[Valolilol]

Hi everybody,
 
I am a fresh new member of the community and this is my first thread, even though I followed a lot of discussions. So I had not a lot of ideas about where to start this new thread because it involves music instruments and sound rating. If anyone thinks that this thread should go somewhere else, do not hesitate to let me know or, if you can, directly change its position.
 
I am highly concerned by headphones and during a lot of reviews I can read sentences like : "These cans have very strong bass, tight medium..." or "Treble are way to high for me, there is also a bass roll-off...". Even though I understand these considerations (I have a degree in Electronics), I am interested about a way to correlate these statements to how instruments sound. In fact, I would like to recommend a headphones because people will be able to hear , for example, very clearly the singer's voice or very clearly heavy metal guitar. Basically I would like some help to correlate music instruments (drums, guitar, bass guitar, violin, piano and so on) to "bass, medium and treble".
 
I know this topic is very large and we will need some guidelines if, what so ever, it is possible to answer my question. This is why I would like to discuss a little bit about frequency range of instruments. For example, I found some interesting details about violin :
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/violin.html
It pictures what frequencies are involved but I cannot help myself thinking as an engineer and I know that not only one frequency is excited when a note is played. So how does that interfere with our perception ?
 
Thanks to everybody who gives some contribution !

 

[icebear]

Hi there and welcome to head-fi,
 
nice first post / thread starter topic. I am totally with you given my music preference for Jazz (mostly acoustic) and classical music. I do visit live concerts often and of course I like the recorded music at home sound as much like the live event with the acoustic character of the instruments as close as if they would be playing in my living room. In my book the HD800 is not too bad creating that impression within my set up.

When it comes to rankings/ratings, obviously people have different musical preference and as soon as you move away from acoustical instruments as point of reference, all is open for discussion

. And even with acoustic instruments you have people prefer the cello being a bit darker because it almost sounds like a viola to their ears.
 
As for descriptions, I agree it would be very helpful for any decription to mention exately which songs/track gave which impression of such and such instrument. Only then you are able to listen to the same track and evaluate that specific opinion.
 
Edit: maybe this could go into the "Sound science" forum ?

 

[Valolilol]

Thank you for your warm welcome Icebear (pretty cool nickname plus avatar I got to say!).
 
About your suggestion, I consider to change the thread's place, I will keep it for a while there and see if other people agree or do not, in order to consider a bit more opinions. Still, thank you.
 
I agree with you, instrument's preferences is a very large topic even though I think it could be interesting to see what people think it could be, for example, a very raw statement like "To me, these cans are very good to hear drums", then we can start to investigate and discuss having a look to some Tyll's measurements or other Head-Fi threads.
 
Thank you for your impression about the HD800. Having a slightly lower budget, I got a HD700 and, knowing they have similar characteristics (even the physical shape is sort of similar), I tend to think that I can speak a little bit about it. I also think these headphones have a very good spatialization and are pretty "clean" (instrument's separation is truly astonishing). Tyll mentionned once that he thinks spatialization is related to treble (I cannot find back the thread where he mentionned it) but having a look to this wiki page it turns out that there are two technics that our brain is using to locate a sound (one more bassy and the other more trebly) so I am still a bit confused to about what to look at...
About instrument's separation (I mean the abitlity of a headphone to destinctly present each instrument : if I focus a bit I can hear all instruments which are currently playing) I am not sure what coefficients, clues to look at. Have you any ideas ?
 
After sometime I started to think in a certain way about bass, medium and treble and I would like to have opinions about it. In my opinion, I think I can relate instruments this way :
-Bass is for the bass guitar and also is important for the bass drum.
-Vocals are medium (this track is a good example for me).
-Treble is more for drum's cymbals.
 
These are just statements but I would like to discuss about it in order to start somewhere to relate instruments to these words. For example, even though I understand there is a range for violin or piano, where would you place them ? I know the question is dodgy because they can play a lot of different notes and it would be easier to discuss about drums but you can provide the CD and track you are referencing of course, that would be a very good idea.