Hi-fi acronyms, euphemisms & thesaurus

There are plenty of views but no comments, does this mean?

1. You all understand the cryptic comments?

2. You are not willing to tell anyone else what they mean?

3. You do not want to embarrass yourself by asking?

4. It was a bad idea?

5. You do not give a shit!

Answers on a post card to the usual address

Nic

Dear Nic,

I don't understand most of it! It took me ages to work out that PRaT is analogous to what I would call articulation and rhythm! That is both musical and English, but I actually don't care enough to be bothered very much. Doctors do the same thing to hide the fact that they are talking about obvious and simple things and actually know no more than a ley person would just from common sense in many cases! So if you see PRat-ish language, just walk away and get back to the music. It is a pose in my view!

My plea to everyone who reads this: Forget Flat Earth and Round Earth. Forget PRaT, forget all this gobbledegook, and describe what you want in terms musical, and, preferably, in English, so that I can look it up in a dictionary if I don't get it, without looking a right PRAT!

All the best from Fredrik

I think we should compile a list.

I'll start:

PRAT - someone who drones on incessantly about their hifi but never gets any listening done.

Source First: The idea that choosing the source is more beneficial to the taste meal than selecting whether you will cook chicken, fish or red meat, or vegetarian.

Speakers first: Those who want to listen to the speeches at a wedding rather than get the cute guy/girl drunk and get them outside for a shag as quickly as possible.

Flat earth: People who believe that real estate purchases on the sides of hills is asking for trouble becuase of the increased risk of erosio/landslides.

Round earth: subscribers to the Columbus Theory that a fool and his money is soon parted. Also see Aztecs.

Speaker cable: speech maker needs to pop out (excuse me folks) to the John.

Vinyl: An alternative to carpet. Harder wearing in kitchens, laundries and bathrooms.

CD player: Devices that all sound the same.

Isolation rack: highly discriminatory male practice where the offender fails to make eye contact with a woman.

Feel free to contribute.

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:

Isolation rack: highly discriminatory male practice where the offender fails to make eye contact with a woman.

Recidivist: Toslink: The owner of half-moon glasses.

That's the spirit gentlemen.

Fredrik, I'am all for plain English, your erudite comments are always an interesting read. Music first not source first.

I need to tread a little more warily regarding the medical analogy as my wife is a consultant anaesthetist. Loads of brains but little common sense, i.e. so that is what the flashing lights on the dashboard mean.

Joe90, excellent post. The original intention had always been to combine learning with humour. Top marks for the humour.

Nic

Thanks Nic. We need to encourage others to contribute - in the least it will identify which forum members have a sense of humour.

Here are a few more:

Stage: something an actor stands on

Width: a more desirable attribute than length.

Height: prerequisite for basketball team selection

Scale: What your savs go on at the butcher's.

Imaging: like imagining, only not quite.

Timing: useful in comedians

detail: where God is in

coaxial: like a co-worker, only they're an axial.

bitstream: what a woman hears at 3am when her husband/partner goes for a pee.

resolution: when you finally make up your mind - after hours of trawling the internet doing research, after seeking the opinions of six friends and had eight demos - to buy that £20 interconnect.

tube: a television

projector: Gaz after 16 lagers.

screen: what's on your nan's front door to keep the flies out. Also the front of the television (see tube).

reviewer: watching the same porn movie repeatedly. someone who is full of shit.

Single ended triode: This complex term is generally used to describe older, single men who have more hifi than space in their houses. They usually smell, can't cook anything other than potatoes and are affectionately known as 'The Professor' by younger, adoring boffins who flock around after work to try out all the old man's 40s, 50s and 60s gear.
'Single' - unmarried
'Ended' - Nearing the end of one's life
'Triode' - (with heavy Northern accent) 'tri ode thees wun laddie'

Tweeter: The sad owner of one budgie.

Supertweeter: Owner of two budgies.

Squawker: Bragging about owning an endangered parrot.

Woofer: Chav dog owner

Sub woofer: Traveller dog owner.

Enclosure: Designated canine lavatory area in park.

Crossover: Pink poodle owner.

Infinitely baffled: Chav at the library.

Reflex: I'll have a pint of Bass John!

Horn: Jules! Your old woman says your dinner's been on the table for.....!

Dipole: Two welsh scaffolders.

Baffling: Explaining the constellations to a randy blonde in the car park.

True infinite baffle: Irish chav at the library.

Labyrinth: Low-cut cardigan with very small buttons.

Folded horn: Your jeans are way too tight!

Exponential horn: Bragging about last night's bit of totty.

Tractrix: Playing chicken on the Liverpool-London line.

Hyperbolic: Bragging about sharing a taxi with two randy blondes last night.

Polyester felt: Inebriated parrot used for artificial insemination.

Damping felt: Desperate attempt to overcome 'rice crispies' on your LP12.

Spindle: Outer platter on 1970s LP12.

Pickup arm: You goin' in 'ere too darling?

Counterweights: Barmaid's rack resting on the bar.

Snaic: Drunken scots complainer.

Phono: Female phoney.

5 pin DIN: Noisy skittles night.

4 pin DIN: Two young slags arguing in the pub.

Strain relief: Gent in late 50's visits the bathroom.

Coax: Talking a nice girl into going home with you.

Antennae: Spotting totty at the bar.

Room Equalisation: the art of making sure that the furniture looks like it was meant to be in there.

Headroom: local whore house

Musicality: this has nothing to do with hifi.

Headphones: those new fandangled cellular phones that clip onto the ear.

Cartridge: the ink cotainer in an inkjet printer. Another name for a bullet.

2 way speaker: noisy sex

3 way speaker: noisy, kinky sex

4 way speaker: nearly unheard of.

Driver: Takes you home when you are pissed.

SNAXO: Light bite between meals.

Platter: Fry up in a Wimpy Bar.

Stageline: Good theatre seats.

Rack: S&M device for kinky sex.

Hutter: Man who lives in a shed in a forest.

Isoblue: Eskimo who has painted his hut blue?

Fraim: Man with big wallet.

Spock

SBL: Some bass lodspeaker.

Turntable: Used for turning steam locos round.

Stylus: Used for playing a stylophone.

Isolation: Not speaking to the partner.

Damping: Something you do after a fire that got out of control.

DBL: Double bass loudspeaker.

Counter-weight: Used in ceratin weighing scales.

Scales: Series of eight musical notes ascending from the tonic through the major or minor (harmonic or melodic) intervals to the tonic again. [Ghastly mistake edited out!]. Can descend of course. Nothing to do with hifi!

Could go on but I bet you wished I had not started.

PRaT: I have been trying to work that out for years... I know one or two, but I think that must be wrong.

All the best from Fredrik

Edited to eliminate the kind of mistake I would not expect a six year old to make! Aaaargh!

respected reviewer: a paradox

hifi show: collection of lookers or 'gunnas' ("Aye Derek, I'm gunna get me a CDS-3 one of these days")

quote:

Scales: Series of eight musical notes ascending from the tonic through the major or minor (harmonic or melodic) intervals to the tonic again, and if you count the tonic twice that makes nine, but that is not how it is done.. Can descend of course. Nothing to do with hifi!

Dear Fredrik,

Just noted your typo ... there are 7 different notes and a full scale is 8 notes .... [unless it is chromatic etc etc ....] :

C-major : CDEFGAB 7 different notes
C-major : CDEFGABC 8 notes in scale

james

Oh goodness! I got to laugh. Still no one found me credible before so what the heck, and sorry, if anyone actually took that too seriously.

All the best from Fredrik

Of course it's just a typo and I am pedantic.

[Other people seem to answer every post with ...
its versus it's].

Dear James,

It was a bloody silly mistake, and the type I would have been less than amused by when I used to teach the bass! Actually my pupils used to love my approach, as it frequently involved me playing their basses, quite badly, as the stop and set up is always different from the instrument I used for my own playing. Thus it was terribly hard to play in tune very nicely. I used to say, "Play it like this 'but in tune!'" One of my students got good enough to attempt duets so I took my big five stringer in, but istead of me playing mine and he playing his, we swapped! It was awful. Me not in tune on his and him not even able to extract a tone from what was a lovely instrument, but not at all easy to play as such! We swapped back and it went rather well. I seem to remember him simply asking me to play piece after piece staright out of the book, "to show what it should sound like!" Which actually was nice thing to say, and actually, without a single thing being said, improved his actual tone production rather more than bowing excercises had till that point. I think a real aural idea often is very useful in the teaching of music. Funnily the lad lost interest in the bass at the same time as he discovered girls, and I have to say he would have been a very fine player, but he gave up eventually, which just shows interest does not always follow talent, sadly.

I am still embarassed by that mistake! Fred

Dear Fredrik,

This is totally off topic but I must say you sound a fine teacher.

I am learning piano and my teacher gives me one of the following answers to questions ...

a) The answer
b) I don't know
c) I can't explain it at your stage but it will become apparent.

[Example of c) is why something in G does not use any black notes so why the key signature -- now I understand but did not at the time].

James

Only F sharp of course in G major, but all it means is that the composer avoids the leading note in the scale. I would not have thought that beyond anyone to grasp, and it shows a thing all too common in music teachers, who think themselves too clever to waste time on simpler less accomplished minds: Being patronising. My solution to any question was to try to answer it, or come back with the answer researched, because I reckon if the mind is enquiring, then even if the answer is not fully comprehended, this mind will work on it or come up with a supplementary question which leads in. I never spared my students the rigours of a decent musical fingerings of the strings, from the very start if they wanted to play an 'advanced piece' or one that was just a bit too difficult really. Indeed, I always showed all the musical solutions and made them practice the lot, and then choose, which they wanted to do. That way they developed musicianship, and most important they were not a clone of me, who never thought myself a perfect model player! I still know one of my pupils, and he wants more lessons years on, but I finished teaching when I finished playing. To teach and not to actually profess is a scandal in my book, so I would not do it.

I was a serious teacher within myself, but always kept an element of fun in the lessons. Half work (technique), and half fun, from about the mid point, when we always played music, regardless of whether the technical lecture was over. There is always time to practice technique in the pupils own time, and that was the only fly in the ointment for me. Getting them to practice. It was pretty depressing to carefully edit a piece to make it playable and musical (fingerings and bowing etc) only to realise that it was last looked at at the previous lesson. My solution was to go back a piece in terms of difficulty and drop the bigger one. The crestfallen reaction usually produced the goods next lesson!

I learned as much as the pupils from teaching, but it could be draining. I guess this is why so many teachers seem aloof and uninvolved. They feel they need to be. I would rather not have done it than been like that.

All the best from Fredrik

PS: I learned a lot about teaching in my own lessons with David Daly, principal bass in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, with whom I studied till the very end of my playing. Our lessons were strange for he reckoned he could not teach and I was his only pupil. They were consultations! We did half technique and then just played and discussed the music. I know that on more than one occasion, I came up with an elegant musical solution, which he adopted! That is open minded, and we would delight in playing (on two bases facing each other) almost every conceivable fingering and bowing, just to work out which was the best, and it was almost always the simplest that got the musical effect easily. Complexity is not useful, but an added burden for the instrumentalist, really.

Dear Fredrik,

We are really off topic.

I understand G versus C. But at the time I said 'if the piece only uses white notes why put in the key signiture .. it can be written either as C or G'. He said because the tonic was G rather than C but I said 'why bother with the notation'. He said -- more or less -- it will make sence later. Now it does.

James

Added ...

At the time I was just starting and did not want to think of 'which notes are really sharp or flat'. I just wanted to play and did not really think about keys.

ends==

Dear Fredrik,

Maybe we should start another thread because we are going way off topic [which always happens].

James H.

Dear Everyone Else,

I think it would be useful to have a thread that explained the terms. I did not know what flat-earth/round-earth meant for ages and I though 'mullet system' meant 'idiot' rather than 'cheap source/everything else expensive'.

James H

In my view, and I actually explained this without questioning, it is important to know where home is. In music it is the tonic (at least in tonal music), and then you know you have a guide to the shapes of phrases! I taught phrasing from the off with pupils, partly because to start with I was mostly self-taught and understood this before I started to seriously play. I never had the hours of tedium of being taught technique, and mine was never perfect, ever.. actually, but musically I always got through, and was always invited back in professional and amateur circles. I never really understood how I scraped through, but the best compliment I was ever paid was by an orchestral leader, when he said to me that I always looked stylish, but always sounded musical. I know that it was more or less pure music and pure terror of the technical side, which is a terrible admission. The nervous energy involved, and the fear, made the decision to quit an easy one given the arthritis in my left hand. It was so painful, and the last straw, but I guess some would have gone on steriods and continued. I think I love music too much to have seen it that way, but one day I'll maybe do it again just for fum. Maybe the harpsichord!

Bedfordshire calls! Thanks for a nice conversation, from Fredrik

Dear Friends,

I am sorry, but that digression just sort of happed. It is a shame it could not just be put in a little box, and moved. Sorry, Fred

If we did not love music why would we have hi-fi.

James and Fred - back on topic boys!

Amusing acronyms/explanations - go!