BAASnotes.com – Bay Area Audiophile Society

Describing What We Hear

We have all been in hundreds of discussions centering on a description of “what we heard” – usually to evaluate the quality of a given system, component, mix, or piece of music. And we’ve all been alternately mesmerized and frustrated by the unusual things that we read and hear, such as:

• “Where’s the air? The music has no air or sense of space!”
• “God that’s sweet and syrupy. Makes me want to cry.”; or
• “There’s just more ‘there’ there!” (with emotion)

Perhaps we’ve even used these phrases ourselves.

But what do they mean? Is there any logic at play?

The chart above attempts to better quantify these statements, at least for their frequency domain manifestations. The shaded horizontal frequency axis extends from 20hz on the left to 12Khz on the right.

(Note: I’ve encountered this illustration several times in my reading, and I can’t recall the source. Sorry about the poor image quality – not my doing. Click on the picture to see a bigger version!)

Let me explain… › Continue reading