Steve williams
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Agreed
I'm interested as well in Morricab's challenge that our "golden eared expert" doesn't have a clue how to fix the problem
How does one get "trained" ears?
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Agreed
I'm interested as well in Morricab's challenge that our "golden eared expert" doesn't have a clue how to fix the problem
It sure doesn't sometimes.
An hour or two ago, I was in the area so I stopped by Audio Advice here in Charlotte to hear their latest and greatest. I asked to listen to their top tier system and he brought me to their main 2 channel listening room. As he was educating me about the speakers, I noticed an anomaly or unwanted artifact emanating from the left speaker. He didn't hear it and he said that the system had been set up for a week with nobody pointing out or recognizing any issue with the rig. I turned it up and pointed it out to him, describing in detail what I had heard. It was at this point that he heard it.
Sometimes the education can go both ways.
Tom
Hi morricab,
Gladwell’s heuristic may have been based on “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance” by Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer (1993). As far as I’m aware it was the first time anyone studied the influence of deliberate practice and asked musicians with different levels of accomplishment to estimate the amount of deliberate practice they engaged in per week for each year of their careers. The number for violinists aged twenty years of age fell into rough estimates of 4,600 hours for the least accomplished group, 7,800 for “good” violinists and 10,000 hours for those considered the “best’. So although that number does exist in research (and corroborates with the experience of your ex-girlfriend), Gladwell applied very broad generalisations across populations and domains in which the heuristic ceases to be accurate.
Johansson’s research (possibly referencing that done by Macnamara, Hambrick and Oswald) attempts to uncover domain specific predictors for success, not only in domains for steady-state disciplines where the 10,000 hour heuristic is more true (classical music, chess, tennis, et al), but for those of greater volatility - entrepreneurship, the stock market, pop/rock music, etc where it is less true. Clearly success in those domains is inherently less predictable, because the relationship between talent/practice and complexity/randomness/chance is much more asymmetrical. Gladwell’s oversight is to miss the volatility of popular culture for creating trends in which talent and hard-work play a lesser role in predicating success versus who your agent is and how well your social media team manage your Instagram. Again, I’m not arguing the Beatles didn’t have 10,000 hours of gigs and band practice under their belts, and that they weren’t talented songwriters (they were), it’s that he fails to identify the asymmetries in the domain in which they succeeded, where good looks and a great management team - of which they had both - are part of the variables needing consideration.
Johansson doesn’t discuss science specifically - perhaps that’s not surprising given how incredibly disparate different disciplines can be under the same umbrella. His ultimate point is to know what the predictors for success are relative to the specific domain in which one wishes to be successful, and leverage those asymmetries (however great or small) in ones favour. For a violinist who wishes to become first chair, it’s relatively clear - a high level of innate talent, a lot of practice, and a little bit of luck (the right conservatories, repertoire, teacher, prizes, etc). To become the next Justin Bieber though, well, let’s just say it’s likely things other than innate talent and practice will play a much greater role.
As to how talent/practice impact the audiophile’s sensibilities when dealing with changes on both the micro and macro level, it’s clear that domain specific training has little to no impact on determining “success” (there is certainly no robust research on what “success” may even mean), despite Amir’s insistence to the contrary.
Why? Because the domain of those who listen to recorded music via the playback mechanism are engaged in a combination of detection, analysis and enjoyment (all of which have their basis in neurobiology) in which the domain itself is less predictable and more volatile. That is, it’s not a domain in which discrete skills (i.e., detection of anomalies of a sound card discerning the original file from a one-pass file under ABX conditions) by themselves are anywhere near adequate to encompass the brain’s response to a perceptual phenomena of a complex waveform continually modulating in pitch and amplitude over time - “music” - via a chain of interdependence in which the result is non-linear and asymmetrical.
It seems to me that music reproduction and its analysis/appreciation is best approached from a multi-disciplinary point of view more in keeping with the the level of volatility and asymmetry.
P.S. It's also widely known da Vinci had many apprentices work for him during his lifetime (the "Leonardeschi"), many of whom significantly contributed to his major works.
I think quit a few bosses /managers would love " trained ears" lol .
How do you get trained ears?
I guess listen a lot , exercise pays off usually .
How do you get trained ears?
I guess listen a lot , exercise pays off usually .
You are jumping to conclusions that the difference is distortion. Not saying it is or isn't as I don't want to spoil the purpose of the exercise. The files are there which you can download and examine if you like.
Not in this thread. The topic here is value of training. A lot of folks are claiming they have better ears than me based on how much they have played around with equipment, how much they have spent on it, and how much they love music. So here we have a test that uses one's ear and only the ear to tell the differences. I have shown that a) I have passed the test and b) nothing about a test being "blind" was a barrier to doing so.
This shows the value of training because I can tell you that without that I would not have been able to pass the test. This is especially true of the second iteration which uses higher fidelity ADC/DAC loop.
The analysis of what is going on is for a different thread and topic. Here we are just interested in subjectivity: can you hear or can't you hear the difference when something goes through that ADC/DAC loop once, five and 10 times? Let's agree that these differences are hugely higher than any USB cable, power cable, stuff under your gear, etc. So if futzing with equipment gets you in a better place than me, then go ahead and take the test.
Sure, analysis then follows. I always say to arrive at audio truth, you need to triangulate listening tests, with measurements and science/engineering of how it all works. But again in this thread, are not trying to diagnose what happens when you re-digitize audio. The aim for presenting these set of blind tests is to see when you use your ears -- and just your ears -- whether you have better acuity than someone who trains for it (i.e. me). If you can't or are unwilling to take the test, then you just have an empty claim of hearing acuity in dire need of verification. I don't have that problem since I have provided the proof point.
Anyone with eyes can see the emperor is naked, the test is who has chutzpa to point it out.
So you post all of this before the ink was dry on OP's post without any idea of what it means personally to either be trained or be a "golden ear?"
How do you know any of this to be true if you have not experienced it yourself? If it is stuff you assume or read about, how about being clear about it in your post? Every word of that reads like you are one and are describing your own journey.
Anyway, if you have no personal experience with this topic, then that is that.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
The obvious for me in this thread is the fact that our resident expert might have golden ears but the reality is none of us really care. As for fixing the problem he has no answer but stated that it is not within the context of this thread when we all know that he always finds a way to take a thread off topic if it is to his benefit.
His classic words were "you have to turn the music off in your head".
I've said before that whilst music lovers are listeners it seems to me that the one with the trained golden ears doesn't have a clue about music because all he hears is sounds. When asked how to correct the problem he goes silent because it is off topic.
His classic words were "you have to turn the music off in your head".
I've said before that whilst music lovers are listeners it seems to me that the one with the trained golden ears doesn't have a clue about music because all he hears is sounds. When asked how to correct the problem he goes silent because it is off topic.
Help me understand this riddle for me, will you?
I routinely read that someone changes something in their audio equipment that their wife or girlfriend walked by and out of the blue they noticed the change and commented on it. With respect to her, the test is blind (or so it seems). How is it that she has that ability but the audiophile himself doesn't? Why can't I change something while you are out of the room and see if you can tell when you come back? You think you can pass that test with your power conditioner for example?
Hi Amir,
In post #169 (to which you did not respond - which is, of course your prerogative) I said this:
853guy said:
Perhaps some reflection on your part could be useful in order to maintain a semblance of civility and sociable discourse going forward. For whatever that may be worth.
853guy
So I'm reading the title of this thread and am thinking back to my trip to Kenya and Tanzania almost 30 years ago and I've decided <<<THIS>>> is what is meant by *training* one's ear. Any WBF members have *trained ears*?
Does the OP mean something else? Well then. Can someone tell me what is the definition of a "trained ear"? What if there is more than one definition? Even if there isn't, who gets to decide if one does have a *trained ear*? *Trained* for what purpose? In contrast to the above photo, where I think we all agree that individual has trained ears, how do the rest of us know if one has such ears?
Does the OP mean something else? Well then. Can someone tell me what is the definition of a "trained ear"? What if there is more than one definition? Even if there isn't, who gets to decide if one does have a *trained ear*? *Trained* for what purpose? In contrast to the above photo, where I think we all agree that individual has trained ears, how do the rest of us know if one has such ears?
No, I was there sitting a couple of rows behind you in history class. I was a very cool cat and all the girls wanted to be with me so don't ask me any history questions. Here is a picture of me from that era:
What was the case for you?
First, I asked you to take a second, more difficult test. If you take that and pass it too, then we start to form a picture regarding your ability. But even in this one test, many people have tried to pass it -- regardless of their audiophile credentials -- and failed. So passing it in identical form of same set of files, has meaning. And I described those:
1. The test used content that was unattractive. Yet it was revealing of differences to both you and I. It proves all this about music have to move you to diagnose fidelity problems as being nonsense.
2. That because so many people have failed it, it is a recognition of someone having above average acuity.
In this thread has every bit of value because so many are challenging whether training does one any good. I am here to tell you without shadow of doubt that I would not be able to pass this test by merely being an audiophile. Countless others who have failed it attest to it.
Remember I come from many years of looking for people with critical listening test ability to hire for our signal processing team. Passing such tests was critical and industry standard method of knowing someone really can hear versus thinking they do.
Just a general note: I am not very active on this forum. It is not a priority for me to jump and answer everything. If you need quick interactions then ask me on ASR Forum.
Regardless, please don't read anything into me not answering something. It could just be lack of interest, time, etc.
Cool. I am a biochemist and work in biotech. I also use mass spectrometry for most of my analyses, on peptides (fragments of proteins, in my case antibodies). This review article of mine may be of interest to you (has nothing to do with my daily work):
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html
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