SocialEQ - teach us a word, and we'll make it into a tool

[mbc0920]

Dear community,

SocialEQ is a research project to learn the meaning of sound adjectives that relate to equalization. We'd like you to teach us a word to describe sound (for example, a ?warm? sound). We?ll ask you to rate some examples (?How ?warm? is this?"), and when we think we understand your word, we will give you a tool to make a sound more or less like your word. SocialEQ is fun to try and only takes about five minutes.

To participate, go to http://socialeq.org

Thank you for your time!

Best regards,

Mark

The Interactive Audio Lab
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Northwestern University

[Gregg Juke]

Sounds like a cool project.

A few chestnuts from the top of my head (in addition to "warm")-- brittle, bright, tinny, muddy, tubby, harsh, fizzy, metallic.

Good luck with the grand-daddy of "producer-speak" verbiage-- "Orange."

GJ

[agershon]

Super cool! I did "tubby" and "harsh". The system (and operator) nailed harsh and we got pretty close with tubby.

Great idea and good luck!

[Snarl 12/8]

Man, I'd like to know WTF "girth" is. I mean, in terms of audio.

[cale w]

I did muffled. It was pretty much spot on by the time the system learned... big dip at 4k, a big hump around 500z, a shelf below 200. Pretty much nailed the concept I was thinking off when rating the samples.

[vvv]

Man, I'd like to know WTF "girth" is. I mean, in terms of audio.

Just ask my ex-, ...


..., oh, "audio".

[MoreSpaceEcho]

Man, I'd like to know WTF "girth" is. I mean, in terms of audio.

thick low mids and/or a weighty low end in general?

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Man, I'd like to know WTF "girth" is. I mean, in terms of audio.

Wide stereo image in the low end? That's how I'd use it. But I suppose it could just mean lots of low end.

[Snarl 12/8]

Are these guys going to be able to Trademark, or worse, patent these words / concepts once they figure out what makes them tick? I mean, they've patented genes in the human genome. (Not these particular guys, presumably.) So, why not patent parts of the groove or certain desirable qualities of audio. Imagine having to pay a nickle every time you added girth to a mix or intentionally made something sound muffled.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

dude. put down the bong.

[cale w]

Well, didn't Harley patent the sound of it's motors?

[fossiltooth]

dude. put down the bong.

: )

Yep -- It's nothing to worry about. You can't patent a chord progression, a chord, a note, a bassline. You can only copyright songs, unique arrangements performances and recordings. That's it. There's no patenting or trademarking a generic term or word that's already in wide public use. (There's even a legal term for that. It's called "prior art".) Contrary to popular belief on the interwebs, copyright is not actually insane. (The only thing that's really kinda weird is the length of the term, but all that's subject for a whole 'nuther thread.)

Anyway, I did a couple of these. I thought it was kinda cool, and that the EQ patterns it came up with for me in the end were definitely in the right ballpark. My one little critique would be that EQ curve isn't necessarily the only thing that goes into my usage of certain words. Some descriptors might have a lot to do with harmonic distortion or transient response or width or ambiance. A lot of terms, like "gritty" or "lush" might describe a combination of a bunch of factors.

Even simple terms like "bright" (more treble) and "dark" (less treble) can be surprisingly tricky. Sometimes the program would play me a sound that didn't really fix on that axis and would be better described as "scooped" or "midrangey" instead. It might be nice if there was a more clearly defined way to "opt out" of deciding which camp to put a certain setting into, or to provide an "other" option to describe individual sounds that don't sit in a well-defined place on whatever two-dimensional axis is being tested.

That said, I think it's still a cool little exercise as-is, and I would like to see it grow into something even more ambitious in the future.

[Grinder]

Seems superfluous...

Gustav