Sound Quality Terminology???

[Jahvy]

Lately I've been watching a lot of reviews on headphones and they all talk about the sound quality. The issue is that I don't understand what they mean by "Highs, mids, and lows". What do these things mean and how do they impact the listeners' experience with that particular product? 

[Theo]

i believe they refer to the frequency, lows=bass high=treble and mids=vocals and instruments and such ( I dont have time to check it to make it 100% sure  but yeah im sure someone will add to this )

[josh_05]

Here you go  ;) http://www.head-fi.org/a/describing-sound-a-glossary

[josh_05]

The way they impact the listeners experience is you have to pick the traits you like E.G. big soundsatge, analytical, warm, bright etc. Not even 10s of thousands of dollars will buy you absolute perfection in the audio world, you always have to sacrifice something.

[bchampion96]

Theo is correct. 'Highs' are the high frequency sounds in audio 'mids' are the middle frequencies and 'lows' are the bass frequencies. Often referred to as bass mids and treble. Things you might also want to know about are cybilance, distortion and people will often refer to sound being crisp or muddy. Cybilance is the distortion of only certain pitches of sounds. You may have experienced this before without knowing. It often occurs on some songs (it's often a recording error, not due to headphones) when a singer says a word with an s in it and the s is at a much higher volume than the rest and almost hurts your ears if you're at high volumes. Pretty difficult to explain, but there it is. Distortion is where the sound will (frequently at higher volumes) deviate from the actual sound of a song due to imperfections in the drivers of the headphones. That means that the sound will lose detail and it will be difficult to hear subtle nuances in the music. Lastly, crisp vs. muddy sound. Muddy sound is often when bass is oversaturated and the sound will be bass heavy and literally sound like you're listening through mud or thick curtains or something. Crisp sound is the opposite.

Hope I've helped! :)

*edit*

As josh said while i was typing and an good thing to add: soundstage. A good soundstage in headphones is where there is good instrument separation and the instruments are easy to listen to on their own and don't meld into one another. Warm sound is mids heavy and bright sound is treble heavy