How does one get "trained" ears?

[Bobvin]

OK, frequently commented on is golden ears, or trained ears. But I've never seen notice of any class on how one might develop 'trained' ears. I know there is a thread of what music to use for evaluating components, speakers, etc... perhaps a reviewer or two (or more) can describe not only what music, but what specifically about a recording they use as a benchmark. For example "the cello on recording x comes in just after the horns in the first movement, and was located just left of center during recording... there is a 'something specific' that sounds like X when that cello comes in—which some speakers/amps/cartridges reproduce as X and others as Y. Listen carefully for that and you will find there is nuance that is actually identifiable on different components."

Educate me...

 

[treitz3]

Hi Bobvin. There is no course or education class that I know of. This comes from many, many years of listening to and evaluating many different systems configured in many different ways. After a while, you know what the subtle differences are between SET, SS tube, power changes, IC's SC's, different types of speaker types and what they can and can not do. On all of these systems and system types, one usually carries a handful of specific albums or test songs that they become intimately familiar with so over time, they are able to detect subtle nuances, texture, roll off, shimmer, brightness and all of the the other ways to explain the differences of what a reproductive system can offer....or what they are deficient at.

Many times, this "trained ear" will observe live, acoustic performances, orchestras, solos, choruses as well as concerts from differing genres of music. Taking these experiences and comparing them to what these various reproductive efforts can offer. Over time and with given experience, one develops a trained ear and a select few develop their skills so weel that they are commonly referred too as a "golden ear". Whether or not a golden ear is something that one wants to achieve is up to the beholder. Sometimes getting what you wish for is not all it's cracked up to be because often times they can listen more to the gear and reproductive effort and not the connection and pure enjoyment of the music itself. Of course, they are always exceptions to this.

I hope this helps you in understanding your query.

Tom

 

[amirm]

Training is domain specific. Hearing compression artifacts is different than hearing speaker frequency response irregularities although once you get trained for one field, you tend to develop much higher acuity than average population/audiophiles.

As a general rule though, I have not run into any trained listeners among audio reviewing population. As such their performance in hearing deviations/distortions can easily be beat by trained listeners.

The reason the above is true is because training involves controlled listening tests where only one variable is modified and in differing amount. Listen enough to these scenarios and you develop heightened sensitivity to them. Random listening to gear even if it is thousand different ones does not provide you this training. So mere fact of being a reviewer and having access to a lot of gear will not develop one into a trained listener.

 

[amirm]

Hi Bobvin. There is no course or education class that I know of.

Of course there is and some have been posted to this very forum by its author!

This comes from many, many years of listening to and evaluating many different systems configured in many different ways.

As I explained this is just not true. You may assume gear A is better sounding than gear B and attribute some cause to that effect. But unless that assumption can be independently verified, you have 50-50 chance of drawing the wrong inference. Do this a dozen times and the odds of anything you conclude being correct may very well be zero.

All of this has been formally studied and results posted to this forum numerous times. Audiophiles are NOT trained listeners any more than someone watching football is a football player.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Trail and error gearwise that is .

Amir while im perfectly happy measuring , i dont listen to measurements, kinda boring

 

[Rodney Gold]

I wouldnt worry a jot about training , hifi is preference and emotion based.. if something floats YOUR boat..its good.. as treitz3 said ..rather concentrate on a whole than the sum of its parts.... deconstruction can be destructive

 

[RogerD]

Experimentation....the best way is to learn to dissect the negative qualities of sound reproduction. Probably the easiest is boomy bass,then tinny or harsh highs,and a sibilant laden midrange. After that it get's a little harder,congestion,lack of dynamics,clarity,speed and so forth. In this regard it takes knowledge and a understanding of why sound reproduction can have these qualities. Listen to a varied selection of music.....

 

[Steve williams]

I agree Tom and andromeda. IMO there is a difference between listening and hearing and I would also venture to say that most everyone here use their ears as the final arbiter rather than measurements

 

[Bobvin]

I will say that most of the time I listen to music, not gear. And yes, my experience has convinced me I can hear some differences contributed by cables, I can tell when a system is too warm for me, or too 'sterile', or when there is a change in the noise floor. But as for having memory of what I hear, maybe that died, if I ever had it, with my youthful substance 'exploration'.

But when I am auditioning a component, I do try to listen analytically... and am willing to learn better how to do that. Just like when my professor at university, long back, said I needed to learn to think analytically to be an effective engineer. In that case analytically meant mathematically.

So yes, if Amir or someone had some example recordings detailing differnt levels of, say, artifacts I'd love to hear them and compare. As a geek, that kind of 'training' would be something I'm curious to learn about, as well as where in a typical recording one might detect various qualities.

'Speed' for example, is often mentioned - but what is that? Is there agreed upon definitions? (Etc.)

 

[Folsom]

Trail and error gearwise that is .

That are when you change parts of gear, or better yet develop some thing. When you do that you really start to sniff out differences between things, and why they're different.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Yes i do always try to change one thing at the time and give at least a 3 month trial before verdict , it also helps if you find a reviewer that floats your boat , Marc Mickelson for example , M fremer

That are when you change parts of gear, or better yet develop some thing. When you do that you really start to sniff out differences between things, and why they're different.

 

[LL21]

I would add, fwiw, that the question also must be asked...what kind of training are we looking for in 'golden ears'?

Training someone to hear one artifact in a complex series of sounds is certainly very helpful...but its not everything. That person does not necessarily then have the ability to equate that artifact with whether the system more closely approaches the tonal qualities of a violin or not.

Put another way, having someone visually trained to spot one artifact in a series of images...does not make that person able to determine which Renoir is the fake and which is the real one. It certainly helps this person quite a long ways towards learning how to spot a fake...but he must ALSO first learn about Renoir's work to do so.

Put another way, a person with 20-15 vision does not necessarily make them a better person to make judgments about how well made an Oriental carpet is, even if they can see the details. Meanwhile, a person with 40 years experience and so-so eyesight can take one look (squinting) and make an excellent call on the quality and make of the carpet...because he know WHAT TO LOOK FOR.

So too in audio i think.

 

[DaveC]

IMO, trained ears come from relative comparisons as we have no ultimate reference to compare with.

With an audio system there are so many facets to learn and so many details in each area... it keeps things interesting because there is always more to do, more to learn.

A simple example is cables, you can experiment with different wire and eventually get a handle on the effects of metallurgy, dielectric and geometry... experiment with connectors and figure out the effects of the base material and plating. After a while it's not hard to predict how a cable will sound... and I can make a cable sound however you want it to on the first try at this point. Other parts of the system are more complicated but the same applies. Build amps and you'll start to get a handle on the sound of different resistors and caps, the effects of different power supplies, drivers, etc... Build speakers and you'll get a handle on different membrane materials and motors, xo components and topology, cab materials, etc...

I think there is a lot that can be learned without building things as well, it's just harder to separate variables and a larger chance a difference might be attributed to the wrong thing, but IMO listening to different systems is extremely valuable both for consumers and designers so they know what's possible in a more general sense. The speaker I'm designing is a result of this, hearing tons of different systems and figuring out what's most valuable to me. That determines the overall concept. Then, relative trials and experiments on all the more specific variables determines parts used and construction techniques in order to best achieve the goals of the overall concept.

 

[treitz3]

Of course there is and some have been posted to this very forum by its author!

Are you talking about my first post? That wasn't an education, just my shared observations of various "types" of listeners I have met over the years.

We will have to agree to disagree on the second part of your post.

Tom

 

[Bobvin]

...

Put another way, a person with 20-15 vision does not necessarily make them a better person to make judgments about how well made an Oriental carpet is, even if they can see the details. Meanwhile, a person with 40 years experience and so-so eyesight can take one look (squinting) and make an excellent call on the quality and make of the carpet...because he know WHAT TO LOOK FOR.

So too in audio i think.

Which goes precisely to my original question... what does onr look (listen) for, and how do you know when you find it?

 

[Audiophile Bill]

I would add, fwiw, that the question also must be asked...what kind of training are we looking for in 'golden ears'?

Training someone to hear one artifact in a complex series of sounds is certainly very helpful...but its not everything. That person does not necessarily then have the ability to equate that artifact with whether the system more closely approaches the tonal qualities of a violin or not.

Put another way, having someone visually trained to spot one artifact in a series of images...does not make that person able to determine which Renoir is the fake and which is the real one. It certainly helps this person quite a long ways towards learning how to spot a fake...but he must ALSO first learn about Renoir's work to do so.

Put another way, a person with 20-15 vision does not necessarily make them a better person to make judgments about how well made an Oriental carpet is, even if they can see the details. Meanwhile, a person with 40 years experience and so-so eyesight can take one look (squinting) and make an excellent call on the quality and make of the carpet...because he know WHAT TO LOOK FOR.

So too in audio i think.

Excellent post! I concur.

 

[andromedaaudio]

For me simple , when i go wow thats sounds good , then i try to figure out which attributes to what, in the configuration

Which goes precisely to my original question... what does look for, and how do you know when you find it?

 

[LL21]

Which goes precisely to my original question... what does look for, and how do you know when you find it?

Hi Bobvin,

I can only describe what I look for in another audiophile, and what I seek to attain for myself.

FIRST: I DO try to see if in blind tests i can isolate effects coming from equipment. And when i mean blind...i mean in some cases i dont even know if ANY change has been made because its not even a test. I just happen to walk into the room i know, sit down and listen. There have been a few good occasions when i could calibrate myself. Dealers had done things without even remembering, and therefore NO ONE knew there was something different.

Its kind of an 'acuity test' that focuses on things audiophile's care about: tonal qualities, instrument decay, separation, etc.

SECOND: Does it sound 'super hifi' or 'super real'? That's much tougher, and it all comes down to whether you trust the original source to have been faithful to 'real' instruments. In this case, I can only say that I fall back to my own times when i studied piano for 12 years and all those years at the keyboard to listen to the weight of the keyboard, the sound of the strike of the keys...which is VERY different as you go up and down the register.

And when i listen to people's comments about audio, i try to gauge whether they are making comments that i equally can hear as relates to 'live instruments'...again trusting that the various 'reference albums' are considered to be well recorded/mastered and transferred so as to be 'truthful' to the original event.

I have listened with professional musicians from London, and what they listen to is often VERY different to what audiophiles listen to...often, they are listening to the musician, not the system. But on the occasion when i can get them to break away from the music and listen to the qualities of the system as relates to live instruments, i have learned a lot by listening to what they say about the depth of instrument notes, how violin bodies resonate, the blat of horns, etc.

In complex systems with rooms, equipment, impedance, sources of unknown quality...it is an alchemy of art and science in my opinion that is best learned from audiophiles whom you respect...and when you hear something you love that they also love (and can critique)...then you not only can learn from them...but you are also doing so in a way that you can calibrate that WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ultimately will suit your personal tastes.

And like anything in life (including the piano!), practice makes perfect. The good thing is...if we're audiophiles, then practicing is fun!

 

[FrantzM]

Hi
Many audiophiles have, for the most part, been "trained" to hear things. Not formally for most but trained nonetheless. People come to appreciate the fidelity of gears or their suitability to their needs by an educational process. Training by another name. One can debate the objectivity and accuracy of the methods or results from these but it exists and those with the better systems go through such a process. We go around, listen to gears and live music, form opinions, change opinions and choose our gears based on that ... education aka training.
The evolution perhaps the changing directions of many systems here is proof that there is training associated with the process of even enjoying our gears. We do learn, we learn to listen better and sometimes true progress in term of getting closer to the goal of High Fidelity may come from this. I have come to pay attention through constant listening through headphones to the lack of fidelity of many speakers and also to recognize that for many years opinions that I held strongly where based on prejudices (my previous views on Horn speakers ... JBL speakers in particular)

One can learn to hear better. I have tried the Harman Listening test FREE software and it has helped me be aware of some artifacts present in some reproducing gears. Same artifacts may be pleasant to other individual... but at least once they are recognize a such then ... Often the pursuit of an hobby is in itself a training. Many people in Cars ultimately go to a special driving school to learn to drive in a way to truly extract, thus enjoy, more from their cars... Buying a Ferrari or an AMG doesn't help you in really being able to appreciate what it can do and what it is all about. OTOH learning to drive these cars appropriately results in more enjoyment and above all safety both for you and others. I have been driving for most of my Life but recently took a training for off-road vehicle... I am now enjoying my G-Wagon in ways that I never thought possible while being a better driver.. by the way a Life and death issue. The same can result from learning to hear better in a formal fashion. Visiting audiophiles friend with great systems is a good way but the best I know of is the Harman Free software. No! This software will not make of you an Harman Fanboy. It will help you understand a few things about what to demand from an audio system and perhaps how to reach it. Can get it HERE

 

[RogerD]

Which goes precisely to my original question... what does look for, and how do you know when you find it?

In my experience most good attributes are bundled together. I use clarity and congestion,and that's why a say listen to a varied amount of different music. A orchestra will have different levels of clarity than a jazz trio and a single vocalist may have no congestion,while a orchestra will have some.A chorale will have both. Also the're are different degrees of these markers,that's why many people who change equipment or cables often remark "I've never heard such detail before" or other comments related to their systems. I would say there are many threads on the subject and many variables,but I think most are tied to just a couple of concepts or solutions. Research and read.