A new approach to talking about sound
Why do audio reviews often look a lot like marketing copy?
What’s particularly frustrating is that reviewers will often use the same terms and phrases to describe a product’s sound as you’ll see in the product’s marketing materials, terms that by and large are intentionally unquantifiable. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve seen loudspeakers advertised, promoted, and reviewed as having “room-filling sound.” Okay, what does that mean exactly, that sound from the speaker can be heard from any point in the room? That’s not exactly a high hurdle to clear. Why aren’t headphones sold as having “head-filling sound”?
What you also might start to notice is that the language of audio reviews has a lot in common with wine tasting notes, as well as a culture that is not welcoming to the novice. The problem is not necessarily the reader’s lack of familiarity with the words themselves, it’s just that they have no defined or widely agreed upon meaning in the context they’re being used. Even those “in the know” probably don’t know exactly what’s being said in a typical review.
Everyone hears things differently, and that’s one of the many reasons why our loudspeaker, microphone, and headphone reviews are written by human beings who have spent time using the product. We express opinions and describe our experiences, including our impressions of the sound reproduction. What has admittedly been a struggle is applying the same scientific rigor to the wording of our reviews as we’ve been attempting to apply to the data we collect through our objective tests.
What’s so hard about describing sound?
Fortunately for us at SoundGuys (and for you) this did actually happen. There already exists a defined lexicon, built specifically for the purpose of assessing audio systems and devices, detailed in an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard, released in 2017. Its full title is ITU-R BS.2399-0 “Methods for selecting and describing attributes and terms, in the preparation of subjective tests,” and details within its pages a consensus vocabulary. It’s free to view and download here.
What’s a consensus vocabulary, and how is it helpful?
a list of characteristics, agreed upon by consensus, allows a detailed characterization of perceived differences between products
Although frequency response is the single most important objective perceptual quality metric for audio, it is not the be-all and end-all. We actually collect data on a number of other parameters, like distortion, linearity, and crosstalk, but it’s not always easy or possible to present our findings in ways that don’t require a scientific background to comprehend. In such cases, the consensus vocabulary should make it easier for us to describe and explain our findings. So, in addition to timbre (changes in the frequency domain), we can address observations relating to loudness, dynamics, spatial factors, transparency, and artifacts, and all of their respective sub-categories. If you didn’t catch all that, don’t worry: you don’t need to memorize the ITU standard, we will be explaining along the way, and will stick to plain and simple language.
Can standardized language make for better headphone reviews?
We believe that implementing this approach will improve our reviews—specifically for more enthusiast-orientated products—and allow us to write clearly about more aspects of what we’re hearing. Much like when we selected and adopted the B&K 5128 as our headphone measurement platform in late 2020 (as one of the first audio review sites to do so), and established our own in-house target curves for headphone responses, it’s a bold move, but one that is necessary. We take our role as your guide to personal audio (and beyond) very seriously, and are dedicated to improving our site in all the ways we can. Hopefully, you’ll appreciate this attempt at improving our coverage in the audio product review space, and we’d like to encourage all reviewers out there to join us on this mission!