maybe a few who are serious composers.
 

 

[Currawong]

Before I say anything else, I want to point out that if this thread was moved here, it's because it's the most relevant forum for the discussion. Those conspiracy-minded people who have some weird idea that there is something negative about threads being in the Sound Science forum need to ditch such nonsense.
 
I posted links to charts such as these in my Head-Fi blog some time ago IIRC, originally so I could quickly reference them (as the original blog system was far from prominent).  Maybe the terms could be added to the (somewhat rushed) glossary of terms I started in the Wiki (see my sig). A guide related to these terms could be started separately too. As the forum doesn't have sticky threads, but the equivalent of a big sticky note at the top of each, I have the idea to put a link to the glossary and other things in them in various forums as appropriate, but there are some discussions I need to have before I start posting stuff all over the place.
 
I don't think there's a problem with putting links in the Sound Science sticky to any threads or wikis at the moment, however.

 

[jwhitakr]

Interesting post, but I really struggle to understand how you are proposing this would actually be accomplished.  There is no "Audio governing body" that defines each and every audio term in precise detail.  What we have today are generally understood (but often mis-used) terms like bass, mids, highs, etc. that are used by people to describe sound.  The graphics you showed are certainly helpful for people to reference, but they are far from being the end-all-be-all.  And until you have a precise definition for all these terms that is dictated by some sort of authoritative body, I just don't see how this is happening.

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

Interesting post, but I really struggle to understand how you are proposing this would actually be accomplished.  There is no "Audio governing body" that defines each and every audio term in precise detail.  What we have today are generally understood (but often mis-used) terms like bass, mids, highs, etc. that are used by people to describe sound.  The graphics you showed are certainly helpful for people to reference, but they are far from being the end-all-be-all.  And until you have a precise definition for all these terms that is dictated by some sort of authoritative body, I just don't see how this is happening.

That is why I keep stressing the critical importance of frequency ranges numbers. By actually stating what frequency range (for example, 1KHz to 3KHz), then there's absolutely no misinterpretation.
 

 

[jwhitakr]

Quote:

Quote:

That is why I keep stressing the critical importance of frequency ranges numbers. By actually stating what frequency range (for example, 1KHz to 3KHz), then there's absolutely no misinterpretation.
 

So you are saying that when someone describes sound they completely forgoe using descriptive terms like bass, treble, etc.?
 
 

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

So you are saying that when someone describes sound they completely forgoe using descriptive terms like bass, treble, etc.?
 

 
No, what I meant was that it's much more helpful to elaborate on exactly what you mean when you say something like "The mids are too recessed," by making it "The mids (near 2KHz) are too recessed, while the rest of the mids seem fine" instead. By including the frequency range, people will know EXACTLY what you're talking about, instead of a very wide range of possibilities you 'might' be talking about.

 

[Currawong]

After I did it myself, I have encouraged people to play around with an EQ while listening to music, paying attention to the frequency being altered. I found it a good way to understand what was going on with my own impressions of headphones.

 

[Mkubota1]

Funny- I was having a quick conversation about the sound of a particular IEM with a friend and fellow HFer recently.  I quickly realized that we had slightly different ideas of where 'midrange' was centered.  Describing sound in places like this will never be perfect, but I think a good practice is to put a reference (link) in your signature that contains a glossary of terms you are using.  Example: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/220770/describing-sound-a-glossary  Without such a reference, we just assume that we all use the same words in the exact same way.  It would also be good use actual frequencies when describing tonal balance and such.  This however does take some amount of training to know what is what.
 
Quote:

After I did it myself, I have encouraged people to play around with an EQ while listening to music, paying attention to the frequency being altered. I found it a good way to understand what was going on with my own impressions of headphones.

Another good way is to pick up an RTA or use one that is software-based.  Have this on in the background while you listen to your music and glance at it every once in a while.  I found this to be quite helpful if not amusing! 

 

[ert]

Just drop qualitative descriptions altogether.  People should learn what various frequencies sound like so instead of saying, "the speaker sounded FAT," one would say "the speaker had an elevated response in the 80-120 HZ range.

 

[CEE TEE]

This is exactly some of the reference that I needed...THANK YOU.
 
I have a lot of learning/listening to do.  
 
I want to train myself to understand the instruments in each area and specifically be able to state when/where something sounds too "scooped" or "boosted/peaky."
 
That will help me communicate and also to understand how to get the sound I like... 
 
 

 

[Currawong]

I've put links to the Wiki-fied version of the "Describing Sound - A Glossary" thread in the main forum stickies now. I encourage people to help with both the main glossary that one by writing well-written and easy-to-understand entries.