Perhaps because these qualities are more difficult to measure and put into graphs in 2021.
But they still exist and audiophiles make purchase decisions based on them.
Audeze LCD-5 Review, Measurements, Interview
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But they still exist and audiophiles make purchase decisions based on them.
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But it is subjective.
One man's slam is another one's bloat
One man's speed, is another man's dry or analytical
One man's spaciousness is another's midrange deficient
One man's smooth is another's treble starved.
One man's full bodied is another's congested.
I can go on.
One man's slam is another one's bloat
One man's speed, is another man's dry or analytical
One man's spaciousness is another's midrange deficient
One man's smooth is another's treble starved.
One man's full bodied is another's congested.
I can go on.
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At the end of the day all sound preferences are subjective.
But you are washing together some terms that do not meant to be washed together.
Slam is slam, it has nothing to do with bloat. Slam means impact, energy, splash. Bloat is if for example upper bass notes bleed into lower mids and make that frequency area less clear. Usually an effect of uncontrolled upper bass quantity.
The sense of spaciousness has nothing to do with midrange. There is spacious and closed-in sound and there is also good or bad midrange. You can have good midrange in a closed-in headphone and you can also have poor midrange performance in a very opened and spacious sounding headphone.
Treble sensitivity/smoothness is another dividing factor. Many people state they have treble sensitivity, but this sensitivity varies a lot. Some are happy with a 6K peak and can't stand a 10K peak, some are the complete opposite. Treble sensitivity varies a lot.
Full body is not the opposite of congested. Full body means a thicker sound, every instrument have its full texture. It still can be clean and well separated, but different quality headphones do this separation to different extent. Congestion means a different thing. It means the headphone is unable to separate busy sections in the music. This is indeed a true test of technical performance in headphones, but can not be mistaken with the sense of 'body'.
Abyss 1266 Tc, known for its bass quality and quantity, 66mm drivers.
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V shaped headphones actually do tend to have a nice sense of space. I'm not referring to soundstage. Spaciousness and soundstage correlate, but are not mutually exclusive.
Slam can be taken as too much bass.
In any case, I'm not here to argue what is and what aren't proper counters to these terms.
The fact is, one man's trash is another's treasure and vice versa. That should be be a simple enough statement.
Slam can be taken as too much bass.
In any case, I'm not here to argue what is and what aren't proper counters to these terms.
The fact is, one man's trash is another's treasure and vice versa. That should be be a simple enough statement.
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Slam in my dictionary is not 'too much bass'. It is more about clean bass presence and impact.
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Not disagreeing with you. Sorry if my examples weren't correct enough. All I'm saying is that there are positive and negative affiliations to many audio terms, balances, frequency interpretations, etc.
One I like to use is omnipresent, atmospheric bass. To some that would sound like it's just invasive bass. I think it really will depend on what your subjective preference is. Again...subjective.
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Do not apologize. These terms are somewhat flexible in audiophilia. We still struggle to globally determine the same sound qualities and lingo.
Omnipresent bass to me is HiFiMan bass (HE1000SE, Susvara) but they do not have the same bass focus and impact of LCD models. I personally prefer a more focused and impactful although less spacious Audeze bass to the more diffuse but 'omnipresent' HiFiMan bass.
This is personal preference.
Well, some sound qualities are easily determined by most folks, some more refined sound qualities are harder to get a grip on. Both statements are true, depending on the listener. There are more obvious and more subtle qualities of sound. Even if the quality of sound is more obvious for the majority, these days you can't question the minority's truth without being stamped as 'horrible', can you?
Because... so many people chase after the "next best thing". You see the same thing in other hobbies as well.
Look at the PC parts industry... I've seen so many people buy the most expensive CPU/GPU even if it's actually not actually the "best" for their use case or system. Then they rinse and repeat with the next gen, and some wonder "how do you afford to buy such expensive headphones...?!" Gee, maybe I don't lust after internet street cred and validation, but instead focus on optimizing for me and my situation.
So when something new comes out -- it threatens their identity (street cred), because it could end up being more beloved than their recent purchase (Stealth).
Personally, if I end up loving the LCD-5, and most don't, so be it.
If I only listened to the mainstream opinion, I would've never tried and found joy in my MDR-Z1R's (and their imperfections).
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And therein lies the problem with using descriptors to try and convey subjective listening impressions. I don't find the Susvara bass to be particularly unfocused. I am using an amp with a very high damping factor, which may account for some of the difference in our perceptions.
Objective performance can be heard differently by different people. I treat even consensus skeptically, not just because people are not truly hearing what they hear, but I may not.
Susvara is rather different to other HE1000 (V1, V2, SE) models and the Arya HEXV2. Perhaps I should not have included it under the same umbrella.
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