Not sure if this is the right forum for this, please let me know if this should go to another forum.
I'm trying to compare the sound of two earphones but while i can hear the difference, i do not know how to describe the difference properly. Things like soundstage, treble, etc...I do not know how to describe them properly.
The best way to describe differences between headphones is by frequency response. If you take an equalizer and dial frequency bands up and down to find what sounds balanced, you can describe what areas are weak and need boosting or too strong and need cutting. This will vary from person to person because we hear headphones differently due to our head shapes and ear canals. So if you find some headphones you feel are perfect, you can describe the frequencies that are different from your ideal target. You can also describe the degree of closed vs open sound. Compare open cans to closed designs and you'll see what that is.
All those flowery terms like "soundstage" and "veil" and "blacker blacks" are just poetry. They don't really mean much. They're just descriptions of placebo usually.
The best way to describe differences between headphones is by frequency response. If you take an equalizer and dial frequency bands up and down to find what sounds balanced, you can describe what areas are weak and need boosting or too strong and need cutting. This will vary from person to person because we hear headphones differently due to our head shapes and ear canals. So if you find some headphones you feel are perfect, you can describe the frequencies that are different from your ideal target. You can also describe the degree of closed vs open sound. Compare open cans to closed designs and you'll see what that is.
All those flowery terms like "soundstage" and "veil" and "blacker blacks" are just poetry. They don't really mean much. They're just descriptions of placebo usually.
FR is a good start, but I still say that its a jumping off point. In other words, so long as the FR is not horribly wrong, then you can start looking at things like square wave response, impulse response, overall THD, and so on.
I would also vehemently disagree that those flowery words are just a means of describing something that is usually a placebo. To me, those words are just what people use to describe an observation. Brushing ANY observation off as placebo, lies, misunderstanding, or impossible is something a skeptic would do. Not a scientist.
Plus, headphones are so different from one pair to the next, that I doubt any observation comes down to placebo in the first place.
Square wave is completely irrelevant to listening to music, and it’s an illegal signal in digital audio. I can’t think of a case where audible distortion is at all an issue with even halfway decent cans. You’re talking about theoretical improvements, ones that show up on charts and diagrams, but not in your ears. That’s fine if you’re interested in all that, but if you’re looking for cans to listen to music, response, comfort and features are MUCH more important than that stuff.
Feel free to describe your subjective impressions in flowery terms worthy of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but those analogies and glittering generalities won’t mean anything to someone with a different set of ears than you.
Good headphone reviews set out facts that you can rank according to your own criteria to make an informed conclusion for yourself. Lousy reviews come to conclusions for you, then use language worthy of a Mussolini speech to try to influence you to think the way they do without providing facts. Personally, I know enough about how home audio works to be immune to that stuff. High end audio salesmen hate me because of that, especially when I start telling their customers how to see through the smoke and mirrors and meaningless flowery praise.
Headphones are different because people hear sound from headphones differently. Your head shape and ear canals might make you prefer one response curve. Mine might favor another. That’s why the Harman Curve is just an average of many target responses, not an actual hard and fast target itself.
Square wave is completely irrelevant to listening to music, and it’s an illegal signal in digital audio. I can’t think of a case where audible distortion is at all an issue with even halfway decent cans. You’re talking about theoretical improvements, ones that show up on charts and diagrams, but not in your ears. That’s fine if you’re interested in all that, but if you’re looking for cans to listen to music, response, comfort and features are MUCH more important than that stuff.
Feel free to describe your subjective impressions in flowery terms worthy of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but those analogies and glittering generalities won’t mean anything to someone with a different set of ears than you.
Good headphone reviews set out facts that you can rank according to your own criteria to make an informed conclusion for yourself. Lousy reviews come to conclusions for you, then use language worthy of a Mussolini speech to try to influence you to think the way they do without providing facts. Personally, I know enough about how home audio works to be immune to that stuff. High end audio salesmen hate me because of that, especially when I start telling their customers how to see through the smoke and mirrors and meaningless flowery praise.
The point of a square wave test is not to see if the headphones can react to an actual square wave. It's to see how fast the headphones can swing from one extreme to the other and how cleanly can they do it. It's kind of like an FR test in that it is not there to determine how good the headphones are, but rather to see if there is some obvious flaw with the design.
"I can’t think of a case where audible distortion is at all an issue with even halfway decent cans"
Define "audible distortion" and "half decent cans". The Abyss headphones are supposedly super high end and I am honestly scared to see their THD performance.
"That’s fine if you’re interested in all that, but if you’re looking for cans to listen to music, response, comfort and features are MUCH more important than that stuff."
Totally agree. Especially comfort. It's real hard to listen to perfect headphones if the ear pads are made out of sand paper. However, that then means that we have to address the fact that the sound science thread is largely pointless and that everyone should just go buy what sounds good and shut up. : P
"Feel free to describe your subjective impressions in flowery terms worthy of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but those analogies and glittering generalities won’t mean anything to someone with a different set of ears than you.
Good headphone reviews set out facts that you can rank according to your own criteria to make an informed conclusion for yourself. Lousy reviews come to conclusions for you, then use language worthy of a Mussolini speech to try to influence you to think the way they do without providing facts. Personally, I know enough about how home audio works to be immune to that stuff. High end audio salesmen hate me because of that, especially when I start telling their customers how to see through the smoke and mirrors and meaningless flowery praise."
I get what you are saying now. Yeah, this is the old "teach people how to think for themselves" vs "teach people what to think" argument. I agree with the core principal of your argument.
The reality of the situation is that most people buying anything, just want to be told what the best thing is, buy it, and move on in life. Those people who want more info, will seek it out on their own. Now for what ever reason, the more educated people seem to have a lower budget than the less educated. I have yet to figure that one out.
A square wave doesn't represent anything remotely related to commercially recorded music. Whether headphones can reproduce a square wave just poorly or completely horribly doesn't at all reflect how it's going to play Mozart or Metallica. And try to push a square wave through a DAC. It flat out won't play it at all.
Great sounding speakers can have distortion levels several times larger than headphones and still sound fantastic. The typical THD of headphones is well below the threshold of audibility. A general rule of thumb for audibility of distortion is 1%, which means the distortion is -40dB below peak. Commercial music generally has a dynamic range of less than 55dB, so 1% distortion is going to be down at the very bottom where masking would render it completely inaudible. In my sig is a link to a AES Audio Myths seminar where Ethan Winer takes the most annoying buzzer sound you ever heard and drops it down to -40dB. He links to the original track on his website. Listen to that and see what you think. Then imagine the distortion following the contour of the music... even less audible. If you look at the specs for just about any halfway decent cans, the THD will be below 1%.
Objective numbers are better than flowery subjective impressions. But those numbers are just abstract ideas until you put them into the context of audibility. Audiophiles tend to know every rating related to their equipment, but they don't have any clue about the ratings of their ears. They worry about differences that are far below the threshold of audibility. Home audio equipment should be judged according to their fitness for a specific purpose- how well do they perform the job of playing your music while you sit on the couch in your living room? How well they perform playing square waves in an anechoic chamber is completely irrelevant. Abstract numbers are a rabbit hole leading to spending a lot of money to improve sound you can't even hear. Now if you *are* just interested in headphones in theory and you don't mind that you can't actually hear the difference, that is great. Chase the dream. But for most of us, all we care about is what our decidedly human ears can actually hear. We don't want the best thing if it means $10,000 for absolutely no benefit.
HOWEVER... It is very clear that frequency response, comfort and features vary greatly from one brand and model of headphones to another. And those three factors may have different solutions for different people. Taking someone else's advice is probably not the best way to determine what is best for you. It's much more effective to define what you are looking for in terms of a frequency response curve, finding a headphone that is comfortable on your particular noggin, and ticking off all the boxes on the features that you need and will actually use. In order to get all that from a review, you need facts so you can make up your own mind. You don't need purple prose.
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, please let me know if this should go to another forum.
I'm trying to compare the sound of two earphones but while i can hear the difference, i do not know how to describe the difference properly. Things like soundstage, treble, etc...I do not know how to describe them properly.
Or? Accurate - The music is (as much as possible) unaltered by the recording or playback equipment.
Aggressive - Forward and bright sonic character.
Airy - Spacious, typically referring to upper midrange and treble.
Ambience - The overall impression, feeling, or mood evoked by an environment or acoustical space, such as the performance hall in which a recording was made.
Analytical - Detailed.....typically thought of as neutral or bright.
Articulate - The overall ability to offer fast transients and efficient imaging of instruments.
Attack - The leading edge of a note and the ability of a system to reproduce the attack transients in music.
Attack (2) - The time taken for a musical note to reach its peak amplitude eg. notes will tend to sound more defined rather than blended with other notes.
Balance - Usually the tuning of the earphone. A well-balanced headphone would not have one particularly dominant frequency, but rather all would be “balanced.”
Bass - The audio frequencies between about 60Hz and 250Hz.The lower end frequency of human hearing. Bass can be measured in quantity (heaviness) and quality (clarity). Other bass descriptors are “muddy” and “boomy.”
Basshead - Emphasized Bass.
Bloated - Excessive mid bass around 250 Hz. Poorly damped low frequencies, low frequency resonances.
Blurred - Poor transient response. Vague stereo imaging, not focused.
Body - Fullness of sound. Substantialness of response.
Boomy - Excessive bass around 125 Hz. Typically edging into midrange and affecting pace.
Boxy - Having resonances as if the music were enclosed in a box. Sometimes an emphasis around 250 to 500 Hz. Often called cardboard box sounding, like boxes used as drums.
Breakup - When different points on the surface of a diaphragm begin to move out of sync, causing distortion. Breakup often occurs in dynamic drivers at high volumes as forces on the diaphragm increase. Breakup is less likely to occur at lower volumes or in planar magnetic or electrostatic headphone drivers.
Bright/Brightness - Boost in the upper frequencies or upper-mid range. Brightness is a feature enjoyed by many but walks a thin line to becoming unpleasant depending on the individual.
Brilliance - The 6kHz to 16kHz range controls the brilliance and clarity of sounds. Too much emphasis in this range can produce sibilance on the vocals.
Clear - Transparent.
Closed - A closed-in sound lacking in openness, delicacy, air, and fine detail usually caused by Roll-off above 10kHz; in contrast to Open.
Congestion - Poor clarity caused by overlapping sounds. Congested sound signatures lack detail and clarity, making it hard to hear separate instruments and may also be called muddy or muffled.
Coloration - The effect of a device on the music signal. The opposite of “neutral.” Various aspects can affect the tone, responsiveness or the frequency response of the music/audio.
Crisp - Clear.
Dark - A tonal balance that tilts downwards with increasing frequency. Opposite of bright. Weak high frequencies.
Decay - The fadeout of a note as it follows the attack.
Definition (or resolution) - The ability of a component to reveal the subtle information that is fundamental to high fidelity sound.
Delicate - High frequencies extending to 15 or 20 kHz without peaks.
Density - I personally started to use this word to describe note weight, and note authority.
Depth - A sense of distance (near to far) of different instruments.
Detail - The most delicate elements of the original sound and those which are the first to disappear with lesser equipment.
Detailed - Easy to hear tiny details in the music; articulate. Adequate high frequency response, sharp transient response.
Dry - Lack of reverberation or delay as produced by a damped environment. May come across as fine grained and lean. Opposite of wet.
Dynamic - The suggestion of energy and wide dynamic range. Related to perceived speed as well as contrasts in volume both large and small. Still in the end this word has many interpretations.
Edgy - Too much high frequency response. Trebly. Harmonics are too strong relative to the fundamentals. Distorted, having unwanted harmonics that add an edge or raspiness.
Euphonic - An appealing form of distortion that generally enhances perceived fidelity, often ascribed to the harmonic elaborations of some valve amps.
Fast - Good reproduction of rapid transients which increase the sense of realism and "snap".
Focus - A strong, precise sense of image projection.
Forward(ness) - Similar to an aggressive sound, a sense of image being projected in front of the speakers and of music being forced upon the listener. The opposite would be “Laid-back".
Full - Strong fundamentals relative to harmonics. Good low frequency response, not necessarily extended, but with adequate level around 100 to 300 Hz. Male voices are full around 125 Hz; female voices and violins are full around 250 Hz; sax is full around 250 to 400 Hz. Opposite of thin.
Grainy - A loss of smoothness resulting is a loss of clarity and transparency.
Grunt - Actually a guitar term intended to denote an authoritative and fast low end frequency response ability in hollow body jazz guitars.
Harsh - Too much upper midrange. Peaks in the frequency response between 2 and 6 kHz.
Highs - The audio frequencies above about 6000 Hz.
High Midrange (High Mids, Upper Mids) - The audio frequencies between about 2kHz and 6kHz.
Imaging - The sense that a voice or instrument is in a particular place in the room. Directly measured with square wave graphs and indicates transient edge response quality in the time domain.
Impedance - Indicates how much power is required for the driver. The higher the impedance, the more power is required to get the maximum quality and volume of sounds out of the driver. Electrical resistance to the flow of current in an AC circuit. The higher the impedance of the headphone, for instance, the less current will flow through it.
Layering - The reproduction of depth and receding distance, which audibly places the rows of performers one behind the other.
Laid-back - Recessed, distant-sounding, having exaggerated depth, usually because of a dished midrange. Compare "Forward".
Layering - The reproduction of depth and receding distance, which audibly places the rows of performers one behind the other.
Less-Tangibles - Everything other than FR, hence reverberations, texture, instrument timbre, soundstage etc…..etc.
Liquid - Textureless sound.
Low-Level Detail - The subtlest elements of musical sound, which include the delicate details of instrumental sounds and the final tail of reverberation decay.
Low Midrange (Low Mids) - The audio frequencies between about 250Hz and 2000Hz.
Lush - Harmonically complex, typicality thought of as thick with many additives. A rich tone and usually with some warmth to the overall presentation.
Metallic - Typicality an overall sheen which can become part of an off timbre response.
Midrange (Mids) - The audio frequencies between about 250 Hz and 6000 Hz.
Musical (or musicality) - A sense of cohesion and subjective "rightness" in the sound.
Nasal - Reproduced sound having the quality of a person speaking with their nose blocked. Closed off; a measured peak in the upper midrange followed by a complimentary dip.
Naturalness - Realism.
Opaque - Unclear, lacking Transparency.
Open - Sound which has height and "air", relates to clean upper midrange and treble.
Pace - Often assoc. with rhythm, a strong sense of timing and beat.
Physicality - Weight and realness, typicality used (by me) to describe bass, but can carry over to all frequencies. Female and male vocals could have physicality, if they sound real.
Piercing - Strident, hard on the ears, screechy. Having sharp, narrow peaks in the response around 3 to 10 kHz.
PRaT - Pace, rhythm and timing.
Presence Range - The presence range between 4kHz and 6kHz is responsible for the clarity and definition of voices and instruments. Increasing this range can make the music seem closer to the listener. Reducing the 5kHz content makes the sound more distant and transparent.
Presence - An emphasized instrument response around 5 kHz for most instruments, or around 2 to 5 kHz for kick drum and bass.
Punchy - Good reproduction of dynamics. Good transient response, with strong impact. Sometimes a bump around 5 kHz or 200 Hz.
Range - The distance between the lowest and highest tones.
Resolution - The clarity to separate and delineate musical information.
Reverb - Short for reverberation. A diminishing series of echoes spaced sufficiently closely in time that they merge into a smooth decay.
Rich - See Full. Also, having euphonic distortion made of even order harmonics.
Roll-off (Rolloff) - The gradual attenuation that occurs at the lower or upper frequency range of a driver, network, or system. The roll-off frequency is usually defined as the frequency where response is reduced by 3 dB.
Round - High frequency rolloff or dip. Not edgy.
Rhythm - The controlled movement of sounds in time.
Shrill - Strident, Steely.
Sibilant - The high unpleasant peaks that are usually unpleasant to the ear if too prevalent.
Sizzly - See Sibilant. Also, too much highs on cymbals.
Smeared - Lacking detail; poor transient response, too much leakage between microphones; poorly focused images.
Smooth - Describing the quality of sound reproduction having no irritating qualities; free from high-frequency peaks, and relaxing to listen to. Not necessarily a positive system attribute if accompanied by a slow, uninvolving character.
Sound Signature - The unique intrinsic sound quality of a headphone, music player, DAC, or audio cable. Some audio products emphasize the higher treble ranges while others strengthen the bass. This overall sound profile of audio devices helps audiophiles fine-tune the listening experience by pairing the right headphone cable, DAC, or music player with their headphones.
Soundstage - An illusionary effect of headphones to produce a listening space front to back, up and down and right to left.
Speed - Pace and timing, can have relationship with overall “tune”.
Steely - Emphasized upper mids around 3 to 6 kHz. Peaky, non flat high frequency response. Metallic.
Strident - See Harsh, Edgy.
Sub-Bass - The audio frequencies between about 20Hz and 80Hz.
Sweet - Typically reference to smooth comfortable high pitch sounds.
Technical Ability - A blanket term for attack transients, imaging, decay, tonality, tonal balance, timbre, temperature, and texture. At times overall frequency response (if even and correct) is considered part of technical ability.
Synergy - The interaction or cooperation of two or more audio components in an audio system, which, when combined produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. Example: the synergy between a DAC and a headphone amp.
Texture - The timbre of multiple instruments playing together, though more accurately the instrument “voices” together.
Thick - Typically bass or lower midrange density.
Thin - Fundamentals are weak relative to harmonics; bass light.
Tight - Good low frequency transient response and detail.
Timbre - The tonal character of an instrument which separates it from other instruments of the same tone.
Timing - Tempo in relationships with clarity of pace.
Tinny - Thin harmonically narrow, metallic, in treble region.
Tone - The sound of definite pitch.
Transient - The leading edge of a percussive sound, though the term can be applied to any wave form.
Transparent - Easy to hear into the music, detailed, clear, not muddy. Wide flat frequency response, sharp time response, very low distortion and noise. A hear through quality that is akin to clarity and reveals all aspects of detail.
Treble - The highest part of music and voice. See Highs. (Most often used when referring to the treble control on amplifiers).
Upper Midrange (Upper Mids, High Mids) - The audio frequencies between 2 kHz and 6 kHz.
Vivid - A word often used to describe clarity and intensity.
Veiled- Lack of full clarity due to noise or loss of detail from limited transparency.
Warm - Good bass, adequate low frequencies, adequate fundamentals relative to harmonics. Not thin. Also excessive bass or mid bass. Also, pleasantly spacious, with adequate reverberation at low frequencies. Also see Rich, Round. Warm highs means sweet highs.
Weighty - Good low frequency response below about 50 Hz. A sense of substance and underpinning produced by deep, controlled bass. Suggesting an object of great weight or power, like a diesel locomotive.
Width - The apparent lateral spread of a stereo image. If appropriately recorded, a reproduced image should sound no wider or narrower than how it sounded originally.
Stuff like that is why I'm happy to be corralled in Sound Science and not have to deal with those kinds of bloated, wooly, punchy words. But the best of all is PRAT because it is false by definition.
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, please let me know if this should go to another forum.
I'm trying to compare the sound of two earphones but while i can hear the difference, i do not know how to describe the difference properly. Things like soundstage, treble, etc...I do not know how to describe them properly.
Fancy lingo or not, just remember that you're talking about your own experience, and that someone else with a different body can have another one. "I feel", "I experienced", "what I heard was". Anything after that is your experience, you own it. Everybody knows that, and everybody is all too fast to forget about it when discussing gear. Do your best not to fall for that.
If you do wish to describe the objective behavior of the headphones, then you need objective measurements. It's not to say that if you feel like one headphone has a lot more bass than another one, it's not objectively true that it has more bass. But it's so easy to slip and start making objective stuff up(cf any audiophile topic...). Pretty much everybody on audio forums is ludicrously overconfident in his ability to describe the objective world by relying on subjective experiences only. Be self conscious of that slippery slope! Measurements have a potential for objective information. Casual listening does remain a subjective and mostly personal experience. communicating about it will also have those limitations.
If you use subjective HiFi lingo, how does anybody know what those terms really mean to you? It's like writing about love. We all have some concept of love, some experience of love, but how can I tell if my experience and idea of love is the same as yours? We would need to discuss for a while to better understand what the other person really meant.
Learning to know each other is the essential part of getting a fruitful discussion about subjective experiences. A reviewer can write that a headphone is too "bright"; too "cold"; or any other term stolen from a non audio domain. Until I've also heard those headphones and felt how they sound, I won't really know for sure what he talked about. And by repeating the experience of correlating headphone listening with him describing the sound in those terms, I will learn, if not the true meaning of the word, at least what he specifically means when he uses it. Maybe his notion of bright is close to my feeling of neutral. it's not like he owns the definition of neutral or bright headphone(again different heads will hear differently). But over time we learn to correlate a few stuff with whatever weirdo word he's using. the good part being that once you've got the meaning, his reviews become relevant to you. the bad part is that there is no guaranty that the rest of the world will interpret "bright" the way he does. we're very much in a subjective situation. with all the limitations attached to that.
just express yourself consistently, doesn't matter too much if you use flowery language or write "ababa agaga". with time a few readers will start to get you. but consistency is the key here.
I would also suggest to focus mostly on frequency response because it's an important part of enjoying a headphone. Many things you might not feel related to FR actually are in one way or another, so it's always a good starting point.
And from a subjective point of view, I suggest to often fool around with an EQ to get used to correlating certain impressions with something you can precisely define in frequency and magnitude. That has the benefit of being fairly consistent for all readers who wish to understand what you say. You also don't need much vocabulary to do well. So I'd go with it as much as possible.
Talking about soundstage/headstage/whatchamacallit is risky because an instrument can be at one place for you and at another place for me(HRTF). Some things will be experienced by most in the same fashion, but some won't. so if you decide to go there, make sure to express those feelings as your own, and not as if the headphone is like that. for the terms to use, don't worry and just go with whatever comes to you. We have tens of pages arguing about the definition of soundstage itself, or if it should be used at all for headphones. So, don't worry about not using the right words to describe your impressions. Just make sure they come out as your impressions and not as claims about the headphone. Then you'll be fine anywhere IMO.
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, please let me know if this should go to another forum.
I'm trying to compare the sound of two earphones but while i can hear the difference, i do not know how to describe the difference properly. Things like soundstage, treble, etc...I do not know how to describe them properly.
I have a few suggestions:
1. First describe the naturalness of the tonal balance that you hear by describing the perceived frequency response. Stick to simple technical terms like more or less bass (or treble).
2. Use a popular reference IEM for comparisons. For example the $5 Sony MH755 (try get the genuine one). So you can say this earphone A has less bass and more treble than Sony MH755. Many audiophiles here will have no issue to understand that.
3. Use good known recordings to evaluate any audio gears. An earphone can have too much treble with certain recording while sounding natural with good tonal balance on other recordings. Recording plays a very huge part in evaluating audio gears. Get good free recordings like for example free download from 2L, HDTracks, Linn, etc. Or at least post the YouTube or Spotify link in your review so people can hear the test tracks that you use to review your earphones.
From my observation there are only 2 important sound qualities that I would like to know when people describing earphone / headphone SQ:
1. Tonal Balance: perceived balance between bass, midrange, and treble.
2. Perceived detail and clarity.
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