Looking for sound evaluation parameters

Question

I have a collection of live recordings of very varying sound quality.

I have graded them in a first pass (along with tagging them) but I'm afraid that evaluation was rather inconsistent.

The grades went from A++ to C but I felt during the process that I should find a more objective and more detailed evaluation system.

So I have started writing a second tool to do just that. It shall play randon portions from each show and I would fill in/check a number of parameters.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like at the moment:

The buttons are actually radiobuttons which will display a color corresponding to the weight (+3 to -3) of the parameter. (The last row buttons are checkboxes, though, to allow checking more than one type of audience 'noise'.) I then will store both the details and a summary grade.

My question is:

What suggestions come to your mind? 
What is missing? 
What better terms should I use? 
Is there something like this out there already?

Mark · Answer

I would approach this looking at objective criteria such as:

Mix Balance - are the elements of the performance correctly balanced? For instance do the vocals sit in the right place in the mix along with the rest of the instrumentation?
Spectral Balance - is the mix a full-range mix or are there elements of the spectrum that are attenuated?
Technical Quality

does the recording suffer from artefacts such as encoding noise, preamp noise, disc/stylus malformation etc?, print-through (tape), etc.
is the phase relationship between the channels correct?
what is the stereo spread like? Too wide, ok, or mono?

Looking for sound evaluation parameters

One Answer

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question