What does "thin sounding" mean?

[mojosaur]

"Thin" is a term used to describe a certain quality that a recording or sound may have. What does the term "thin" mean to you and can you explain it in technical terms, ie why would a particular sampleor sound be "thin." And what would the opposite of thin?

 

Because my main hat is visual, I think in terms of a film negative. When a negative is thin, then it has very little information on it.....how does this translate into musical terms?

[steadyb]

Thin - no bottom end, no body.

thin sounding = lacking bass or low mids.

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Mojo,

 

You're likely to get a wide variety of responses on this because, like so many other musical terms, you're trying to assign a description to something that is somewhat intangible.

 

My definition of thin is, in general, lacking in a complete frequency response, especially in the lower register. The resulting sound is somewhat more nasal (i.e. midrangey) and less -- you guessed it -- fat than a less frequency-impaired sound. So your photo analogy is actually pretty accurate.

 

The problem is that this is very specific. Can something sound thin even if it's full of 60Hz rumble? Sure it can. There are no hard and fast rules in this regard. Eddie Van Halen described his ideal sound as "brown". And if you ever work with record producers, you'll be amazed at the endless blather of bullshit terms you'll hear to describe a sound.

 

Producer: "I don't like it."

Engineer: "Why not?"

P: It's too...I don't know...salty."

E: "Salty, you say?"

P: "Yes...it's gritty and abrasive. I want it more smooth."

E: (turns up volume slightly and adds a little reverb)

P: "Ah, yes. Much better. Wait, not so much...now it's greasy."

 

- Jeff

[coyote]

IMO it's best to illustrate this by citing examples. The best 'fat' to 'thin' comparison I know of actually occurs in a single song - the last 15 seconds of "Have A Cigar" on Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here".

 

And those BS terms are about as good as it gets. How else are ya gonna describe sound? http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

 

Originally posted by Jeff, TASCAM Guy:

Mojo,

You're likely to get a wide variety of responses on this because, like so many other musical terms, you're trying to assign a description to something that is somewhat intangible.

you ever work with record producers, you'll be amazed at the endless blather of bullshit terms you'll hear to describe a sound.

 

Producer: "I don't like it."

Engineer: "Why not?"

P: It's too...I don't know...salty."

E: "Salty, you say?"

P: "Yes...it's gritty and abrasive. I want it more smooth."

E: (turns up volume slightly and adds a little reverb)

P: "Ah, yes. Much better. Wait, not so much...now it's greasy."

 

- Jeff

[mEm0]

I always thought that sound could be fat thanks to the amount of overtone coloring besides the base pitch. Take a pure sine wave, it probably can't get thinner than that. But if you add overtones to that, and especially if those overtones are not perfectly in tune with one another, the sound becomes thicker. Detuning a sound with itself it's probably the easiest way to make it fatter. Add random detuning, and you get a certain unpredictability of the sound you usually get with live instruments. That's probably my interpretation of fat, but I'm sure there are others. How fat is fat enough? It's up to you.

 

memo.

[Guest Room Warrior]

Salty! I love it! A new audio descriptor, just when you though you'd heard 'em all. Thanks, Jeff.

 

- Jim Bordner

[mojosaur]

Great answers.

 

And I guess it all relates to the speaker that the playback comes through, ie what sounds good on the tiny speaker of my imac might not sound so great at the movie theatre.

 

OK follow with me, to get a really good scan of a picture you need a really high end scanner.......probably $30,000 or more, but there are are scanners that cost $4,000. and produce credible results, depending on the final reproduction (ie newspaper, high gloss mag) which are roughly the equivalents of your car radio, high end stereo, etc.

 

In terms of the studio environment, and computers, how much do you have to spend to produce a recording that will have some kind of depth like the track I might hear on the dolby before the movie starts, that kind of high end thing?

 

And do the samples themselves, or the synthesized or modeled sounds likewise determine how much "enlargement" a particular piece of music can take before its flaws come out?

 

 

 

This message has been edited by mojosaur on 07-30-2001 at 03:42 PM

[synthfoolsynthfool.com]

While a sine wave has no harmonics, I've never found them to be terribly "thin" sounding. A narrow pulse has much more harmonics, but I've often found them to sound thin (and not just on an oscilloscope).

 

One session with an equalizer and almost any recorded material can help illuminate "thin"

 

http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Senator]

An obvious yet unidentified problem? Could be EQ, could be variety of progression. Can mean a variety of things. As opposed to 'fat' which can be the response to an obviously cool element. Such as awesome bassline, drum sounds etc.

 

Agree with Jeff TASCAM's answer as the predominant usage.