This video turned into something more productive and useful than what I assume it should’ve been! I assume this video was just made mainly to evaluate how effective these terms are, but really this video has now turned into my audiophile dictionary ❤️. Instead of searching for forums and reading debates on what some of these terms should and shouldn’t mean, I just need to refer to this video again. This makes my life 100x easier filtering out all these audio mumbo jumbo coming out of different youtubers. Awesome job!
I can't believe warm, dark, and bright are not S tier, those are the qualities that are immediately apparent for me. Even back when i knew little to none about audio
It makes sense when you consider his video is about the "usefulness" of the audiophile terms. Warm, dark, bright, muddy, shimmer - these are things you can consider generally useful terms to quickly understand the feeling of audio you might get (so A is a fair grade). But Shout, Honk, and Sibilance go one step beyond that because they are very specific properties of a pair of headphones; enough for people to make an immediate purchase decision if they are familiar with and immediately repulsed by those properties.
@@moltenbullet Yeah maybe I should've considered that as like... something that gives you the strongest sense of a particular aspect of the sound that carries with it a very clear valence. But, I can totally see someone finding bright, dark, warm more useful as well.
@@moltenbullet honestly sibilance is way less useful than it should be given how most reviewers call any treble or even upper mid peakiness "sibilance"
@@moltenbullet i only have a vague idea what shoutiness in a headphone is, and i can imagine how a honk would sound but never heard a Headphone that i would consider "honky" so both of them i don't really get. And i think harshness should also be included in A/S
I disagree about dynamics. For a musician, dynamics only refers to one thing: volume. If someone uses it in any other context, they don't know what they're talking about.
I think this is actually helpful to newcomers like myself. A lot of the terminology is shared in music so those tend to be easier (e.g., timbre, dynamics, attack) but there are others that are very useful but used differently by people (e.g., warm).
Ive spent the last couple days shopping for Home theater speakers and the word ive heard most is "Boomy" which is used to describe when a subwoofer crossover is too high.
For me warm and cold were always midrange-only descriptors. Dark and bright describe a general balance. So a headphone that is warm will often be dark, but a piece of gear can be also at the same time warm and bright if it has recessed upper mids.
Transient response is a technical term that holds information of both attack and decay. Where the later doesn't mean anything unless explained transient response is at least used in the professions of things audio and electronics related.
@@ResolveReviews Overall I think your reasoning is very fair. People can better relate to visual things, how it's used and understood can be easily transfered to frequency response. The transient response is where things get more complicated, we can't look at a visual repensentation of an analog music signal and understand what going on. Maybe for one sine wave only and then we still can't tell if there is compression or if it's 100Hz or 102Hz. Also transient response will in most cases be related to the "speed" of the system, which is again confusing.
@@maxb.simonsen2459 Yeah and then it eventually gets into questions about the value of impulse response and CSD, and because headphones are typically minimum phase devices, time domain information is proportional to frequency response, meaning... we're back at frequency response. So there's the issue of these terms being used to mean different things, and then there's the issue of their usefulness even when technically applied. It's tough.
Late to this video, but absolutely LOVE that you did this!!! Not only do I agree with the placements, but it helped me understand some of the terms better!
i tried to be a cynic but this was really really on point. solid video and i will definitely be linking this to people in the future. this is a fantastic video for people getting into the hobby.
Attack and decay seem obvious to me. Think of the hard edge when hitting a cymba, guitar string or a piano string (via a key), and they trailing off of the sound. This is really important to the way a headphone realistically represents a real instrument’s sound as opposed to approximating it. Dynamics is dynamic range to me, and is rarely tested with modern, compressed music. I could care less about shout or honk. Finally, I would have liked to see “transparent” as a corolllary to “muddy” (which I see as similar to “hazy”)
A lot of these are very clear, specific and descriptive terms that you downrate just because some people use them wrong. For example "transient response". It couldn't be any clearer. How does the system respond to a transient? Granted, it's not experiential, but anyone willing to learn the first thing about waves (which should definitely be a prerequisite for this hobby) knows what a transient is. Resolution is another. Part of the cause for the misconception is that people use it the wrong way when describing video too, but that's neither here nor there. Resolution in audio is very simple and objective. How completely does the transducer deliver to the ear all the information that's in the signal? You can't ask for better than that. Detail is a bit less useful, cuz you could debate what constitutes a "detail" and there's a lot of crossover with timbral accuracy, decays etc. so I agree there. Funnily enough, I hate "soundstage", particularly because larger soundstage is conflated with better, and it's often sold to beginners as a key advantage of high end headphones, when it isn't necessarily a better or worse way of presenting music at all. Everyone perceives it totally differently, everyone has differing opinions on which soundstage size is enjoyable, and the shape of the stage is almost never considered/described. Also the term itself is often conflated with imaging, although again that isn't the term's fault. PRaT is a British term almost exclusively, and almost no dealer or designer has been able to explain to me what it *is*, which is a problem because I live in the UK and even we are confused. But I also don't think it's nothing, nor is it everything. Gear I tend to enjoy for reasons I can't put my finger on is often described as having PRaT when I look into reviews after the fact.
Some terms I use and how I understand them: Congested: when a driver has difficulty reproducing sound that often covers most of the FR and often has a lot of distortion. Like some planars with metal. Separation: how easy it is to differentiate and concentrate on different tracks/instruments. Clarity: perhaps macro contrast + separation? Natural/lifelike: when the overall presentation makes it easy to forget that the sound is coming from a headphone. Saturated: when sounds are full bodied and thick. Airy: when sound lacks saturation. Shrill/sharp/harsh: somewhat different mainly tremble related issues with the pleasantness of the sounds I'll just stop now xD
In more meaningful terms: Congested: Poor tonal balance, usually masking from bass or mid bloat. Separation: Almost the exact opposite of congestion, good tonal balance Clarity: Synonym for sufficient unmasked treble. Natural: Neutral tonality. Saturated: Meaningless term probably referring to 'body' from sufficient mid emphasis. Airy: Boosted upper treble range, or illusion from upper mid scoop. Shrill/sharp/harsh: Peakiness in the upper mids or treble.
@@bathynomusgiganteus2916 Need to think about these a bit more. What would you call it when a planar can't handle the extension and dynamics. It sounds like compression like the sound becomes really small or distant and messy. Like an LCD-2C has that issue a lot. Actually from my notes I noticed the K 713 Pro is one of the worst in that.
Hi Andrew. Thanks for the enlightening discussion/ranking of your interpretation of commonly used “audiophile” descriptive terms used by various reviewers of audio gear & components. I guess this raises the question of whether a proper review is incomplete without an included dictionary/glossary defining terms used in said review. Then again I suppose it’s an inherent handicap when it comes to the explanation of individual acoustic & psychosomatic experiences colored by the biases/hearing capabilities of the reviewer. So ultimately the proof is in the ear of the “behearer”.
"veiled" - imo S tier - example: Ether2 - headphones which give you an impression that the music is coming from behind a barrier ruining the transparency "transparent" - also S tier - example: SR-009S - Like wearing empty earpads. How good is the impression of music coming from behind of the drivers. When you're unable to hear any sign of the drivers themselves even when focusing on it. "wonky" - A tier - example: also SR-009S - tonality uneven by small segments of the spectrum, somewhere too much, lacking elsewhere.
Transient, attack and decay are probably the most absolute term here (along with sibilant) it's literally a technical term in sound engineering, mixing and mastering. People who've got no clue miss use it😞😞
If you rank the term “analytic” you maybe should also rank the term “musical” because I consider that to be the opposite when describing the character of headphones.
For me analytic something bright, opposite to warm, or naturally sounding. I consider many Beyers as analytic sounding vs warm or neutral sounding HD 6** Sennheisers. Or well known Sony 7506 vs M50X
@@pliedtka I had a slightly different take on analytical, it meaning thin and lacking sense of dynamics. I typically find analytical stuff to be cold or lacking warmth, which can tend to sound bright. I consider musical to mean fuller and more dynamic sound.
This is as close to a glossary as I have ever seen with these terms and explanations of their meanings. The other real dynamic that almost no reviewer I have followed has ever published is their results from a hearing test. It’s the second most important measurement that never gets talked about enough. We measure headphones, pads, ear ups, cables, amps, dacs and everything in between. But the reviewer hearing is not something we ever learn about. That’s why there is no standard for these audiophile terms. The most important term is fun/enjoyment. It doesn’t matter if the headphones cost $10 or $6k. Did you enjoy hearing the music you love when you had them on your head. Have fun listening to music. Whether it’s classical, reggae, rock, hip hop, spoken word etc. Just have all the fun. Enjoy and share new music with the people you meet along the way. Ymmv
There is fucking STANDARD audio term for contrast, it's dynamic, not just audiophile term, dynamic range is so well defined that is literary defined down to a number and unit, yet you rate it 2 tier lower.
I have one specific headphones that are handmade. Those phones have dynamic driver , semi open at 6 ohms and those are hard for amplification. You can not amplify them as usual , like linear or logarithmic volume stage. Somewhere in between!!. I can call them analitical and flattest headphones that i have ever heard. Soundstage is great, much wider and cleaner than m40x for example. Tried them on various amps. Every of those amps cant push them enough. I did some freq test, and they cen go that deep at 20 hz without any problem, also very high as far as i can hear, at about 15khz. Over all great clean sound , BUT , very , very, very , flat, and hard to push them.
@@ResolveReviews Welp, I suppose my absurd interest in philosophy has crossed over into hifi territory. Happy that it was Wittgenstein in this case lol. Thanks for all the cool videos you do on here.
Starfield, using above terminology: - bright: too much elevation between 1 and 2k. - warm: bass starts sloping into mids too late. - blunted: electric guitars sounds like if you take a photo with your phone, zoom in and see white halo around edges because it's been over sharpened. - veiled: mid-bass (70-50hz) and mids (1-2k) are too elevated while upper mids and treble are recessed. This might prompt you to increase the volume but that won't work. EQ will.
Like others mentioned: this turned from expected tongue-in-cheek to educational very fast! It’s a Headphone Review Bingo template. But where is “forward” - I find it so ubiquitous to headphone reviews, but still don’t know if means anything other than ‘boosted’.
This is an excellent video! I do have 2 comments to offers: (1) As you described it, isn't bluntedness simply fast decay? (2) Marco and Micro contrast -- the terms may be very specific to you, but as most of us haven't used photo editing software, and it is not a pre-requisite for our hobby, this would be akin to a doctor using a very accurate medical term to describe an audiophile term - it may be very accurate, but it is not useful for most of us... just my 2 cents :)
1) I think generally it's meant differently - like for me I'd characterize bluntedness more along the lines of the trailings ends of tones simply being lopped off or missing, rather than being 'quick', but I suppose someone could define it that way. It's super difficult to define these terms with any certainty because of the complexity of the experience. 2) yeah totally less useful if you've never used photo editing software.
Perhaps more clarity in differentiating the term "decay" from "release" is needed? Those familiar with programming sounds in some types of digital equipment will recognize the terms attack, decay, sustain, and release. In this, attack is is the initial rapid increase in volume to a maximum level, followed rapidly by a rapid decay from that maximum to a sustained volume that carries on for some time at an intermediate volume until it dies - is released. What you describe as decay is what I think of as release.
Yeah, I was chuckling, because to me ADSR is a very very well established in the audio community, to the point that they’re industry standard terms. So the idea that they’d be B tier is a bit… interesting.
The ranking seems based on how little prior specialized knowledge is needed to understand a term. So I can see how ADSR wouldn't be very useful to those who aren't familiar with music production or performance. But there is some bias towards photo editing terms, which I suppose is fair given the popularity of Instagram and other photo sharing apps versus music production apps.
Macro/Micro contrast is firmly F tier and I understand photo editing. F tier exactly because you have to learn photo editing before you can understand it. That is a heavy qualification.
Well.. anyone who has bothered to adjust a photo with instagram should be able to get a sense of that - or any other of the multitude of phot apps that exist these days. It's not merely limited to lightroom/photoshop or pro editing of some kind.
@@ResolveReviews Anyway, all tier lists are shitty (unless of course I made one). The only good thing about any tier list is poking holes in or making fun of them. I appreciate the opportunity you have gifted us with your shitty tier list. 😃
A lot of the time these descriptions come from narrative inertia. There is also the possibility they're related to conservation of 2nd 3rd order harmonics within the audible band. We noted this in the SINAD piece, and it's surprising how those harmonics can make the same frequency be perceived as having a different tone.
This kind of thing, is an interesting microcosm, of an issue that has gotten completely out of hand, in society and the world in general. Not that this video is displaying the same or any negativity in any way, as this is lighthearted. But it is kind of an interesting idea to examine the seeds of so many of our larger issues. For example, However one chooses to describe sound, doesn’t indicate a thing about their ability to appreciate it. Nor does it indicate the depth of their capacity to understand the properties of sound. So in this lighthearted analysis, we can safely imagine, how something so simple, can also become a mess when taken too far and too seriously. Most niche jargon should be dumped in the eternal “F” tier. Same with art terminology. Same with critical theory as well. Multiple obscure, redundant, nonsense words used to create a form of indecipherable jargon, designed by insecure elitists, doesn’t deserve any acknowledgment other than criticism. Jargon was never really meant to describe, but rather, to alienate, by causing people to feel ignorant, and inferior if they don’t understand a word, or combination of words, that sound impressive. We’ve all felt this. It makes people feel quite vulnerable, and they become, therefore, easier to manipulate. The creeps who enjoy this kind of power, form a miserable little club, and derive their identity from the fact they are part of a group, that gets to choose who to allow into their group. Insecure elitists exist in most fields, and tend to view all human beings as a potential “threat” to their ego. A solid sense of self, developed through reflection and honestly, is the only foundation which won’t collapse under the weight of the collective ego. Ego is based on an illusion, and falls apart quite easily, as it is supported by nothing of substance. I see this in the audiophile community, to an extent, and while It isn’t exactly out of hand, it certainly is completely out of hand in the world we live in. There are no experts. We must question the definition of “expert” and appreciate that most of the institutions which create the so called “experts” are corrupted, so is the so called “expert”. A real, genuine “expert” doesn’t portray themselves as an “expert”. It would embarrass them to be so naive. Life humbles you, if you allow it to, otherwise it just makes you bitter. We have to be humble to what we cannot yet know, and as desperately as we try to control our environment, circumstances, people and everything else, it is also wise to consider that we were never meant to control so much, and certainly not with regard to the capacity of a human being, to grow and learn. Just a thought, that occurred to me. I always enjoy your videos very much, and I don’t feel that you come across as an elitist, for the record, it just kind of made me think about my own experience as an academic, and how dumb it all is.
Plankton - to me, at least - is when you have a sense of really fine details without losing perspective of the whole. Like, being able to see a swarm of plankton and having a sense of the individual members even though you can't perceive them directly without focusing on them exclusively. Another visual metaphor would be leaves on trees, from a reasonable distance away; you can see the movement in the wind and different shading and colors and such that imply finer details, even when you can't make out the individual leaves. At least, I hope that's what plankton is. I think it's mostly a combination of resolution and detail, but not necessarily either of those jacked up to maximum, and both of those themselves are really combinations of other more basic descriptors (and again, a balance of them, not a definitive 'tune like this for the best detail') so I don't disagree with your rankings as far as helping people understand reviews goes.
Tier C (minus strident) summarizes your HFM Arya review :) Fantastic video, demystifies alot of terms Ive always wondered what the term 'forward' means.. is it like the midrange (vocals) are pushed forward in the sound plane?
I highly disagree with your placement of strident, it’s a clear, audio-specific term, much more understandable than “shout” and a word commonly used to describe sound. You simply shouldn’t place it that far down because you don’t use it often.
I am terribly disappointed that you did not follow your cold, emotionless heart and end the video by reordering the list and putting them all into F-tier.
Dynamics should really be F tier. This word or people who use it, try to mean everything with it! Soundstage is not an S? I feel like it's the most immediately comprehensible one. Okay, I understand what macro/micro contrast does visually, but how do you translate that to sound? Wouldn't it be like "dynamic range" in how much difference there is between the end points of a spectrum?
They don't all have to be visual analogies, they just have to usefully convey meaning that's specific enough in order to rank highly. I just happen to find that visual analogies are the easiest.
The only thing I don't agree with is what you defined plankton as. Plankton, at least from what I understand from more than a decade on several different sites, is the opposite of bluntedness. It is the trailing ends/tones and tiny little things that very, very high levels of resolution give. Those trailing edges and minor details are tiny enough that the word Plankton is used to signify that - since plankton are tiny.
Yes that's how I had thought of it before, but then I was recently reading up on someone who was giving an extended description and thought to myself huh... this is the private language problem in a nutshell
I like tier lists. I can't watch every video you guys post due to time constraints regardless them being top tier. Tier list gives me a good summary of what to look out for in the current market, and they are fun as well lol
Perfect timing for this since I'm making a review video and I've been thinking about the terms I use and how it might differ from the norm. As a photographer I also connect most of these to photo editing. It's somehow a very easy analogy when most have a slider in Lightroom.
I think soundstage should be B tier. Too confusing with imaging and spatial cues / spaciousness. Here's some other terms: veiled, musical, transparent, airy.
![Eminem - Fuel (feat. JID) [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5H_CewqpKA/mqdefault.jpg)
This video turned into something more productive and useful than what I assume it should’ve been! I assume this video was just made mainly to evaluate how effective these terms are, but really this video has now turned into my audiophile dictionary ❤️. Instead of searching for forums and reading debates on what some of these terms should and shouldn’t mean, I just need to refer to this video again. This makes my life 100x easier filtering out all these audio mumbo jumbo coming out of different youtubers. Awesome job!
💯 I was initially like “how stupid…” then got hooked. Totally useful actually. (Edit: but there’s no way “honk” is s tier c’mon haha)
Totally!
I can't believe warm, dark, and bright are not S tier, those are the qualities that are immediately apparent for me. Even back when i knew little to none about audio
It makes sense when you consider his video is about the "usefulness" of the audiophile terms. Warm, dark, bright, muddy, shimmer - these are things you can consider generally useful terms to quickly understand the feeling of audio you might get (so A is a fair grade). But Shout, Honk, and Sibilance go one step beyond that because they are very specific properties of a pair of headphones; enough for people to make an immediate purchase decision if they are familiar with and immediately repulsed by those properties.
@@moltenbullet Yeah maybe I should've considered that as like... something that gives you the strongest sense of a particular aspect of the sound that carries with it a very clear valence. But, I can totally see someone finding bright, dark, warm more useful as well.
@@moltenbullet honestly sibilance is way less useful than it should be given how most reviewers call any treble or even upper mid peakiness "sibilance"
@@moltenbullet i only have a vague idea what shoutiness in a headphone is, and i can imagine how a honk would sound but never heard a Headphone that i would consider "honky" so both of them i don't really get.
And i think harshness should also be included in A/S
@@GlitzPixie yeah, should've been harshness instead
Can you make a Tier List of headphones and rank them based on their plankton-inducing ability?
Plankton likes mud
I disagree about dynamics. For a musician, dynamics only refers to one thing: volume. If someone uses it in any other context, they don't know what they're talking about.
Should be more like dynamic contrast, as how well it can reproduce fast changes in signal. But yeah I kind of get it.
I think this is actually helpful to newcomers like myself. A lot of the terminology is shared in music so those tend to be easier (e.g., timbre, dynamics, attack) but there are others that are very useful but used differently by people (e.g., warm).
I actually never heard of the term PLANKTON like ever lol
As meta as one can get. I loved it. Makes listening new reviews so much more understandable.
the delivery of the intro was 👌 chef’s kiss
If you watch till the end it's a fair take.
This has been very helpful for me as an objectivist! I now understand the subjective language.
Ive spent the last couple days shopping for Home theater speakers and the word ive heard most is "Boomy" which is used to describe when a subwoofer crossover is too high.
For anyone wondering where the excerpt for Wittgenstein comes from, it's from the entry, "Ludwig Wittgenstein" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Added it to the description.
For me warm and cold were always midrange-only descriptors. Dark and bright describe a general balance. So a headphone that is warm will often be dark, but a piece of gear can be also at the same time warm and bright if it has recessed upper mids.
Transient response is a technical term that holds information of both attack and decay. Where the later doesn't mean anything unless explained transient response is at least used in the professions of things audio and electronics related.
Yeah they should all probably be C tier at best.
@@ResolveReviews Overall I think your reasoning is very fair. People can better relate to visual things, how it's used and understood can be easily transfered to frequency response. The transient response is where things get more complicated, we can't look at a visual repensentation of an analog music signal and understand what going on. Maybe for one sine wave only and then we still can't tell if there is compression or if it's 100Hz or 102Hz. Also transient response will in most cases be related to the "speed" of the system, which is again confusing.
@@maxb.simonsen2459 Yeah and then it eventually gets into questions about the value of impulse response and CSD, and because headphones are typically minimum phase devices, time domain information is proportional to frequency response, meaning... we're back at frequency response. So there's the issue of these terms being used to mean different things, and then there's the issue of their usefulness even when technically applied. It's tough.
Romantic, buttery, holographic, Tubey, neutral, preference target, natural, live, airy, flabby, smooth, musical, hifi, reference, black background, spicy, recessed, bumped, thin, ringing, metallic.
Late to this video, but absolutely LOVE that you did this!!! Not only do I agree with the placements, but it helped me understand some of the terms better!
i tried to be a cynic but this was really really on point. solid video and i will definitely be linking this to people in the future. this is a fantastic video for people getting into the hobby.
Attack and decay seem obvious to me. Think of the hard edge when hitting a cymba, guitar string or a piano string (via a key), and they trailing off of the sound. This is really important to the way a headphone realistically represents a real instrument’s sound as opposed to approximating it. Dynamics is dynamic range to me, and is rarely tested with modern, compressed music. I could care less about shout or honk. Finally, I would have liked to see “transparent” as a corolllary to “muddy” (which I see as similar to “hazy”)
Your voice sounds exactly like Casually Explained, I love it
I like how Andrew kept so serious thru the whole video. Maybe he took it serious 🤣
Nah, that's just how Andrew is like
A lot of these are very clear, specific and descriptive terms that you downrate just because some people use them wrong. For example "transient response". It couldn't be any clearer. How does the system respond to a transient? Granted, it's not experiential, but anyone willing to learn the first thing about waves (which should definitely be a prerequisite for this hobby) knows what a transient is.
Resolution is another. Part of the cause for the misconception is that people use it the wrong way when describing video too, but that's neither here nor there. Resolution in audio is very simple and objective. How completely does the transducer deliver to the ear all the information that's in the signal? You can't ask for better than that. Detail is a bit less useful, cuz you could debate what constitutes a "detail" and there's a lot of crossover with timbral accuracy, decays etc. so I agree there.
Funnily enough, I hate "soundstage", particularly because larger soundstage is conflated with better, and it's often sold to beginners as a key advantage of high end headphones, when it isn't necessarily a better or worse way of presenting music at all. Everyone perceives it totally differently, everyone has differing opinions on which soundstage size is enjoyable, and the shape of the stage is almost never considered/described. Also the term itself is often conflated with imaging, although again that isn't the term's fault.
PRaT is a British term almost exclusively, and almost no dealer or designer has been able to explain to me what it *is*, which is a problem because I live in the UK and even we are confused. But I also don't think it's nothing, nor is it everything. Gear I tend to enjoy for reasons I can't put my finger on is often described as having PRaT when I look into reviews after the fact.
A very nice take on a tier list.
Some terms I use and how I understand them:
Congested: when a driver has difficulty reproducing sound that often covers most of the FR and often has a lot of distortion. Like some planars with metal.
Separation: how easy it is to differentiate and concentrate on different tracks/instruments.
Clarity: perhaps macro contrast + separation?
Natural/lifelike: when the overall presentation makes it easy to forget that the sound is coming from a headphone.
Saturated: when sounds are full bodied and thick.
Airy: when sound lacks saturation.
Shrill/sharp/harsh: somewhat different mainly tremble related issues with the pleasantness of the sounds
I'll just stop now xD
In more meaningful terms:
Congested: Poor tonal balance, usually masking from bass or mid bloat.
Separation: Almost the exact opposite of congestion, good tonal balance
Clarity: Synonym for sufficient unmasked treble.
Natural: Neutral tonality.
Saturated: Meaningless term probably referring to 'body' from sufficient mid emphasis.
Airy: Boosted upper treble range, or illusion from upper mid scoop.
Shrill/sharp/harsh: Peakiness in the upper mids or treble.
@@bathynomusgiganteus2916 Need to think about these a bit more.
What would you call it when a planar can't handle the extension and dynamics. It sounds like compression like the sound becomes really small or distant and messy. Like an LCD-2C has that issue a lot. Actually from my notes I noticed the K 713 Pro is one of the worst in that.
Hi Andrew. Thanks for the enlightening discussion/ranking of your interpretation of commonly used “audiophile” descriptive terms used by various reviewers of audio gear & components. I guess this raises the question of whether a proper review is incomplete without an included dictionary/glossary defining terms used in said review. Then again I suppose it’s an inherent handicap when it comes to the explanation of individual acoustic & psychosomatic experiences colored by the biases/hearing capabilities of the reviewer. So ultimately the proof is in the ear of the “behearer”.
"veiled" - imo S tier - example: Ether2 - headphones which give you an impression that the music is coming from behind a barrier ruining the transparency
"transparent" - also S tier - example: SR-009S - Like wearing empty earpads. How good is the impression of music coming from behind of the drivers. When you're unable to hear any sign of the drivers themselves even when focusing on it.
"wonky" - A tier - example: also SR-009S - tonality uneven by small segments of the spectrum, somewhere too much, lacking elsewhere.
tbh wonky is b or c because while it does tell you somethings wrong with the tuning it doesnt tell you what exactly is wrong with tonality
True but it indicates it's usually beyond fixable with EQ
Transient, attack and decay are probably the most absolute term here (along with sibilant) it's literally a technical term in sound engineering, mixing and mastering. People who've got no clue miss use it😞😞
Lol so right some words seem to be changed for Audiophile verbiage. I understand but would use in mixing of mastering.
Words that are onomatopoetic (I may have mangled it) are god tier for describing audio
Amazing video Resolve. Thanks!
Layering is the most important thing related to the sound of the headphone
If you rank the term “analytic” you maybe should also rank the term “musical” because I consider that to be the opposite when describing the character of headphones.
For me analytic something bright, opposite to warm, or naturally sounding. I consider many Beyers as analytic sounding vs warm or neutral sounding HD 6** Sennheisers. Or well known Sony 7506 vs M50X
@@pliedtka I had a slightly different take on analytical, it meaning thin and lacking sense of dynamics. I typically find analytical stuff to be cold or lacking warmth, which can tend to sound bright. I consider musical to mean fuller and more dynamic sound.
I was skeptical going into this video, but I feel like it was actually pretty well done and fleshed out.
This is as close to a glossary as I have ever seen with these terms and explanations of their meanings.
The other real dynamic that almost no reviewer I have followed has ever published is their results from a hearing test.
It’s the second most important measurement that never gets talked about enough. We measure headphones, pads, ear ups, cables, amps, dacs and everything in between.
But the reviewer hearing is not something we ever learn about.
That’s why there is no standard for these audiophile terms.
The most important term is fun/enjoyment. It doesn’t matter if the headphones cost $10 or $6k.
Did you enjoy hearing the music you love when you had them on your head.
Have fun listening to music. Whether it’s classical, reggae, rock, hip hop, spoken word etc. Just have all the fun.
Enjoy and share new music with the people you meet along the way.
Ymmv
There is fucking STANDARD audio term for contrast, it's dynamic, not just audiophile term, dynamic range is so well defined that is literary defined down to a number and unit, yet you rate it 2 tier lower.
Great fun. What about ‘neutral’ and ‘coloured’?
Also "Imaging"
I have one specific headphones that are handmade. Those phones have dynamic driver , semi open at 6 ohms and those are hard for amplification. You can not amplify them as usual , like linear or logarithmic volume stage. Somewhere in between!!. I can call them analitical and flattest headphones that i have ever heard. Soundstage is great, much wider and cleaner than m40x for example.
Tried them on various amps. Every of those amps cant push them enough. I did some freq test, and they cen go that deep at 20 hz without any problem, also very high as far as i can hear, at about 15khz. Over all great clean sound , BUT , very , very, very , flat, and hard to push them.
lol Wittgenstein tier feels fitting for this.
I knew someone would get it hahaha.
@@ResolveReviews Welp, I suppose my absurd interest in philosophy has crossed over into hifi territory. Happy that it was Wittgenstein in this case lol.
Thanks for all the cool videos you do on here.
@@epochphilosophy it's not that weird haha. It's the reason I do it to be honest. Or at least, perceptual things. That's the crossover for me.
This video is veiled and lacking air. I was expecting more textured planar bass. Imaging is flat.
Yes and lacking slam.
Slam, pace and rhythm - I was wondering what it means but once I heard proper bass and it all became very transparent to me what it means
Glassy, glarey, blare-y, blurry, smoothed-over, sterile, lifeless, recessed, plastickey, V-shaped, W-shaped, flat, soft, mellow, sweet, spectral, solid, thick, creamy, full-bodied, euphonic, euphoric, organic, wet, dry, bloomey, analog, vivid, tight, controlled, overly-dampened, free, loose, quick, lively, reactive, coherent, disconnected, expansive, friendly!, inner detail, microdetail, microdynamics, macrodynamics, "refined", "nuanced", "delicate", "intense", "engaging". Plucked (lol). And precious (I think I just made that one up).
Starfield, using above terminology:
- bright:
too much elevation between 1 and 2k.
- warm:
bass starts sloping into mids too late.
- blunted:
electric guitars sounds like if you take a photo with your phone, zoom in and see white halo around edges because it's been over sharpened.
- veiled:
mid-bass (70-50hz) and mids (1-2k) are too elevated while upper mids and treble are recessed. This might prompt you to increase the volume but that won't work. EQ will.
Like others mentioned: this turned from expected tongue-in-cheek to educational very fast! It’s a Headphone Review Bingo template.
But where is “forward” - I find it so ubiquitous to headphone reviews, but still don’t know if means anything other than ‘boosted’.
Missing: frequency, frequency response, boring, imaging, sterile, musical, crisp, harsh, harshness, dead, fuzzy, transparent, treble, peaks, peaky, balanced, bass, mids, highs, veiled, extended, fatiguing, closed-in, rolled-off, life-like, signature, real, realistic, surreal (STAX BRO), spacious, TOTL (describind headphones only based on price and not performance, like Meze trash)
I’m not a newbie at all but when I saw “Plankton” NGL I was like “what’s a microscopic Protozoa doing on this list?” 😂
This is an excellent video! I do have 2 comments to offers:
(1) As you described it, isn't bluntedness simply fast decay?
(2) Marco and Micro contrast -- the terms may be very specific to you, but as most of us haven't used photo editing software, and it is not a pre-requisite for our hobby, this would be akin to a doctor using a very accurate medical term to describe an audiophile term - it may be very accurate, but it is not useful for most of us... just my 2 cents :)
1) I think generally it's meant differently - like for me I'd characterize bluntedness more along the lines of the trailings ends of tones simply being lopped off or missing, rather than being 'quick', but I suppose someone could define it that way. It's super difficult to define these terms with any certainty because of the complexity of the experience.
2) yeah totally less useful if you've never used photo editing software.
@@ResolveReviews thanks! again, wonderful video, very informative and useful!
I still think just contrast at least is rather clear for most.
I've never slammed a thumbs down button so stridently
Glisten to me: one hay, two haze✌🏼🤠
PS. another auphl term that needs tiering is… 🥁🥁🥁
Liquid
Perhaps more clarity in differentiating the term "decay" from "release" is needed? Those familiar with programming sounds in some types of digital equipment will recognize the terms attack, decay, sustain, and release. In this, attack is is the initial rapid increase in volume to a maximum level, followed rapidly by a rapid decay from that maximum to a sustained volume that carries on for some time at an intermediate volume until it dies - is released. What you describe as decay is what I think of as release.
Yeah, I was chuckling, because to me ADSR is a very very well established in the audio community, to the point that they’re industry standard terms. So the idea that they’d be B tier is a bit… interesting.
The ranking seems based on how little prior specialized knowledge is needed to understand a term. So I can see how ADSR wouldn't be very useful to those who aren't familiar with music production or performance. But there is some bias towards photo editing terms, which I suppose is fair given the popularity of Instagram and other photo sharing apps versus music production apps.
The one that makes me cringe the most is describing a headphone as romantic. Tyler's favorite buzzword.
Musical is the worst
Bruh
Metal of course he's doing that 😁
bruh
Macro/Micro contrast is firmly F tier and I understand photo editing. F tier exactly because you have to learn photo editing before you can understand it. That is a heavy qualification.
Well.. anyone who has bothered to adjust a photo with instagram should be able to get a sense of that - or any other of the multitude of phot apps that exist these days. It's not merely limited to lightroom/photoshop or pro editing of some kind.
@@ResolveReviews Anyway, all tier lists are shitty (unless of course I made one). The only good thing about any tier list is poking holes in or making fun of them. I appreciate the opportunity you have gifted us with your shitty tier list. 😃
@@04yellowjacket accurate
Joe and tell did a 7 part series on many audiophile terms which is a good watch if you want to follow up on resolves video.
Saw an ad brochure for a Chi-Fi tube amp that said it was a gallbladder amp.
Some people describe DACs as being warm even though it has a flat frequency response so what does warm mean in that context?
A lot of the time these descriptions come from narrative inertia. There is also the possibility they're related to conservation of 2nd 3rd order harmonics within the audible band. We noted this in the SINAD piece, and it's surprising how those harmonics can make the same frequency be perceived as having a different tone.
This kind of thing, is an interesting microcosm, of an issue that has gotten completely out of hand, in society and the world in general. Not that this video is displaying the same or any negativity in any way, as this is lighthearted. But it is kind of an interesting idea to examine the seeds of so many of our larger issues. For example, However one chooses to describe sound, doesn’t indicate a thing about their ability to appreciate it. Nor does it indicate the depth of their capacity to understand the properties of sound. So in this lighthearted analysis, we can safely imagine, how something so simple, can also become a mess when taken too far and too seriously. Most niche jargon should be dumped in the eternal “F” tier. Same with art terminology. Same with critical theory as well. Multiple obscure, redundant, nonsense words used to create a form of indecipherable jargon, designed by insecure elitists, doesn’t deserve any acknowledgment other than criticism. Jargon was never really meant to describe, but rather, to alienate, by causing people to feel ignorant, and inferior if they don’t understand a word, or combination of words, that sound impressive. We’ve all felt this. It makes people feel quite vulnerable, and they become, therefore, easier to manipulate. The creeps who enjoy this kind of power, form a miserable little club, and derive their identity from the fact they are part of a group, that gets to choose who to allow into their group. Insecure elitists exist in most fields, and tend to view all human beings as a potential “threat” to their ego. A solid sense of self, developed through reflection and honestly, is the only foundation which won’t collapse under the weight of the collective ego. Ego is based on an illusion, and falls apart quite easily, as it is supported by nothing of substance. I see this in the audiophile community, to an extent, and while It isn’t exactly out of hand, it certainly is completely out of hand in the world we live in. There are no experts. We must question the definition of “expert” and appreciate that most of the institutions which create the so called “experts” are corrupted, so is the so called “expert”. A real, genuine “expert” doesn’t portray themselves as an “expert”. It would embarrass them to be so naive. Life humbles you, if you allow it to, otherwise it just makes you bitter. We have to be humble to what we cannot yet know, and as desperately as we try to control our environment, circumstances, people and everything else, it is also wise to consider that we were never meant to control so much, and certainly not with regard to the capacity of a human being, to grow and learn. Just a thought, that occurred to me. I always enjoy your videos very much, and I don’t feel that you come across as an elitist, for the record, it just kind of made me think about my own experience as an academic, and how dumb it all is.
Hmm yeah good I like the words Murky and Twinkling for some headphones.
Plankton - to me, at least - is when you have a sense of really fine details without losing perspective of the whole. Like, being able to see a swarm of plankton and having a sense of the individual members even though you can't perceive them directly without focusing on them exclusively. Another visual metaphor would be leaves on trees, from a reasonable distance away; you can see the movement in the wind and different shading and colors and such that imply finer details, even when you can't make out the individual leaves. At least, I hope that's what plankton is.
I think it's mostly a combination of resolution and detail, but not necessarily either of those jacked up to maximum, and both of those themselves are really combinations of other more basic descriptors (and again, a balance of them, not a definitive 'tune like this for the best detail') so I don't disagree with your rankings as far as helping people understand reviews goes.
For me one F tier audio term is Musical. Mostly it is used to save a bad headphone.
Where was your infamous “plucked” Andrew?
When you first said that in a review, I thought I was watching a cooking video.
Very useful!
Soundstage should be S tier!
Punch and slam should be A tier because it's obvious what they mean.
Tier C (minus strident) summarizes your HFM Arya review :)
Fantastic video, demystifies alot of terms
Ive always wondered what the term 'forward' means.. is it like the midrange (vocals) are pushed forward in the sound plane?
Check out presence region in frequency response graphs. This can be forward or laid-back. At least this is my understanding of it.
I highly disagree with your placement of strident, it’s a clear, audio-specific term, much more understandable than “shout” and a word commonly used to describe sound. You simply shouldn’t place it that far down because you don’t use it often.
I am terribly disappointed that you did not follow your cold, emotionless heart and end the video by reordering the list and putting them all into F-tier.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates slam. Imo discussion about it is as bad as debates over cables.
Dynamics should really be F tier. This word or people who use it, try to mean everything with it!
Soundstage is not an S? I feel like it's the most immediately comprehensible one.
Okay, I understand what macro/micro contrast does visually, but how do you translate that to sound? Wouldn't it be like "dynamic range" in how much difference there is between the end points of a spectrum?
What's with the picture of Wittgenstein?
edit - I just got to that part, smart.
thin as in lacking bass presence or impact, and veiled as in the Sennheiser cliche :), IMO work decently
Wow, I'm surprised "diminishing returns" and "snake oil" aren't on here 😂 Great video!
Add MQA into the tierlist 😈
Which Focal headphones are those. They look like Elegias but have leather pads?
Probably an Elear with utopia pads which he wore on the last stream
'open up, 'extended' also 'F' tier. By your own logic 'dark' is 'A' tier because it is a (excellent) 'visual' analogy.
They don't all have to be visual analogies, they just have to usefully convey meaning that's specific enough in order to rank highly. I just happen to find that visual analogies are the easiest.
We should just change glisten and shimmer to 'glitter' .
zero seconds in and I think this is genius! Thanks metal571 and Andrew!
what video gear do you use in this video? looking sharp
I see attack, but where is defensive? I like headphones that sound defensive. B tier.
Imaging: "Am I a joke to you?"
The only thing I don't agree with is what you defined plankton as.
Plankton, at least from what I understand from more than a decade on several different sites, is the opposite of bluntedness. It is the trailing ends/tones and tiny little things that very, very high levels of resolution give. Those trailing edges and minor details are tiny enough that the word Plankton is used to signify that - since plankton are tiny.
Yes that's how I had thought of it before, but then I was recently reading up on someone who was giving an extended description and thought to myself huh... this is the private language problem in a nutshell
So now we can grade every one of your reviews based on the average tier of terms used. 😛
Tier lists are F tier.
Glisten is A tier because it has listen in it.
I like tier lists. I can't watch every video you guys post due to time constraints regardless them being top tier. Tier list gives me a good summary of what to look out for in the current market, and they are fun as well lol
Perfect timing for this since I'm making a review video and I've been thinking about the terms I use and how it might differ from the norm.
As a photographer I also connect most of these to photo editing. It's somehow a very easy analogy when most have a slider in Lightroom.
Great video
This video is a cool idea, things make little more sense suddenly
What pads are you using for the focal elegia?
That's an elear with utopia pads.
missing my favourite meaningless superlative "clinical"
Slam. A particular subgenre of brutal death metal. ;)
Technically correct is the best kind
@@metal571 Musical tastes are fun, aren't they? I love the crazy amount of variety in metal.
I think soundstage should be B tier. Too confusing with imaging and spatial cues / spaciousness. Here's some other terms: veiled, musical, transparent, airy.
Wouldn't transparent be the opposite of veiled?
Veiled is basically a FR where there's over emphasis on mid-bass and lack of treble, no?
Now do one for headphones! Lol please
"Musical" = G
When is the TOTL headphone tiers list for 2021
Are you using the Elegia?
It is an Elear with Utopia pads.
@@jamesbittle2138 thanks!!
if this video were a song, it would be a Father John Misty song (in a good way).
Started as a meme but turned out quite interesting and informing. Thanks Andrew
Cool video idea!
Up vote for Wittgenstein
Very handy guide! I learnt some new words today :D
This is a video no one asked for that we ALL needed. Thanks!
Walking through a swamp while being attacked by bees
Muddy slugs banging on a tin drum
You missed "digital" and "musical", and other synonyms of "good" or "bad".
What's the lowest on this tier list you'll go in continuing use?
Probably detail.