2. misc-audio
  3. 174422-20253

The worst sentence in audio writing

. Literally, hearing new details and delicacy in music I’ve heard a thousand times before.

I read this sentence from another thread but didn’t want to pollute it with this thought or to harp on my own opinion about the gear being discussed.

What I did want to do was point out that this sentence is one of the worst, most fraudulent sentences in all of audio, and we have all read it from a dozen different reviewers.  Anytime I read this I shudder. It’s not that I don’t believe the reviewer who writes this, it’s that I do. To understand why I hate this sentence you have to know my own personal values in audio.

  • Smooth frequency response
  • A laid back presentation

In order to make gear which has details never before heard the gear must exaggerate some sounds to the detriment of others. There’s no such thing as a neutral piece of gear that also makes you hear things yo have never heard before.

It’s a type of con, in that sure, you get new details, but they never talk about what you are giving up. The beauty of this con is that there’s all sorts of frequency response tricks and distortion gimmicks which will make you feel this way, each different, each not neutral. Each time we experience this "never before heard details" is like a new hair cut. It isn’t better, it’s different and that is exciting.

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by mirolab

mirolab
206 posts
 

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!

Time, phase, & transient response..... NOT frequency response.  Everybody seems to go gaga over frequency response and how FLAT it has to be.  But what really obscures details in music is transient anomalies and little resonances that maybe don't contribute much to the frequency response, but DO obscure details.  Imagine for a minute that you have two speakers that measure absolutely flat, but one has better phase and time alignment between the drivers... don't you think you'll hear MORE detail from the better aligned one, even though no special frequencies are being "enhanced" or boosted.  IMO, frequency response is only half the story.  Maybe it's even less than half the story. There's so many other aspects of audio to worry about!

More to discover