[Glmoneydawg]

Try getting silver jumper cables

Because of the high amperages involved jumper cables truly do benefit from quality and gauge of wire....i thought you where going to avoid automotive analogies my friend

 

[Glmoneydawg]

My car needs detailing

Ultrasonic cleaning perhaps?

 

[BobG55]

Ultrasonic cleaning perhaps?

That would be a "bit" much wouldn't it ?

 

[Ryokan]

"Detail" implies hearing something more clearly, but this can be affected by so many factors I don't think the term is very useful without context. Something could sound "blurry" because of actual resolution (amount of information), the speed/precision of the transducer, or peaks/dips in the frequency response (auditory masking is real).

would 'clarity' be a better descriptive word than 'detail' in this instance? When I read the word detail (concerning music) I thought it meant good sound gear let you hear everything in a recording, whereas budget sound gear wouldn't let you hear vocals in the background, fingers caressing strings etc.

Clarity:
the quality of transparency or purity.
"the crystal clarity of water".
The quality of being easy to see or hear; sharpness of image or sound.

 

[bigshot]

would 'clarity' be a better descriptive word than 'detail' in this instance?

It's generally best to use specific terminology to describe sound, rather than analogies to other senses like sight that may not be at all applicable.

Sound can be defined by a few terms... Frequency is the pitch of a sound, amplitude is the volume, noise is irrelevant sound added to the signal, distortion is the difference between the original sound and the reproduced sound, dynamics are the contrasts between loud and quiet, timing is how a sound is placed in time. By using these basic fundamental principles, you can more accurately describe things.

For instance... A person can say that sound is "grainy", referring to how a photograph might look, or how sand on the beach feels. But how does that relate to sound? Grainy sound might have distortion in the upper midrange frequencies. Or it may be timing errors causing tiny dropouts. Or it may have noise added to the signal like an antique record. All of these things could be described as grainy... but they would all have different causes and different solutions.

It's common among audiophiles to use flowery language to define things... veils being lifted, crystalline sparkles, velvety blacks... but these terms define how a person feels about sound, it doesn't describe the sound itself. Feelings about sound can be caused by anything. Velvety blacks could be caused by congestion in your ear canals. veils could be because you just had a really nice lunch and you're feeling good. Subjective descriptions are fine for you, but they don't apply to anyone else.

That's why we tend to stick to specific terms here in Sound Science. The idea is "how do we go about improving sound quality?" That requires defining the cause and effect precisely so we can come up with a way to produce the result we want. The fundamentals of sound reproduction help us do that.

 

[tansand]

However, there are limits to language's accuracy or even relevance when describing reality in general, or in specifics, so either we find a work around or give up trying to describe reality beyond the meanings of words.

lmao.

 

[bigshot]

A lot of people use words indiscriminately.

 

[castleofargh]

A lot of people use words indiscriminately.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

Right?....RIGHT????

 

[bigshot]

I can count to potato.

 

[taffy2207]

I can count to potato.

That's Dan Quayle logic right there

Spoiler: For the Young un's who are thinking huh?

 

[tansand]

I like to think of detail as hemispherical, because it's something we can find in our neighborhoods. However when I describe a sound as 'grainy', people here have a fair idea what I'm saying, unlike when I describe a sound as photosynthesis, or potato. lol.

 

[gregorio]

[1] would 'clarity' be a better descriptive word than 'detail' in this instance?
[2] When I read the word detail (concerning music) I thought it meant good sound gear let you hear everything in a recording, whereas budget sound gear wouldn't let you hear vocals in the background, fingers caressing strings etc.

1. I'm not sure it would because "detail" and "clarity" can mean quite different things. For example, it's common to be able to discern fine details near the noise floor, particularly when significant compression and make-up gain has been applied, in which case we could have detail without clarity. Likewise, it's possible to have clarity without detail.

2. This raises an important point: How much detail are we supposed to hear? In the audiophile world, more detail (and certain other attributes) is always better and therefore gear that lets you hear more detail is better than gear which doesn't. However, there are many situations where artistically we don't want more detail. An obvious example would be say a violin section, where we typically want to hear a homogenous whole, rather than the actual detail of say 20 individual violins. Another example would be that most instruments produce some amount of mechanical noise, the sounds of the keys or valves on wind and brass instruments or creaks and rattles with many percussion instruments. This is typically undesirable detail because it's a consequence of the common need to closely mic an instrument/s but in a real life performance the audience will never (and are not intended to) hear those "details" due to their distance from the instruments. For this reason it's common and in some cases almost routine, to reduce these sounds during editing, most typically the breath sounds of singers and the fret (finger slides on strings) noise on acoustic guitar.

G

 

[ev13wt]

Detail is what people say when they hear "Jazz at the pawn shop".
I have never listened to it
I was there and gave the recording guy some pointers.

 

[jagwap]

Detail is what people say when they hear "Jazz at the pawn shop".
I have never listened to it
I was there and gave the recording guy some pointers.

Early in my career I was setting up a blind listening test, and I listed it as "Jazz at the Porn Shop*. Probably a very different jazz solo...