Quantitative measurement of sound quality

Sumanta

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Reading some few reviews of various parts of a music set up chain, I found reviewers use qualitative values to rate a product. I have not read a lot of reviews, but all that I read are using some examples to express quality of a product. Like we express joy of freshness with examples of fresh air, morning dew, green vegetables.

But I never saw someone giving rating a product by its every attributes.
Overall rating in build, sound, appearance etcetera are to me still a broad set of attributes. And hence they are more towards qualitative rating.

How about making a standard to have quantitative rating system for audio products' audio quality.

For that we need to set which attributes we should rate.
Then, we can have some fixed popular music (among audiophiles) of preset format for highest quality available in common. Two audition CD of Dali and one having "Hotel California" immediately comes to my mind.

Then we each can rate our own system and then can match other's rating to judge measurement system's reproductability and reproducibility.

I think it is better to take step by step approach.
I suggest to start with making a measurement system for speakers. So, we need to first fix attributes for checking.

I am not at all a right person to fix these attributes.
I can only suggest following with a rating scale of 1 to 10. Request others to feed in their opinion.

1) Female voice representation (presence)
2) Male voice representation (presence)
3) Attack
4) Decay
5) Silence
6) separation (I like to test it with sounds of claps)
7) Depth
8) imaging
9) staging
10) presence (drama) like live acoustic performance without electric & electronic support
11) Ability to represent public performance using electric and electronic support

Let us complete this list first.
 
What does '10' represent ? It will be different for different people.
The best way to describe a system is to compare it with another system that the other people have already heard .
 
What does '10' represent ? It will be different for different people.
The best way to describe a system is to compare it with another system that the other people have already heard .

Good!
That will not work alone because many wouldn't have heard that reference system. I know value will still be person dependent, but slowly over time, it will settle.

But following you if one gives a mark and say what he/she gives for his/her reference system then people can make a benchmark.
 
Good initiative Sumanta,

I appreciate your approach.

of the two reference disk i know the "Hotel California" , which is the other one you are referring to and which song in that disk you want us to listen to ?

you may give me a you tube link for reference, then i will order that disks

Also what should be the source ? CDP or TT ?

Regards,

Tanoj
 
Last edited:
Good initiative Sumanta,

I appreciate your approach.

of the two reference disk i know the "Hotel California" , which is the other one you are referring to and which song in that disk you want us to listen to ?

you may give me a you tube link for reference, then i will order that disks

Also what should be the source ? CDP or TT ?

Regards,

Tanoj

Thank you Tanoj.
The other CD is an audition CD of Dali which has various types of music from Jazz to vocal to Piano.
I think for a start we can work with Hotel California only as it has various tones and timbres.
My first goal is to set attributes that we will be rating. Let's freeze that first.

I would like to concentrate first on setting attributes of speakers. Let's not subgroup it again by size or design as the basic purpose of speakers are same. But speakers should be considered for listening music as our testing medium will be music.
I think setting up attributes will clear things more now on.
 
Post some more thought, we can parallel way set global attribute of a system. Irrespective of parts in its chain.

I think still the above mentioned 11 stands good.
 
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