Bullshit Buzzwords
Here are some examples of jargon, buzzwords that mislead or are meaningless.
Musical
Quite often when a salesperson wants to convey that product X is better than product Y that costs quite a bit less, and there is no real difference, they will claim that product X is more “musical” I guess it’s not really a lie, I’m sure the extra money they want you to spend is music to their ears! Whenever you hear the word musical used in a description of an audio product just substitute the word bullshit and you’ll do just fine.
Noise Floor
A huge amount of products are sold on the premise that by reducing the amount of noise present you’ll hear more music. The idea being that if you get rid of noise, small details will become more apparent to your ear and the music will sound better. Hey it makes sense right? Less noise equals more music. The unfortunate thing is that more often than not they’re SAYING they are lowering the noise floor when in reality they are using a device that is widely used in the recording industry called a compressor. A compressor is like a super fast robot that turns up the volume when things are quiet and leaves the sound unchanged when the music gets louder. This has the effect of making anything processed in this way to sound more detailed and live. However it limits the dynamic range of the music so the difference between the loudest sounds and the softest sounds is in some cases dramatically reduced. A good example of this is commercials on TV. Ever notice how they sound louder than the shows you are watching? The people who produce these commercials employ compression to achieve this effect. It is also used to make dialogue in movies crystal clear despite all manner of other sound effects happening at the same time. When you employ compression to Jazz, opera and classical music all of which avoid using compression in the recording and production of the music, it works astonishingly well, the subtle aspects of the music jump out and tickle the ear drums. The problem comes when you want to listen to some good old rock and roll. Crunchy overdriven rock guitar is already as compressed as you can make it and still have it be pleasing to the ear. Compress it any more and it turns to mush! Long story short, if you like to rock out with your system occasionally be very careful with products that claim to “Lower the noise floor”
High Bandwidth
This one isn’t used as much as it used to be, but you never know when it will creep up again. All this means is that the product in question can reproduce very high highs and very low bass. Since most audiophiles are at least pushing 40 years of age it is unlikely that many can hear a frequency higher than 18 or 19KHZ. This is because most people begin to lose the ability to hear the very highest frequencies by the time they reach age 40. You would also require a room that allows you to sit up to 28 feet away from the speaker to most accurately reproduce 40Hz let alone 20Hz!. That’s a pretty big room as most sound experts will tell you that it is good to have the speakers away from the wall at least a few feet and it is also ideal to have some space between you and the wall behind you! So keeping all this in mind a sound system that can reproduce sounds from 20Hz up to 50,000 Khz is not worth paying extra money for! In fact it may cause problems! You see your speaker system will try to reproduce any signal you send it and this can have a negative effect on the overall sound you’re hearing from the speaker. For instance if a woofer has to slow down to try and reproduce something at 20 Hz it can’t simultaneously reproduce the rest of the signal as faithfully and so this becomes a detriment to the sound. Basically it’s like part of the music you can hear is being masked by a sound your speakers can’t even reproduce!
High Resolution
I have seen some speaker wire and interconnects described as being “High Resolution”. Good quality speaker wires and interconnects can have a positive impact on the sound but they can’t raise the resolution! A CD plays back at a higher resolution than an MP3 because more information derived from the original recording is present and available to recreate the music. An up sampling digital to analog converter takes digital information and converts it to a higher bit rate in the digital realm before converting it to the analog sound you hear, thus raising the resolution. Cables merely transfer a signal from one place to another with varying degrees of accuracy they cannot raise the resolution of the sound.
Musical
Quite often when a salesperson wants to convey that product X is better than product Y that costs quite a bit less, and there is no real difference, they will claim that product X is more “musical” I guess it’s not really a lie, I’m sure the extra money they want you to spend is music to their ears! Whenever you hear the word musical used in a description of an audio product just substitute the word bullshit and you’ll do just fine.
Noise Floor
A huge amount of products are sold on the premise that by reducing the amount of noise present you’ll hear more music. The idea being that if you get rid of noise, small details will become more apparent to your ear and the music will sound better. Hey it makes sense right? Less noise equals more music. The unfortunate thing is that more often than not they’re SAYING they are lowering the noise floor when in reality they are using a device that is widely used in the recording industry called a compressor. A compressor is like a super fast robot that turns up the volume when things are quiet and leaves the sound unchanged when the music gets louder. This has the effect of making anything processed in this way to sound more detailed and live. However it limits the dynamic range of the music so the difference between the loudest sounds and the softest sounds is in some cases dramatically reduced. A good example of this is commercials on TV. Ever notice how they sound louder than the shows you are watching? The people who produce these commercials employ compression to achieve this effect. It is also used to make dialogue in movies crystal clear despite all manner of other sound effects happening at the same time. When you employ compression to Jazz, opera and classical music all of which avoid using compression in the recording and production of the music, it works astonishingly well, the subtle aspects of the music jump out and tickle the ear drums. The problem comes when you want to listen to some good old rock and roll. Crunchy overdriven rock guitar is already as compressed as you can make it and still have it be pleasing to the ear. Compress it any more and it turns to mush! Long story short, if you like to rock out with your system occasionally be very careful with products that claim to “Lower the noise floor”
High Bandwidth
This one isn’t used as much as it used to be, but you never know when it will creep up again. All this means is that the product in question can reproduce very high highs and very low bass. Since most audiophiles are at least pushing 40 years of age it is unlikely that many can hear a frequency higher than 18 or 19KHZ. This is because most people begin to lose the ability to hear the very highest frequencies by the time they reach age 40. You would also require a room that allows you to sit up to 28 feet away from the speaker to most accurately reproduce 40Hz let alone 20Hz!. That’s a pretty big room as most sound experts will tell you that it is good to have the speakers away from the wall at least a few feet and it is also ideal to have some space between you and the wall behind you! So keeping all this in mind a sound system that can reproduce sounds from 20Hz up to 50,000 Khz is not worth paying extra money for! In fact it may cause problems! You see your speaker system will try to reproduce any signal you send it and this can have a negative effect on the overall sound you’re hearing from the speaker. For instance if a woofer has to slow down to try and reproduce something at 20 Hz it can’t simultaneously reproduce the rest of the signal as faithfully and so this becomes a detriment to the sound. Basically it’s like part of the music you can hear is being masked by a sound your speakers can’t even reproduce!
High Resolution
I have seen some speaker wire and interconnects described as being “High Resolution”. Good quality speaker wires and interconnects can have a positive impact on the sound but they can’t raise the resolution! A CD plays back at a higher resolution than an MP3 because more information derived from the original recording is present and available to recreate the music. An up sampling digital to analog converter takes digital information and converts it to a higher bit rate in the digital realm before converting it to the analog sound you hear, thus raising the resolution. Cables merely transfer a signal from one place to another with varying degrees of accuracy they cannot raise the resolution of the sound.
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