What the heck do these terms mean?
It's all about timbre and the timbral reproduction offered by the system. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/timbre Timbre is what enables us to distinguish a violin from a viola, and a Stradivarius from a Guarneri. Adjectives to describe the particular timbral reproduction of a given component can be hard to come by, beyond the most obvious ones. Most languages are fairly impoverished, lexically speaking, on their literal level, so we have recourse to figurative descriptors. This can easily get out of hand (qv. most wine critics). |
While I am on my soapbox, why are so many reviewers using obscure recordings to describe the sound? If I have never heard the recording how can I relate?Using the same recording over and over can be really boring. That's why there's a lot of music :) The point here is simply that the writer is using a recording that he thinks he knows well enough, and thinks its recorded well enough, that its worth mentioning how it sounds in the context of the review. The simple answer is 'you can't'. Just roll with it :) |
For anyone, genuinely interested in audio terms, commonly used by reviewers, etc, here’s some reading from a few years back: https://www.stereophile.com/reference/50/index.html |
For anyone, genuinely interested in audio terms, commonly used by reviewers, etc, here’s some reading from a few years back: https://www.stereophile.com/reference/50/index.htmlThanks. That’s a really informative link. Interestingly "organic" was not used back in 1993 though 'naturalness' was, maybe they are similar. |
