Do we as audiophiles hear things "differently" from other listeners?
- Thread starter spiritofmusic
- Start date
No head phones, but I do have a hand drill and for larger holes I use a brace and bit. I am not a carpenter, I simply have my father's old tools to maintain my home. Like my father I only buy a tool when needed around the house.
With today's C&C machines I wonder why more loudspeakers do not have dovetailed joints, if not for strength then looks.
I suppose because they are either veneer over MDF or some kind of high tech cabinet, not many use solid wood.
Daedalus and Oswald Mills comes to mind.
Saw these at the NYC audio show...solid walnut.
Two very good starting points to the discussion:
I think we like to give a bit more credit to our own special physical abilities than is warranted. Most certainly some have better hearing acuity and awareness of tone, just as some have significant deficiencies in this regard.
I liken the act of critical listening to that of anyone who becomes skilled and practiced in any hobby or sport. I've long worked from the perspective that the same sound hits all of our ears. The differences like in how we process and focus on that sound. Like any skill, it improves with experience, familiarity, and exercising the muscle; be that a physical muscle or mental processing power. There are endless products for very specific specialty sports, activities, and of course culinary/beverage interests. Some are predisposed to refine certain skills more quickly, but most all can hugely improve their skill in any such area with practice and experience. Some are more skilled users and less analytical, and certainly vice-versa.
Outside of hi-fi and sound reproduction, my other obsessive interest/sport/hobby is alpine skiing. It helps that I've been on skis since the age of 5, and have skied 35 of my 36 years since then. Having taken many weeks of lessons at Colorado resorts growing up and then getting lucky enough to ski with some who let me well past my previous comfort zone, I'm now a rather technical skier who can adapt to most any snow condition... if only I made enough time to keep in the physical condition to fully take advantage.The point here is that being as analytical and engineering minded as I am, I will immediately notice differences in gear, down to a lazy edge tuning. While many intermediates might try two different model skis and comment how one is "easier to turn" and another is "super fast," I'm thinking about separate details of how quick a ski is edge to edge, how is the turn initiation in different snow conditions, what shape turn the ski prefers and can be made to carve, and how stable a ski is in different snow and what parts of the ski are contributing to that feel. If for some reason I decided to bail on the audio world, I might go into designing skis.
I'm sure many of you have other interests and pursuits which you have similar acuity to gear and details. A great golfer will feel subtle differences in golf balls and club designs that I would only notice more generally, just as I'm sure avid tennis players would be very sensitive to every detail of a tennis racket, or a great chef of knife qualities. The point is that while we have interests and dispositions, these are sensitivities that are learned, practiced, and refined. I fondly remember a handful of experiences in local audio stores and playing with friend's systems in college and after where certain qualities of a sound system were initially pointed out and demonstrated in a way it finally clicked, just like the first time I got on a pair of skis with modern sidecut/shape allowing both edges to sweep through high speed turns like rails on a roller coaster.
Great essay, Mark! Thank you!
Sure, as people get older, the upper extremes of our hearing degrades. But not all aspects of our hearing degrades.
For example, things that occur in the time domain does not degrade.
I personally don't care that the term audiophile has taken on the connotation of 'equipment junkie' by the general public. I proudly use that label to describe the audio enjoying part of my personality. If it leads to further discussion, I will explain that the better my system gets, the deeper my joy for the music become.
As to the the question in the OP, I believe we do hear differently, but not because of something inherent in our nature, but because years of listening and comparing equipement. We've trained ourselves.
People listen differently.
EVERYBODY hears things differently.
There are age concerns, trauma from high volume, and anatomic variations in the inner ear, diameter and length of the ear canal and even the shape of the earlobe affects the way sound is heard.
EVERYBODY hears things differently.
There are age concerns, trauma from high volume, and anatomic variations in the inner ear, diameter and length of the ear canal and even the shape of the earlobe affects the way sound is heard.
We all make love differently, with our own unique touch and sensitivity. Loverphiles develop the art of sensual sensibility by listening to massaging music.
I'm sure back in the day (in my case that means the 70s when lp sales exceeded revenues from cinema and sport added together), a greater majority of people had a half decent sound system at home, families would listen to music in a revolutionary way, you know like ALL TOGETHER, PLAYING AN LP FROM START TO FINISH, and I'm sure sound quality was discussed.
Now, w iPod and in-car MP3 as the preferred means of listening, sound quality is as far from the minds of the masses as ever.
Me? More critical than ever as I get more time in my 50s to listen in my revealing new space, and I'll keep flying the flag for our hobby and my own intense personal happiness.
I still love getting people who wouldn't have a clue on SQ of recorded music to just sit down for ten mins in front of my system and start babbling like a proto audiofool LOL.
Now, w iPod and in-car MP3 as the preferred means of listening, sound quality is as far from the minds of the masses as ever.
Me? More critical than ever as I get more time in my 50s to listen in my revealing new space, and I'll keep flying the flag for our hobby and my own intense personal happiness.
I still love getting people who wouldn't have a clue on SQ of recorded music to just sit down for ten mins in front of my system and start babbling like a proto audiofool LOL.
Mark Seaton
WBF Technical Expert (Speaker & Acoustics)
While I whole-heartedly agree that we all *listen* differently, and even learn to listen differently over time and with experience, my concern when throwing out the blanket concept of "EVERYBODY hears things differently," is the tendency to entirely dismiss subjective differences in systems as "we all hear differently." I would agree we have differing preferences, but the relative differences we hear will almost always track from listener to listener, even if the absolute descriptions differ. A good example would be two systems where one has much less high frequency energy than the other. I'm certain we would find some listeners critiquing the system with less high frequency energy to be just right, and others saying it's too dull, recessed, or lifeless, but all would agree which system has more high frequency energy. The debate lies in which is more accurate, preferred, or less offensive, but not which one has more energy.
...The design of the drivers, the materials used, the marriage between the enclosures and their parts; the sum of it all.
By observing the good principles of acoustic laws we expand the music listening passion to a wider audience. ...Audiophiles and music lovers.
By observing the good principles of acoustic laws we expand the music listening passion to a wider audience. ...Audiophiles and music lovers.
