What do people mean by a "grainy" sound?

The title says it all. What do people mean by a "grainy" sound? To me, it implies a kind of fuzziness which in turn implies distortion which is really quite drastic and I'm sure people don't mean it this way. So either I'm not hearing this phenomenon, or I am hearing it but calling it something else.

 

My JoLida tube amp had a grainy sound right out of the box. The mids/highs just weren't clear enough. It's hard to explain. Once I got the amp modded, the grainy aspect of it was gone. So in some cases, I think it's due to average parts being used.

 

AT440mla.

 

Your question points up a key problem in audio writing--we really don't have, on the most basic level, a shared understanding of what audio descriptors mean! For me, when I see "grainy" in an audio review the first thing I think of is a sandpapery, exaggerated edgy distortion to the highs, but it occurs to me that might not be what the writer means at all. Another word I used to think I knew the audio meaning of, but am no longer so sure, is "glassy." I always assumed it to mean shrill highs, but who knows?

 

sandpaper

 

Like a barely noticeable but still annoying crackle throughout. Exaggerated it could be like poor radio reception I guess.

 

Corn, wheat, and rice usually.

So if it sounds sort of like tortillas, or toast, or rice krispies while you're listening then that's usually considered 'grainy.'

 

Here are some I have come across over the years ...

steely
woolly
glassy
muddy
dry
warm
thick
thin
fat

JG

 

I remember hearing a Philips CD player on demo in a music shop in the early 80s. It sounded like the entire recording had been rammed through a synthesiser or soemthing. Grainy alright.

 

It's always a challenge to talk about sound. Sure, if you can do the requisite signal analysis you can discuss specific frequencies, and noise and distortion numbers. That has the advantage of being specific but not really evocative of the sound itself. Other than that we're pretty much stuck speaking metaphorically.

We do tend to borrow descriptive words from other sensory experience to describe sound -- it's grainy (touch) or bright or dark (sight), etc. -- more than we borrow descriptive words about hearing to describe other sensory experiences -- though we do often describe the colors and patterns of clothing as being "loud."

I'm not sure what people mean by grainy. I use a word, "hashy," which I always thought was the same thing people mean when they say grainy, but I might be wrong.

To me it describes a kind of edgy, high frequency noise that you don't really hear as discrete noise per se but more as an unnaturally sharpness (another borrowed tactile word) to high frequency sounds and an obscuring of high frequency detail. Listen to the cymbals on a well recorded, natural sounding record, like Sonny Rollins' The Bridge. To they sound just like a bright, generic, splash, almost more white noise than not? Or do they sound like cymbals do live -- like an airy, rich cloud of changing harmonics? Do they disappear into the background quickly or do you hear the full length of the decay? That's grainy vs. smooth to me, but it might mean something else to someone else.

 

This.

Similarly, sitting in the front row of a movie or right on top of the screen of a good, big HDTV showing a high-def rendition of an older movie, so you can see the particulate matter of the film's grain instead of maintaining the illusion of continuity. "Edge enhancement" is another visual analog. But the sound of early, cheap solid-state amps pretty much is the best description. I recall hearing the Stax Signature earspeakers first through its solid state amp, then through a tube/J-Fet hybrid amp and it was no contest. The solid state amp was good but the Earspeaker is just too revealing. And the combination of fine detail and lack of grain is a big part of what makes the combination of electrostatic headphones and tubes amplifiers so great.

 

Grainy to me is hearing the whole but slighty fragmented rather than as a single piece presented whole. Well I know what I mean

 

This is the way I think of it.

 

So far, in just a very few responses on just one thread, we've discovered that "grainy" as applied to sound means very different things to different people.

This is a problem.

 

Like a bad FM reception. That's grainy sound to me.

 

I've always thought of grainy as "not smooth", or harsh in the upper mids and lower treble in particular.

 

Grainy to me has always been analogous to a "rough haze" that obfuscates the smoothness of the sound - like looking at a painting through translucent sandpaper.

Whatcha think?

 

Grainy to me is like a cassette without Dolby. Back when I used to evaluate studio recordings, one of my clients used to always bring cassettes over. That made it very hard to hear what I needed to hear as the grainy texture often obscured fine details I was looking for.

I don't consider it the same as hiss, which can be very smooth and non grainy.

Electronics can seem grainy as well, when there is a haze or perceived texture present which also tends to obscure fine detail. As Steve mentioned upthread, this can be hard to recognize until you hear alternative electronics which do not have as much grain.

 

I think I agree with you. Another single word descriptor I would use to describe this "grainy sound" is unfocused.

 

Grainy refers to the film term. Grainy, as in "not crystal clear or in focus." It's a term that applies very well to sound. Not sure why there's confusion.

 

That's exactly what I've found over the years. Some average parts make the overall sound grainy, rather than being precise, clean, and open sounding. And I've found that just about any part can do such.

One way I describe grainy sound is like the compromised sound of the last song on a 20+ minute record side. Compare that sound to the first song of same side.

 

That is so true. We don't know what we haven't heard. That "first" nice stereo we've each heard sounded perfect, because we had narrow reference points. Things like grainy sound become noticeable when we hear a improvement in systems, or parts, or records/CDs, that are less grainy. When we go back, we hear the grain and wonder how the heck we used listened to that.

 

Here's why there's confusion. The word "grainy" has other associations besides film. For instance, the surface of a piece of sandpaper is literally made up of grains of sand (or sand-substitute). So "grainy" in the world of sound can call to mind this association of sandpapery edginess, the sound sandpaper actually makes when it's being used. I'm not arguing that the "edgy" definition is right and the "unfocussed" definition is wrong; I'm explaining why there's no unanamity of interpretation, which gets at one of the central problems involved when we think we know what an audio writer means and it turns out we don't.

 

Some "G" words from the Stereophile "sounds like" glossary of terms that seem somewhat related.

grainy - A moderate texturing of reproduced sound. The sonic equivalent of grain in a photograph. Coarser than dry but finer than gritty.

gritty - A harsh, coarse-grained texturing of reproduced sound. The continuum of energy seems to be composed of discrete, sharp-edged particles.

grunge - Sonic dirt, crud, roughness. Muffled grittiness.