Timbre is how close/natural does the sound of your gear sound like in comparison to the real instrument. If it sounds very similar to the real thing then it has good timbre, if it sounds unnatural/different then it has bad timbre.
Detail is how much of the sound can you hear, like can you hear the player tapping their feet when playing or can you hear the singers breath.
Since people dont really state how they interpret these things, some people might have different definitions for them but this is how I define them in a short summary.
Timbre is the sound of the headphone. It involves bass/midrange/treble, driver. wether its made of plastic or wood. damping done or not done. Just its tone. ZMF headphones are known to have great timbre. The Focal headphons can have a metallic sound.
Detail is just that. how much of the music thats revealed. The STAX headphones are known to be so detailed you can hear with the guys whoâs playing drops his toothpick. you can hear it hit the ground. You hear all the nuances of the music, sometimes you can even hear stuff you dont want to hear. i mean i can never get enough detail. but some people do.
The terms layering/instrument separation/imaging is something I am using as synonyms
Basically describes how good the gear âplacesâ all the instruments/sounds around you and how well you can tell apart each sound/intrument from each other. Usually if it has bad separation the sound can sound like a giant clusterfuck when there is a lot of things going on in the track.
The term soundstage is somewhat related to the separation as with a bigger soundstage it is usually easier for the gear to have better separation too.
So layering, instrument separation, and imaging are interchangeable terms? They have all sounded very similar in definition and Iâm always a bit confused whether theyâre the same thing or each have their own different interpretation.
Layering is how the instruments or sounds are placed together in the studio. Sometimes this âlayeringâ can produce an interesting sound. Sometimes they create a wall of sound. A good headphone can reproduce this well or not so well.
Separation is how well you can make out each individual instrument. Sometimes the music can sound congested in the headphone. Where a good headphone you can hear them all separately when you focus your attention on it.
Imaging is where the instruments are placed in the studio and how well the headphone reproduces that. The guitar is in your left ear while the piano is in the right and so on. Sometimes they can make an instrument or sound movie around in your headphones. for instance the Cars: Moving in Stereo. this is all imaging. and sometimes a headphone can get it right and sometimes it drops the ball.
So with any âunwantedâ timbre then, can it sound like anything or is it limited to certain options as there is a limitation to the materials and driver types used? Also, is there any aspect of a headphone that doesnât continually scale up in price, but instead, sort of flat lines at a given price point?
@M0N Out of curiosity I decided to see if there would be a difference between the usb ports on my laptop and I could tell right away that one is clearly louder than the other. I didnât change anything but which usb port I used and it got louder when I tried the one I havenât been using. Any reason I should choose one over the other besides volume?
So is one a 3.0 vs a 2.0 port, and do you have any other usb devices plugged in? One sounds like itâs got nicer power output, I would use the louder one, but that is strange?
Iâd check windows isnât changing the volume/sampling rate when you change USB ports.
Usually a sound device in windows is associated with the USB port, so the settings are per port.
USB is just a digital signal, it canât on itâs own make things louder.
Yes thatâs possible, should be easy to identify if the DAC has an additional port for power.
I believe some laptops do provide more current than required by the USB standard on some ports.