wht is the difference between good and bad sound ?

hi jlambrick:

when you decribe certain phenomena as bad, isn't that an arbitrary standard. suppose someone like bright sound, or likes the effect of jitter. maybe you and i don't but you can't have it both ways.

if its all subjective--jitter, harmonic distortion, frequency response imbalances, sound is only bad when someone doesn't like it.

if there are standards, they are not absolute. the fact that many agree with them merely denotes popularity which is subjective.

until you are in a quantitative mode, such athletics, where faster can be construed to be better than slower, universal acceptance, as you say neither conotes good or baad.

again logic dictates deduction and if you have a postulate from which you draw a conclusion, i can posit another postulate.

the concept of good and bad as applied to any endeavor of life is philosophical. there is not definitive answer. it is just an exchange of ideas.

i happen to agree with you regarding harmonic ditortion, but i have heard evidence of jitter which has sounded pleasant to me.

I've never heard of anyone liking the sound of jitter or odd harmonic distortion. These seem to be universally accepted forms of 'bad' distortion. What type of jitter have you found to be pleasant?

years ago i became a member of the bmg music club.

i compared cds issued to the club to commercially available cds on the dgg label. these were classical cds. i noticed a difference between the sound of the cds.

in a nutshell, i would describe the diffference as a loss of detail or veiling for the cds from the club as compared to those commercially available.

these facts were reported to bob katz, a recording engineer at chesky records.

he did some research and concluded that the club cds had more jitter than the commercially available cds.

i found the losss of detail on the club cds a benefit, making the sound more pleasant than that of the commercially available cds.

Mrtennis, I wasn't trying to enter into the existentialist debate, just describe how good and bad sound occur for me - no more and no less. Good and bad are generalised terms to describe what must be a continuum and may have several dimensions. You can describe any observation as 'in the eye of the beholder'. Is this sheet of paper white, or is the only fact that I perceive the paper to be white. Me perceiving it to be white does not preclude another person perceiving it to be grey. So where does this get us? Not far unless you just like such debates. But the counter-factual, which could be that noone should ever describe here something as sounding good/bad, or better/worse than anything else seems to me to lead to reducing the sum of our enlightenment. Just because we cannot prove many useful facts about sound does not mean we cannot discuss the observations that have occurred to us. Take everything with a grain of salt, but don't dismiss all reported observations as meaningless.

observations are not meaningless. our experience is basically all that we have. there is very little knowledge. most of us know very little.

there is sound. it is neither intrinsically good or bad.

the terms are used to express a subjective reaction to listening. there are disagreements between serious listeners as to what is good and bad.

the point of this and other similar philosophical posts is to get people thinking about different perspectives, and rid themselves of rigidity and dogmatism in their thinking.
of course debates are stimulating and keep our brains sharp. remember use it or lose it.

one could do worse than engage in philosophical discussions.