Can you describe these Headphone Adjectives?

[Ruahrc]

(inspired by the one-word headphone review thread

)

Often times when I read reviews on headphones or read posts in this forum I have a little trouble comprehending what the review is trying to say about the cans. Specifically when they try to describe the sound properties of the phones using words such as:

bloated
recessed (mids, highs, lows)
tinny
tight
colored
loose
flat
full
bumps/humps
neutral
open
airy
etc, etc.

I have just recently purchased some pretty good speakers (Klipsch PM5.1) and some pretty good headphones (Koss KSC-35) as well as a pretty good source (iPod, all my mp3s are EAC ripped/LAME encoded at "alt preset extreme") and as such I am developing a feeling for some of these words, but I am still kind of lost.

So I was wondering if you guys could (at least try to) describe what you are hearing/feeling/thinking when you use these words to describe your cans. Feel free to describe your favorite word that is not on the list either- as I am sure I have left lots of them out.

Thanks! Let's see what we can do here.
Ruahrc

 

[ablaze]

add "musical" to that list

 

[andrzejpw]

Here's a start

Stereophile glossary:
http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?50:1

 

[stan23]

can't really help you too much..

neutral = not to high, not to low. Does not excel in treble nor is the sound bass heavy.. Just neutral

 

[KR...]

Just follow the link :

http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?50

 

[KR...]

Quote:

Originally posted by andrzejpw Here's a start Stereophile glossary: http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?50:1

Grrr..... you beat me to it!

 

[Rizumu]

I was going to post the link but I thought it'd take the fun out of the thead. The guy wanted to get a discussion going =^/

 

[kcits]

i'd guess that 'musical' just means that the 'phone colours the sonic spectrum to the listener's liking..

hmm 'forward' sounds a little more ambiguous i think.. does it mean that a certain part of the spectrum is exaggerated (i think that's the general consensus), or - more literally - that the sound comes from 'out of your head'?

 

[Mr.PD]

You guys with the links are either being lame or you don't know the answers either.
I know I don't know.So I followed the link, bloated is there, but not bumps. Flat is there but full isn't.
Then you have descriptions like this Quote:

dark A warm, mellow, excessively rich quality in reproduced sound. The audible effect of a frequency response which is clockwise-tilted across the entire range, so that output diminishes with increasing frequency. Compare "light."

I know what a dark sounding headphone sounds like (I have Beyer DT250). But what in God's Greenacres is a clockwise tilted frequency response?

 

[myself, aka me]

A line with a negative gradient? emphasised bass and recessed treble with neutral mids is what I have in my mind right now

 

[wallijonn]

Mr. PD,

a clockwise tilt is a frequency response which goes downward in an ever increasing slope (no treble). it may have a large midrange hump and then dips after 2kHz.

Ruahrc,

I'll give it a shot,

bloated - usually refers to lower to mid-bass, covers a large frequency range (usually about 500 Hz in width)
recessed (mids, highs, lows) - recessed mids are where the bass and treble are higher than the mids, but usually refers to the vocals being not forward enough, they sound quieter than the surrounding music. recessed highs: sharp rolloff of high frequencies.
tinny - too much treble or not enough bass and midrange
bright - upper frequency exaggeration.
tight - slight distortion (soundwave undershoot), sounds restrained. when referring to bass, it's as if someone hit a kettle drum and then stopped the membrane from decaying by putting their hand over the membrane. a "twang" instead of a "thung", no "thud" sound. the bass note does not extend past it's initial frequency.
colored - extra body, an excessive warmth, usually denotes the vocal spectrum. doesn't sound "clear". in some instances bad sound decay, decay, decay, ....
loose - soundwave overshoot, usually refers to bass being flabby. the bass note affects frequencies around it more than it should. a "thud" sound.
flat - all instrument intensities are reproduced with same volume or power
full -
bumps/humps - short intensity (usually under 5 dB) / higher intensity (usually over 5 dB), usually covers no more than 1000 Hz in width. the bump has a short width, a hump has a wide width.
neutral - no one range predominates, not too bright, not too forward, not to bassy. good decay of timbre.
open - good positioning, sounds don't smudge together
airy - large soundstage with large space between instruments, but there is a sense of greater depth of the soundstage which seems to extend forward and backward. very sensitive to amplifier being used.

will everyone agree to what I said? HELL NO!

i actually heard something strange the other day. i was listening to a song and i reversed the cups so that the left channel was on the right ear, and visa versa. there was a certain riff that actually travelled around the back of my neck, from the right channel to the left. it was not in the middle of my head, nor above it. it was very 3D positional in nature. wearing the headphones correctly did not produce the same effect, nor did it travel in front of my neck.

if you really want to know what these things mean, you'll have to take two different headphones and compare them. "airy" can be manipulated by amplifiers, especially if they have separate power supplies. then you can say that the first headphones sound more coloured than the second, the bass sounds bloated compared to the second, the second sounds bright compared to the first, etc. They are comparatitive verbs. and your comparison will probably not jive with someone else doing the same comparison. overall there should be an overall agreement, but there should also be minute comparative differences. some people prefer bass (bass heads), others prefer mids (mid head) and still others prefer highs (high heads). I'm a high head. there are many here who can not accept anything less than total neutrality in their sound. these are usually the audiophiles. the audiophile is probably looking for the holy grail of headphones - one that can reproduce all gendres of music equally well with equal aplumb.

 

[steve6]

"airy" is one of my favorites. It means that (particularly if, say, you are listening to a string quartet), you can hear (or sense, I guess) the "space" between the instruments. Also, to me it sometimes means the very *movement* of air, as when you hear (especially with headphones) a singer take a breath. Or a trumpeter, for that matter.

I dunno.

 

[Ruahrc]

great link, thanks! Still is kind of ambiguous though- I don't know what the sound range between 3kHz and 7kHz sounds like- so when they say that that portion is exaggerated, it still is pretty confusing. That's kinda why I like the wordy responses

All replies appreciated though!

Ruahrc

 

[wallijonn]