Old 09-26-2014, 05:05 PM   #1
JimFichs
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Default "Color" in Audio

Or, "colour" depending on what side of the pond you're on.

I'm pretty much infantile as far as my audio experience goes and I lurk a lot of forums trying to pick up little brown nuggets of information. Something that I always come across from various vets is the use of EQ or compression for "color" or character. I'm very keen on compartmentalizing and I often find myself wondering if I can separate this kind of flavoring of my audio using saturation or other methods since I prefer clean EQing.

Am I off-base or missing something here? I'm sure I'll get answers of the "it's subjective;trust your ears" variety and I certainly do keep that in mind. I also invite the opinions of others, though. Any perspectives presented that I can eventually agree or disagree with after some trial-and-error will sharpen my understanding. I'd just like to gather some thoughts on this.
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Old 09-26-2014, 09:59 PM   #2
DVDdoug
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Color (in the audio context) is a rather vague term and it can mean whatever the speaker/writer wants it to mean. It's generally some kind of distortion, and probably a desirable type of distortion... At least desirable to the particular listener or producer.

Equalizers are generally clean. They don't introduce distortion (harmonic or intermodulation) or add any sounds that weren't there to start with... They just boost or cut existing frequencies. Personally, I wouldn't call that color, but maybe some people do.

Color is often attributed to compression. Or, when certain preamps "add something" to the sound instead of cleanly amplifying, some people call that "vibe"... Assuming it's adding something good!

If you are using a compressor/limiter and you like what it's doing to the sound, I guess you could say you like how it colors the sound. (Or maybe you don't like the way it colors the sound...)

I have an engineering background so I tend avoid terms like "color" or "vibe" and I try to use more specific terms like distortion, noise, and frequency response that have particular scientific meanings.

However, I may say someone's voice has a particular "character" when I should say "timbre". Or, I might say something like, [I]"A Marshall guitar amp has a different sound character than a Fender amp."[/b]
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Old 09-28-2014, 07:13 AM   #3
JimFichs
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I see. So "color" in that sense seems to be a wishy-washy term. I figured it might have to do with the color of noise (white/pink/brown) and that there was more to it than what was being described.

Is "mojo" a similar thing, then? Just a word everyone uses but has no nailed-down meaning? That's a term I figured I'd understand at some later point as well.
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Old 09-28-2014, 09:30 AM   #4
Judders
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"Colour" and "mojo" are most often seen in advertising copy, and then regurgitated on Gearslutz

Remember that analogue equipment was made to be as clean as possible. EQs can introduce phase distortion, and tranformers can affect the sound somewhat, but this is negligible compared to the actual frequency frequency boosts and cuts you actually use the unit for.

Your instinct towards "clean" EQ is good. If you want saturation, add it elsewhere.
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Old 10-03-2014, 10:38 AM   #5
Slandis
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Color simply means that when you send a signal through something, the sound coming out has a fundamentally different timbre or character. A good example is a delay pedal. A digital delay will likely have more pristine, clinically accurate reproductions of the sound, and each repeat will sound very close to the sound of the guitar if the effect was bypassed, what some people call "transparency". A tape echo, on the other hand, will color the fundamental sound. The repeats will sound dark or wobbly or have any number of noticeable modifications to the fundamental sound. This is "color" because it's like adding a global filter to the sound on top of the modification itself (delay, preamp, etc.).

Another example is film photography. A digital photograph will look very "real", almost morbidly so, because digital cameras are shockingly accurate at linearly graphing light. You could call this "transparent". On the other hand, think of an Ansel Adams photograph shot on film: intentionally inaccurate, and strives instead to depict what the mind's eye sees rather than providing a scientifically accurate mapping of the light. This is how some people would describe "color, mojo, or vibe."

These terms are fundamentally wonky, as any informal psychological descriptor is likely to be. People describe "color" and "transparency" in different contexts, but in a general sense that's what people mean by them.
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Old 10-07-2014, 02:01 PM   #6
JimFichs
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Thanks all, and especially Slandis for the Ansel Adams explanation. As a visual guy, that drives it home.
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Old 10-07-2014, 02:38 PM   #7
whiteaxxxe
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Judders View Post
"Colour" and "mojo" are most often seen in advertising copy, and then regurgitated on Gearslutz
yesyesyes. that is soooo. :-))

to state that absolute clear upfront: I am a fan of clean eqing and a hater of saturation and such nonsense.

I dont want to rant again about the in my opinion idiotic use of mojo, voodoo, coloring, saturation and so on to degrade a signal and on the other hand the same people are bullshitting about 96khz samplerate as minimum and calling all that subjective - no, I want to tell you that I got to manage to listen to some of the Gearslutz-pros that work with mojoed gear: everything I heard was disgusting degraded noise. really, imagine a 50s average vinyl-player pushed through a 60s tube radio which has its volume cranked up to 80%. really funny. not, not funny. idiotic.

for me its a no-go from the moment I hear or read such terms as mojo and analog or saturation. if I want to distort something, thats ok. I am a great distorter. but I never would call that hyped telephone sound "colored". its bullshit, it is simply distorted. to make out of such terms a religion and having people believe in such a religion thats what I call marketing.

and the top of all that crap was delivered by Neil Young and Jack White (I am a fan of both) when they recorded for the sheer sake of being analog and retro and magic and voodoo and analog in a recording booth from the 40s and then spread that bullshit on iTunes in 24bit/96khz.

again I have a feature reqeust for that forum: I would like to have a huge facepalm-smilie ... :-)))

so: in my opinion a eq has to eq and a compressor has to compress and both have to add to the signal as less artifacts as possible. if I would like a shitty sound I would have kept my vinyl-player from the 70s and would listen to vinyl still today. but I dont want a shitty sound. so go away with analog, tubes, mojo or whatever. glad that these things are down the drain of history.

but some people cant let go ... sigh, when we all know, that in former times everythign was better than today, everything! :-)))) what a bs ...
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