MacGuild
Member
I simply think - after having nearly 50 years of sound engineering + over 50 years guitar playing under my belt - that there is no scientific way to define sound quality. Fine approximations on various details - no denying there.
And as far as I know - there is no "standard" good sound - on any instrument.
Instead of trying to prove my statement w technical data I quote a finnish man, who invented the Ortoperspecta 3-speaker sound system in 1960:s and more importantly also found out important things about TIM - transient intermodulation distortion - he once wrote: my free memory . . .
"If the measurements of sound show good but our ears hear bad - there are two alternatives : either we have not measured enough many parameters - or we have been measuring wrong parameters . " - Tapio Köykkä
Totta. All very true, @Nuuska.
The reason I like what @dwasifar is doing here is because it is not unlike something I wish I had done myself, starting a long time ago, in the sense of making detailed observations about various string sets. Like you and many people who frequent Let's Talk Guild, I have been playing for decades and have had dozens of various guitars, which means, like everyone else, I have gone through countless sets of different strings. What I failed to do was document a lot of that variation, all those string/guitar combinations. And I wish I had. You know, perhaps a spreadsheet with columns for which guitar, which strings, general opinions and observations. But because I had a loose and lazy way of tracking string history, most of that information got lost over the years. There are times when I wish I had retained it.
I like trying a lot of different strings, it is all part of staying excited.
Besides, this thread has stimulated a lot of interesting conversation, which is why we all come hear in the first place! I will very happily read dwasifar's observations over the next year. As a string geek, I could read this stuff all day. And I like the subjective human element. Being told by machinery what is closest to ideal bothers me, these days more than ever. I spent decades working with machinery, machines are tools and nothing more. I would much rather have a conversation about hex cores or note decay with you, Nuuska, than with an audiometer.
Stay warm, friend!