From how i understand joker's scoring, i would sum it up as a scale of clarity.
clarity would mean a lot of things.. i can probably list it down below..
1. details, how much can you hear, opposite of er.. well.. less detail (lol). i think he mentioned resolution.
2. focus, how solid is the note, opposite of fuzzy, smeared, related to muddiness.
3. fluidity, how effortless the sound is, or opposite of how constrained the sound is. also related to muddiness, dynamic range, strength of sound, etc.
4. imaging, also related to focus, but more on soundstage, positioning, separation, spatial room for each note, and so on.
taking into account of all the above.. the result is still clarity, how clean the music comes to be heard, or not.. a clean and smooth sounding iem will actually get higher score, a smooth sounding but muddy iem will get lesser score, a clean but harsh sounding iem will get points depending on how the harshness affects the flow of the sound, if it hampers the flow, it gets less, if its simply grainy or piercing or painful but still conveys the sound well, it will get marks depends on how the listener interprets the harshness, or how annoyed the person is.
there's still a lot more things to consider that will affect the sound of the iem, namely balance, presentation, impulse, body, decay, projection, and probably a whole lot more criteria (the glossary have lots anyways) but were not used when putting scores. Its possible that we will get a more accurate idea on where to rank the iems if we consider all 20+ criteria? 30+? dunno, never bothered, just like the lots here..
, score them, and average the whole lot, but we simply dont have enough resource, measuring tools, scale, or what not to do that, hence the huge bias in the simplified scale used by joker (its HIS reference scale anyways), and differs to other people's scale.
all in all, i found his comments and opinion valuable as a reference vs our own personal opinion, and that can actually give an idea on what to expect when trying out new iems.
