In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf
wrote:
Both these terms are colloquialisms in every day use in the studio
environment. Every producer, engineer, student and trainee
understands their meaning, and the difference between them.

That doesn't particularly surprise me. Quite easy for an in-group to
adopt a jargon that make no sense to anyone else. Ambiguities like
these are common enough. e.g. the use of "compression" or "bandwidth"
to mean quite different things which those "in group" would
distinguish from context. But I'm not clear why you'd expect anyone
else to understand your (hidden) meaning when you simply wrote

The world of broadcasting is rather larger than Iain's one and I've
never heard such nonsense as 'reverb the delay'. We would use pre and
post delay to describe such a thing. Normal terms adapted to suit a
variety of applications.

My difficulty is that "jargon " is often only used by small in-groups who
may not be even aware of how self-selected they are. Hence ambiguities and
lack of clarity may not be realised by those 'in group'; if they just learn
the words and phases as labels for what they do without thinking of the
actual underlaying processes. Bit like Feynman's comments about knowing
what a bird is called and being able to recognise it's call actually
telling you nothing much about the bird itself! :-)

Not my wish to criticise Iain for this though. It is common enough in other
areas in my own experience. My concern is the way it fogs communication and
thought. Now combined with the feeling that Iain's lack of dealing with the
questions I put may be a sign that he hasn't understood my actual points
about the *wording* he used and how anyone "not in the know" is supposed
to understand it. Indeed, I now have to increasing feeling that he is
so used to the phrase that he can't see the ambiguity.

In academic areas it is certainly common enough for some people to
use obscure language and assume it means they understand something
that others don't (or can't). Jargon can be very useful as shorthand
*when* those involved have established they all have the same meanings
in mind. But it then often leads to problems when others encounter
the field and are treated as inferior and/or mislead because in the
absence of a clear and unambigous explanation simply it doesn't make
sense.

Slainte,

Jim

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