Quantifying What You Hear...

[RicB]

Very tough prospect you outline. Musical decriptives are so very 
individual and subject to personal tastes as well as personal language 
usage patterns that even the most vague of terms are more often then not 
far from universal enough to be of any real worth in the kind of 
translations you evidently are after.

There are some terms that go down sort of a half way road between what 
is quantifiable and what is simply purely subjective description.  
"Brightness" for example is a term that you could to some degree 
quantify in soundboard response isolated from all other issues.  Yet 
something like "Harshness" is far more difficult as it implies a value 
judgement.

You will be forced to hold yourself to as neutrally loaded words as you 
can find that are at the same time descriptive in some musical sense.  
And there are not all that many.  And you will be force to somehow 
isolate these from other issues that can impact the end sound of the 
finished whole instrument.

Touchy groundwork to walk on at best me thinks... tho I do follow your 
reasoning and desire to make some kind of connection between the 
quantifiable and musicality.

Cheers
RicB