[3602]

Excellent. How about music produced with softwares, then?

 

[SDDL-UP]

"Neutral"

"Transparent"

"Uncolored"

Sound quality is measurable - Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), Frequency Response (FR), good channel separation, etc.

If a source can provide good measurable results on all fronts, then it has "good sound quality" you may not like the way it sounds, but that is besides the point. That's also why they make equalizers. There may be some confusion when a source has very good results in some areas, but lags behind in others.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDDL-UP /img/forum/go_quote.gif If a source can provide good measurable results on all fronts, then it has "good sound quality" you may not like the way it sounds, but that is besides the point.

No, it's not beside the point. It IS the point.

If it doesn't SOUND good, then sound quality, by definition, is not good.

se

 

[SDDL-UP]

Koyaan,

You're talking about the subjective part. I'm talking about the objective part.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDDL-UP /img/forum/go_quote.gif You're talking about the subjective part. I'm talking about the objective part.

There is no objective part. Sound is all about human perception. When did human perception suddenly become objective?

se

 

[eucariote]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif There is no objective part. Sound is all about human perception. When did human perception suddenly become objective

Ever since evolution killed off anything that did not respond reasonably well to their environment from what could be inferred from their sense organs.

Okay that was a joke but seriously everything between a musician's body, voice & hands, instruments, performance, recording equipment, digital conversion, amplifiers, headphones - 99% percent of things dealt with in these forums and that can be addressed and improved with hardware is physical. As is the ability of all that equipment to put us back in the performance, which is the best starting place for all things subjective and what we all seek. Without good reproduction, we just have human perception of crap sounding music.

 

[SP Wild]

Why is there always salt and pepper at the restaurant table?

 

[GuruTech]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif To me, "sound" is all about human perception. Therefore "sound quality" is the ascribed quality of sound as perceived by humans thus making it a decidedly subjective evaluation, and one for which there can be no judging beyond that of a given individual. se

I agree "sound quality" is subjective. That sound can be good to you but it does not mean that it is good to me.

 

[yliu]

I think good sound quality means that the speaker, or headphone reproduces the sound almost the way it is recorded, unlike bad quality sound that has more coloration, distortion producing less accurate sound.

 

[SDDL-UP]

Koyaan,

I do see what you are saying, but I disagree. Sure SOUND is what someone (or something) can hear - great that gets us a nice definition you got out of your unabridged dictonary. The question HOWEVER, is not what is "sound" the question is what is "sound quality".

It is my opinion that "sound quality" can and should be measuered any way possible - including the human ear.

In the same way that you can take a red paint chip to Home Depot and have it analyzed and a whole gallon mixed up for you in minutes that will be a perfect match - you can have various instruments test and analyze "sound". Just as a person that is color blind can't match that red paint chip, one person cannot determine sound quality for another, but instruments and scientific measurement can determine sound accuracy and that I think is what the OP meant.

 

[Guidostrunk]

If you take into context the word Sound Quality, IMO its subjective for the fact that its how its perceived. For instance you have bad , good , great , mediocre , etc. Whether you use your ear or some sophisticated analysis, ie. graphs. As far as sound accuracy goes , if there's a scientific measurement for what an accurate sound is then there should only be one universal headphone/IEM that we all should have with no choice as to what sound we like because " scientifically " there's no need for selection.So IMO its subjective to choice.

 

[SDDL-UP]

Guidostrunk,

I see what you are saying as well, but does a person's individual taste alone determine quality?

I can see somone not liking something that perfectly reproduces sound, they may have personal taste for something that is not like the original sound and that's fine, but does that make the perfectly reproduced sound somehow imperfect? No. it just makes it undesirable to that individual. The quality of the sound may be perfect, but it may not be ideally suited to everyone.

As in my comparison above, does my opinion of red make the paint chip more or less red?

 

[Guidostrunk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDDL-UP /img/forum/go_quote.gif Guidostrunk, I see what you are saying as well, but does a person's individual taste alone determine quality? I can see somone not liking something that perfectly reproduces sound, they may have personal taste for something that is not like the original sound and that's fine, but does that make the perfectly reproduced sound somehow imperfect? No. it just makes it undesirable to that individual. The quality of the sound may be perfect, but it may not be ideally suited to everyone. As in my comparison above, does my opinion of red make the paint chip more or less red?

Putting the red paint chip into the same context, the red paint chip, to some it might be to red to others it might not be red enough ,even though the color is red. In the terms of perfectly reproduced sound, who would it be perfect to.What you consider perfect and someone else does, could possibly be 2 different things.Just like when you go to a restaurant ,you have FOOD Quality. I thought my steak was good while yours in your opinion was terrible , with it being prepared the same way. Produced sound and prepared steak , what makes it perfect? So IMO it's preference which intern makes it subjective.

 

[eucariote]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guidostrunk /img/forum/go_quote.gif In the terms of perfectly reproduced sound, who would it be perfect to.

Um, me. Unlike a steak, a violin, voice, guitar, etc. once had a true and original sound. The bow, strings, body, wood of a string instrument all create a very particular set of sound waves that moved through a hall/room/studio and impacted a microphone, as they did the ears of the musician and audience. Let's call that perfect. Did that all exist in the inspired mind of a chef? Would you put Dynamat in Yo Yo Ma's cello?

oh, I give up.

 

[haloxt]

What happens if you take fluorescent paint chips to home depot? Anyway the best way to render that analogy is the difficulty of using machines to copy all the qualities that contribute to an object's color, which is hard because under different lighting things appear different. Theoretically possible, but I really doubt what they have at home depot can give you an exact match when you consider the difficulty cameras currently have at replicating colors that appear as they would to human eyes in real life. The issues of color reproduction and perception are pretty unfathomable, and I think "sound quality" is equally confusing. Nonetheless I think people can come to a working compromise if they acknowledge perfect sound quality is just an unachievable ideal.