Subjective Rating System

[Hugo9000]

3 minutes ago, esldude said:

Imaging was like a dirty ceramic tile bathroom in New Orleans at the end of a 5 day drunk at Mardis Gras.  

 

The vapid sense of air and space was as grainy as a swarm of flies surrounding roadkill in the west Texas sun.  

 

 

Which equipment is this?  The specificity is remarkable, it must be an amazingly high-fidelity loudspeaker!  Birth of a new (dystopian?) world!   

[Hugo9000]

I am going to suggest areas of measurement, their units, and scales.  This will be followed by some discussion of rationale for choosing or rejecting certain terms and/or scales.
 

Property:  Transparency

Unit of measure:  holt

Scale:  0 to 7 (0 holt=perfect transparency/fidelity to the source; 7 holts=no transparency)

 

This is suggested by the clarity scale of diamonds, but while that scale goes from 0 (flawless/internally flawless) up to 10 (see Note 1 below), Transparency for audio only goes to 7, due to the quantity of veils worn by a fully-clothed Salomé (0=nude or no veils, on up to 7, denoting all 7 veils yielding 0 transparency).

 

Continuing with diamond grading as inspiration, and as they are graded on multiple properties, the same could be done with audio equipment, thus I propose two for audio, based on their figurative parallels.  Transparency equating to Clarity, and of course we have literal Color for diamonds as well as figurative "color" for audio.

 

Property:  Coloration

Unit of measure:  none (see Note 2 below)

Scale:  A to Z (A=absence of coloration from the source, Z=maximum coloration)

 

Diamond color is graded from D to Z.  D (for diamond itself) being colorless--"a chemically pure and structurally perfect diamond has no hue, like a drop of pure water" (hence a gem of the first water)

 

Since we are talking here about Audio rather than diamonds, we will use A to represent the least audio coloration, which expands our coloration grades from A to Z, whereas transparency (clarity) shrunk from 11 grades in diamonds to only 8 for audio.  So we still have ample scope for differentiation. 

Note:  

 

 

Rationale for rejecting the rather more obvious veil as the unit of measure of transparency:

 

As we decreased the scale to 8 whole units (0 through 7), it is quite likely that reviewers would begin dividing into partial units.  This leads to inevitable problems and confusion.   0.5 veils would suggest "half a veil" to the casual reader, while others might presume that it refers to a single veil of half-thickness.  The whole point of this proposed system of measure/rating is to reduce ambiguity, not add to it.  If we truly mean "half a veil" (which covers only a particular half of the audible range), then the holt unit allows for that without ambiguity:  simply state 1 holt covering the upper frequencies, and 0 holts for the lower, or vice versa.  If we mean a veil of half-thickness, then it seems that 0.5 holts is perfectly clear.  (Obviously, it's more likely that it would be some odd portion of a veil rather than half, certainly if we use the conventional range distinctions of treble, midrange, and bass, we have third-veil portions in that sense (although the midrange is greater than one-third, and many would say it was all-important, musically).)

 

Best to use the holt, and describe a loudspeaker as having 0 holts in the treble region, but 1 holt in the bass or midrange, for example.  If you actually mean that the veil is finer than normal, then you'd state that the loudspeaker exhibits 0.5 holts overall.  If using veils, you'd have to specify 0.5 veils, with treble fully transparent, and no clearly logical way to distinguish a half-thickness overall, due to the problem of perception over the designation 0.5 veils as noted earlier.

 

 

 

Some other possibilities, and reasons in favor or against:

 

Unit of measure:  atkinson

(1 atkinson being equivalent to number of new worlds birthed)

Main reason for rejection:  MQA is generally considered vaporware on the most-viewed discussion of the subject on the internet, so the general reader will have no frame of reference, thus requiring lengthy footnotes to reviews.  Additional considerations:  ambiguity of the sense of world.  Is this in the sense of planets, as in our own world, planet Earth?  Or is it in a more figurative sense of everything meaningful around us, potentially meaning the entire universe.  Is it renewal of this world, or a completely separate world?  A parallel world?

 

Unit of measure:  harley

(1 harley being equivalent to number of jaws dropped, or possibly to measure Coloration)

Main reasons for rejection:  Coloration, being rated A to Z rather than having a numeric scale, needs no unit of measure.  Simplicity is best.  Jaws dropped as being part of a unit of measure or scale seems to sacrifice clarity or sense.  Do we allow for all jaws in the world, theoretical limit of jaws in the known universe, number of jaws that theoretically could be contained in the listening room?  If only the jaw of the reviewer, then it has little utility, as the jaw will either drop or not, so we have two possibilities only, 0 harley or 1 harley.  What a mess, and too much ambiguity needing additional clarification in the footnotes of each review.  Other significant reason to reject the unit harley for any type of measurement:  ambiguity potential, as readers might assume it is named in honor of the motorcycle, thus a higher number on the scale would seem good to those who enjoy or admire the brand, while detractors would consider 0 harleys to be the optimal or perfect designation on the total scale.

 

Unit of measure:  hirsch

No proposed area of measurement, rejected due to ambiguity or perceived lack of utility/possible bias of those who might have a belief that it suggests a state of events where "all electronics sound alike."   General audiophile readers might assume at most a binary scale, where 1 hirsch means it works/powers up, and 0 hirsch where it is completely broken.  Thus any attempted use of the hirsch as a meaningful unit of measure would require lengthy footnotes appended to every review.

 

 

Note 1:  For the sake of simplicity, I am following the example of the American Gem Society's 0 to 10 scale, rather than VVS, VS, S, and I ratings in the GIA scale, although both systems in fact have 11 grades including "flawless/internally flawless."

 

Note 2:  Coloration, being rated A to Z rather than having a numeric scale, needs no unit of measure to be clearly understood.

 

General Notes:

Carat weight and Cut in diamonds have no special parallel in audio equipment, other than things already served by conventional measures and descriptions.  Cut loosely parallels categories like "tube" or "solid state," or "dynamic" versus "planar," etc.  We already have weight in audio gear as representative of value (just like diamonds, the heavier it is, the more value--as everyone knows when comparing amplifiers).

 

Other Important Concerns:

I have not addressed a time-based measurement, as I feel that timing issues in components can be covered by their effect on either Transparency or Coloration or both.  Anything such as bad AD or DA stages causing temporal blur will necessarily reduce transparency to the source, just as having one speaker cable that is longer and thus requiring a few extra nano-seconds for signal arrival will reduce Transparency or induce Coloration.  Perhaps more important is the concern that Coloration by definition/logic is a reduction in Transparency, thus perhaps it should not be considered a separate and valid category of measurement at all.  Certainly, a component with Coloration of Z cannot have full fidelity to the source recording, so it could not also have Transparency of 0 holts.  So as one or the other gets further from perfect, by necessity the other is also further from perfect.  The exact ratio presents some problems.

 

 

Disclaimers:

I've mentioned number of veils, with a maximum of seven (source:  Oscar Wilde, in his play Salomé, later made into an opera by Richard Strauss), in threads discussing these matters in various places on the 'net and in real life before, as have countless others independently, I'd imagine, as it's so obvious.  Likewise, I'm certain that nearly everything else here has been suggested many times by many different people, just like the origin of helen as the unit of measure for beauty (1 millihelen=beauty to launch one ship, and suggestions for -1 helen=ugliness required to sink a battleship), which has multiple claimants including Asimov.  All to note that I make no claims to originality with any of the above.  I also make no claims that it's funny, as it's also so obvious that it is of course low hanging fruit.  So sue me!  Also, I'm a touch-typist using a good keyboard, so it really didn't take long to write this up--in the extremely unlikely event anyone cares how much time I wasted on this haha!