Seeing sound

Following the line of "added sparkle" from yesterday's post, I think the below note from one of my readers, Blake, is insightful. Blake writes:

"Could it be most reviewers and enthusiasts have synesthesia, and they are “seeing” with their ears? So much of the terminology is a cacophony of “visual” words, like an Ives precursor to modern “noise” compositions, no wonder it gets confusing. No doubt because so many people’s dominant sense is sight. Even though smell seems a more forceful sense, with the ability to transport people back to their childhoods with a cream and citrus whiff of a Dreamsicle, or petrichor that whisks me back to my 4 year old self and an early evening rain in Lincoln, Nebraska, where bulldozers had scraped the ground bare for the house being built next door. Maybe the path forward to more aural accuracy in the hifi world would be to wean ourselves from all the sight-suggestive words and develop our audio vocabularies. Tone, timbre, booming and shrill. Bone-rattling and gut-punching bass. You get the drift. Sorry for the length. It’s been on my mind for some time after hearing so many YouTube reviewers struggle with this very thing. And the craziness of trying to write about sound! Using a visual medium to convey an understanding about an invisible thing? Oof."

Not to bring in yet another sensory example but I think Blake's offered us some food for thought.