Audiophile phrases (1 Viewer)

[Lee Distad]

I thought that Sturgeon's Law only covered 80% of everything. Hmm. I personally hold to believing that of about 92.5% (98.6% if you count the internet).

 

[Charlie C]

some more I purged from the internet:

The valves do have some remoteness.
The immediacy and presence
The highs are a bit sweeter
The lows are incredibly lush and defined
The midrange has lost most of its focus
Hateful tizzyness in the top end.
... wire sounds "sweeter" but perhaps "sloppier" than...
There was an absence of a sweet midrange colouration
Transients increased at the expense of midrange texture and air.
Lovely, spacious, coherent music.
..give you a much larger sonic picture, but less focus and low-level subtlety.
The deep fundamentals leave you gasping for breath.
Telefunkens are very rolled off in the highs.
Lots of air around instruments
Amazing sonic character
..will impart a "warm" sound to the system
A lack of "atmosphere" and "quietness"
Great tube harmonic depth and slam.
Quick, smooth, dynamic, musical, not fatiguing on highs and crescendos
... tends to thicken up instruments and voices quite a bit
... got enough solid state zing and lots of palpability, presence, air ..
... gave a nice sense of space around the individual instruments
... to get more atmosphere and "quietness" around instruments
A little less musical down low and up high.
An occasional honk on a horn during arias
Russian tubes are pretty neutral.
A bit of sibilance in them
...wire of exceptional musicality.
The lack of multiple crystals should prevent inter-crystal diode effects.
The former sounds better in the midrange, the latter sounds "muffled" overall
The ear is oblivious to phase shifts above 20K.
Valves and transistors possessing different sonic signatures....
Smoother more natural sound
More realistic harmonics
... with the hand-wound capacitors imparting an unbelievable smoothness
Like a monkey hitting a dustbin lid with a dog's bone..
Devoid of the hardness which afflicts most transistorised amps
Uneven tonal balance
Bass is slightly loose and emphasised
Bright and pure treble
Upper registers were cleaner and less fizzy
... imparting a new plumminess to the sound
Bass was faster and meatier
..gaining in speed and impact
Image precision and soundstaging of the warehouse variety
Tizzyness in the top end
These cables have a pinched sound that goes away over time
The whole experience can become quite hollographic
The ears need time to adjust to any system or setup
A whiteness during intertransient silences

 

[Scott Oliver]

I don't know about you guys but I would much rather read descriptors of a piece of equipment that may actually give you some insight into what the reviewer is hearing than something like this which I guess is what you guys want if you don't want reviewers to use desriptive adjectives and prose.

"The speaker is a good speaker. It has a good enclosure. Drivers are of pretty good quality. Sound produced by speaker was very good. It reproduced 20-20k HZ pretty well. They could also play loud. Overall, this speaker is good."

This is the typical online review from someone who isn't experienced at writing reviews that you see on forums like this one. I know I would take the flowery prose anyday.

 

[Chu Gai]

I'll take the prose with measurements.

And Charlie, you did a spectacular job. Have a beer. Just don't put it too close to those fast woofers, alright?

http://www.garysheppard.com/location...eer-&-head.jpg

 

[Lee Distad]

Who makes amplifiers or speakers that use valves? Is that the new hydraulic stereo technology that I've heard so much about?

 

[Charlie C]

I would like to see these comments in a review


"the tubes are warm cause when I touched them, my hand felt hot."

"the speaker can reproduce highs so well, the dogs in the neighborhood were all barking"

"the speakers were so clear, that when I put in Van Halen, I heard Van Halen"

"These speakers sound better than my Bose"

"the amp is so friking heavy and expensive, it better friking sound good"

"this Mark Levinson setup is a step up from an mp3 player"



I cant think of any more yet...

 

[ChristopherDAC]

And you can tell a British reviewer because he says "valves" instead of "tubes". Long live the Audion!

 

[Steve_AS]

Regardless of what people believe or enjoy reading, both 'flowery' descriptions and 'typical online reviews' are potentially very flawed indicators of actual performance, unless they have some objective support, and some considerations of *why* the reviewer heard what they heard (room acoustics, other components, source material, sighted vs. blinded, etc). It's just that simple. To me , they're both useless for getting an idea of sound.

 

[Wayde_R]

I have mixed feelings about this. Not sure where I stand.

On one hand, the reviews with flowery adjectives are funny, some are misleading (promises about cables) and others downright criminal (Shakti stones and wooden knobs). As with all things whose inherent value are a matter of perception (IE the dollar) you must be on guard.

On the other hand. I appreciate reviews that delve a little deeper than Consumer Reports.

Flowery descriptions of wines have given me some appreciation for wine. How was I supposed to know that a white wine could have a vannila hint for an aftertaste?

To hear someone who is passionate about fine audio wax poetic about the details in the merest plucking of a string or the ability of a good system to audibly expose fingers running along the fret of a steele guitar, the presence of defined sonic objects on a soundstage; this can be very contageous. It can really give someone who's never thought of it a real appreciation for what a fine soundsystem calibrated correctly can give.

In that respect I think we have far too many folks reading Consumer Report reviews of HTIB systems from Best Buy so they think they've got the best sound available from a 4" sub in a plastic box.