I appreciate Mrtennis's question, and especially Elizabeth's response. Every hobby has its own vocabulary, words that help us explain what we're doing and experiencing. Last year I stumbled across some reviews by Jeff Day (6moons.com) and appreciated how he distinguished between two sets of attributes: soundstaging, transparency, imaging, and detail recovery on the one hand, and things like beat, rhythm, and melody on the other. He mentioned that components and systems that excel at the former often lose the latter. Elizabeth pointed out that none of us are neutral, that we all favor some aspects of performance over others. If we use specific audio terminology to explain why one component or group of components serves our needs better than another, the ambiguity Mrtennis laments will be resolved, and the reader will understand why person A can think a Rega RP6 is clearly better than a SOTA Comet (about the same price once you add a dustcover and hinge kit to the Comet) while person B thinks the opposite.
the meaning of the word "better"
thr word better is frequently used when comparing the sound of components.
yet, it leads to ambiguity when there is no statement of the specifics as to why one component is better than another.
aside from the obvious connotation that better entails a subjective perception, the termm leads to ambiguity when used by itself.
i would hope that in the future when the word better is used in the context of comparing components, the user will explain what he /she means by "better".
yet, it leads to ambiguity when there is no statement of the specifics as to why one component is better than another.
aside from the obvious connotation that better entails a subjective perception, the termm leads to ambiguity when used by itself.
i would hope that in the future when the word better is used in the context of comparing components, the user will explain what he /she means by "better".