Clinical sound?

[johngalt47]

What causes a speaker or a recording to sound "clinical"?

[LoveDoctor]

A white coat and a stethiscope.

[cjd]

Lack of low level noise resolution. And by Noise, I really mean the subtle details that living just above the noise floor, 30, 40, 50, even 60dB down.

Yes, they exist, yes they're important, and yes, most people think you can't hear shit that low which is why they ignore distortion profiles and put nice shallow slopes on drivers... er... I digress.

At any rate, you end up with clean, and very dead, sound.

FWIW I do not use "clinical" and "analytical" as synonyms though some that seem fond of certain sound flavors might...

[Space]

My first thought was that "clinical" is what some people say about speakers that are accurate, when they are suddenly able to hear the limitations of a recording. For example poor digital resolution might sound sort of clinical. However this reply by cjd is interesting.

It might be helpful if there were an example of some speaker that a lot of people agree sounds "clinical", and then we could try and figure out what's wrong with it (if anything).

[cjd]

Recordings are a lot easier to find that sound clinical - I once heard a reprocessed recording much lauded by the local audiophiles (who also ooh'd and ahh'd when a tube amp was suddenly wired up) and they loved it, but it had no life. It was classical, and it had everything below -30dB cleaned out completely.

I think that people often blame the speakers (as in Space's example above) when in fact it's the recording that's clinical, and the speakers just show it.

There was NO sense of real space (note that pretend engineered "depth" wasn't entirely gone, but that's phase and timing related, not low level detail). The notes were there, but... very uninviting.

I think that a lot of people DO call a highly resolving system "clinical" and I disagree with the word use here - which is why prefer "analytical" - in these systems, they are VERY good at resolving low level detail, not to mention everything else bad (or good) in a recording.

For a recording, a simple lack of dynamic range can cause it to be "clinical" as well I suspect.

FWIW people found the recording I mentioned to be very good to a much MUCH higher degree when it was on the system with a tube amp... and this tube amp had the classic "soften up the sound, add some nice even order distortion, and roll off the top end" profile tube amps often do.

I should also add, it was this same outing that I finally understood what "veils lifted" might mean: lowered distortion/noise floor allowing actual low level recording detail to shine through.

[Carl V]

I'll agree with the 2 previous post (posters) but I'll throw out
two instances where the words clinical or analytical came to my
mind & like cjd I don't use these terms too often.
Theil & Wilson Sofias (1st gen)
recordings were Barber's String Adagio
and Brahams German Requiem. Leading edges of notes.
Less of the body & less hall ambience. Less interplay is
heard between the performers (sections). The usual check
list of Soundstage or imaging is fine. It's tonality of more than two
instruments/performers/sections at the same time which seemed off.
Gear was good, very good.
Room was fine.

I've also observed this when I've felt the need to increase the gain
in order to hear more only to realize I'm getting more of the low level
grunge. There is often a sweet spot in terms of spl. with respect to
both the gear, the recording & the room.

[Brian Kingsbury]

According to Stereophile's un-officially Official Audiophile Terminology Dictionary..

Clinical : Sound that is pristinely clean but wholly uninvolving.

Generally speaking, I think it's somewhat futile to try to describe sound to someone. I realized this after going to the Califonia Audio Show a few weeks back. People listening right next to me had COMPLETELY opposite opinions on some systems from me. The best hope you have for being able to communicate sound to someone else is if the two of you have shared a considerable amount of listening experiences together. At least that way you have a few references for comparison. Without a common reference to compare against, the only thing the person gets from your description is that you were impressed or unimpressed by the speaker.

[johngalt47]

It just seems to me that some speakers, while being obviously more accurate and less distorted, don't pull me into the music....

[cjd]

It just seems to me that some speakers, while being obviously more accurate and less distorted, don't pull me into the music....

That may not be their fault - it could be that their lack of additives are at fault, and the recording itself is lacking. Especially true with more recent genres and recordings.

But there are a great many things in the sound chain that could be eating low level detail as well, or just not working together well, or... yeah.

I can definitely see how a speaker can mask a clinical recording, but have a harder time grokking just how a speaker would *cause* this unless they simply fail to resolve low level detail at all. Which is possible, to be sure - especially those that take a ton of power to get going at even a decent output level.

C

[Face]

Poor equipment synergy and/or lack of dynamics.

[nelsonvandal]

There are probably a number of factors but distortion spectrum dominated by odd order harmonics is definately one, if we're talking clinical in a negative sense.