What I hate about HiFi web sites & magazines

[Gag Halfrunt]

The terms in any subjective evaluation are often florid. It's an attempt to describe the performance of a thing in a language that is often ill-prepared to describe that performance. This is why the language of wine tasting is seemingly so full of odd terms like 'round', 'deep', 'short' or 'supple'. This could be dismissed as subjective nonsense, except these terms are often consistently expressed in blind tasting tests. The only difference between expert and inexpert tasters under blind conditions is that the novices lack the terminology, but that doesn't mean they fail to spot the differences.

 

These terms also act as a form of shorthand. I can easily spot - under blind conditions - the sound of the 'big three' loudspeaker engineering projects in the same room. Take the products that sprung out of the Canadian National Research Council (NRC) development project (Axiom, Energy, PSB, Paradigm directly... Infinity, JBL and Revel as engineers from the original project went their own way). These sound 'flat' (tonally neutral) and 'focused' (good stereo separation) in US rooms and can sound too 'shimmery' (wayward upper midrange/treble as the first reflection off the tweeter bounces off very solid walls) in brick European properties. OTOH, loudspeakers that came out of the BBC Research and Development department (Harbeth, Spendor, et al) sound tonally correct in many UK rooms, but can sound 'fat' or 'blowsy' (upper bass causing standing wave issues) in drywall US rooms. Then, there's the Eureka/Archimedes project (Imperial College London, KEF, B&O... and more recently THX-approval), which was designed to eliminate the influence of the room and can be readily spotted by wide dispersion, creating greater 'physical presence' (individual instruments are easier to locate and are solid enough not to waver around the mix) at the expense of 'soundstage focus' (pin-sharp stereo sound).

 

All of the above are non-contentious effects that have been well documented by a stack of peer-reviewed research, blind and sighted tests and a lot of thorough listening. It's strange that people paid by the word choose shorthand, but perhaps understandable in the light of it being a consumer magazine and not a set of engineering notes.