How does one get "trained" ears?
- Thread starter Bobvin
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I feel that most, if not all of the posts, are talking around the elephant in the room. Namely, that elephant is TALENT. Just like any human endeavor there are those who can and those who try and fail to one degree or another. Think about all the children who put in endless hours per day playing, training, dreaming of being at the top. However, only a handful actually achieve the subtle control, touch and strategic ability to be in the top 10 or even 20 in the world. Plenty of wannabes, only a few with the exquisite ability and training to actually get there.
It is the same in ALL human endearvors; science, engineering, cooking, brewing, wine making, wine tasting, art critique and, yes, hifi critique. There are those who can hear what is right and wrong with a sound, relative to the real thing to one degree or another and those who cannot...regardless of experience. Is it related to intelligence? To some degree, but also a focus and an ability to make connections that others overlook. A great chef might not be an overall genius but he just KNOWS which foods and spices go together...training helps to sharpen the inate skills but only to the limit the ability allows. Lots of practice also helps and can compensate over someone who has great inate talent for hearing and applying but doesn't use it much or doesn't care about hifi so much.
What are the implications for the audiophile community and the WBF in particular? It means that money doesn't matter, experience doesn't matter...much... and exposure to live music doesn't matter UNLESS, you can somehow connect what is hear live to what is heard from playback and find a way to bridge the two. 99% of the systems I have heard convince me that the owner of that system has no clue how to do this and it doesn't matter if he has been an audiophile 2 weeks or 30+ years. I have met people who simply get it from the get go and those who are floating around like a feather in the wind...with no compass whatsoever to guide them.
The more clever of those who are wannabes find someone who is the real deal and emulate them. Maybe they eventually come to realize what made the system of the truly gifted and now their own sound so good but usually they do not and are happy that others compliment them on the system.
So, just like the fact that most doctors (or engineers, or lawyers or scientists or whatever) are mediocre at their profession at best...and incompetent in a surprisingly large number of cases, the same is true of the audiophile in building a truly realisitc sounding system regardless of money or experience. Without the insight to understand what does what, the experience and money (exception: The money can BUY the talent) can't get there. I can train a monkey forever to write a poem and the best I will ever get is gobbeldygook on the screen.
Of course the real problem is demonstrating this convincingly to the outside world that one has talent in audio listening. Other endeavors have metrics that make it possible to do some sort of evaluation...wine tasting does not and you see a lot of variance in opinions...
Anyway, I guess the inability of most people is what keeps a lot of companies in business so it is not bad as it makes jobs.
It is the same in ALL human endearvors; science, engineering, cooking, brewing, wine making, wine tasting, art critique and, yes, hifi critique. There are those who can hear what is right and wrong with a sound, relative to the real thing to one degree or another and those who cannot...regardless of experience. Is it related to intelligence? To some degree, but also a focus and an ability to make connections that others overlook. A great chef might not be an overall genius but he just KNOWS which foods and spices go together...training helps to sharpen the inate skills but only to the limit the ability allows. Lots of practice also helps and can compensate over someone who has great inate talent for hearing and applying but doesn't use it much or doesn't care about hifi so much.
What are the implications for the audiophile community and the WBF in particular? It means that money doesn't matter, experience doesn't matter...much... and exposure to live music doesn't matter UNLESS, you can somehow connect what is hear live to what is heard from playback and find a way to bridge the two. 99% of the systems I have heard convince me that the owner of that system has no clue how to do this and it doesn't matter if he has been an audiophile 2 weeks or 30+ years. I have met people who simply get it from the get go and those who are floating around like a feather in the wind...with no compass whatsoever to guide them.
The more clever of those who are wannabes find someone who is the real deal and emulate them. Maybe they eventually come to realize what made the system of the truly gifted and now their own sound so good but usually they do not and are happy that others compliment them on the system.
So, just like the fact that most doctors (or engineers, or lawyers or scientists or whatever) are mediocre at their profession at best...and incompetent in a surprisingly large number of cases, the same is true of the audiophile in building a truly realisitc sounding system regardless of money or experience. Without the insight to understand what does what, the experience and money (exception: The money can BUY the talent) can't get there. I can train a monkey forever to write a poem and the best I will ever get is gobbeldygook on the screen.
Of course the real problem is demonstrating this convincingly to the outside world that one has talent in audio listening. Other endeavors have metrics that make it possible to do some sort of evaluation...wine tasting does not and you see a lot of variance in opinions...
Anyway, I guess the inability of most people is what keeps a lot of companies in business so it is not bad as it makes jobs.
I thought the elephant in the room you were going to mention was sensibility. The ability to keep an unbiased mind, not get emotionally invested with gear, either the one owned by oneself or that one is propagating on the forums - ego and sunk costs tend to keep people going down the blackhole. I think a lot of people hear similar things if they have similar experiences, but the decisions made differ even with the same experiences - and in many cases decisions are not made based on experiences. Of course a live concert background as well as gear experience is required, but if one stays sensible, humble, does not get emotional and ignores the marketing noise (which includes price tags), he can go a long way.
Greg,
Sean Olive never wrote such article - he wrote Do Untrained Listeners Prefer the Same Loudspeakers as Trained Listeners? It is serious work on speaker preference, based in experimental results taken with loudspeakers in well defined conditions. See: http://seanolive.blogspot.pt/2008/12/loudspeaker-preferences-of-trained.html and its references.
As far as I remember the Sean Olive Audio Musings blog has articles on loudspeakers and headphones.
IMHO you have really a pessimistic view of the world - fortunately I disagree with most of your points, including the non audio ones. I agree about the need of having talented people - fortunately they are many more than you think. And contrary to what many people can think the high-end is a team work - and as such a few talented people are enough to spread the needed talent in large communities.
I was once in an engineer's session debating what is talent and what drives talented people. It is not something that we define in a sentence with a few words - it is the kind of definition that needs a broad perspective of many fields, not just from feedback of scientists.
..what if those "trained"ears are 70 yrs old? What if they're reviewing $200K speakers and describing micro details thru those 70 yr old ears, ears that can't distinguish anything above 12Khz?
Also, many people can be trained to a certain extent that imo exceeds morricab's perspective.... but otoh I've sold audio and demo'd gear to countless customers and I'd guess the natural talent for hearing perception is probably a standard bell curve. Some people can't tell the difference between quite different speakers, others can pick out minor issues, all without any training whatsoever.
I do think that cable deniers' stance that everyone can hear equally is more than ridiculous, and so are their blanket dismissals of hearing talent and system resolution. There's no doubt there are systems where cables won't make a difference, in fact some years ago a certain manufacturer thought his incredibly poor-performing components were actually incredibly well designed and better than everyone else's because they were "immune to cables". These electronics were demo'd with speakers with poor quality, opaque crossovers as well. He'd invite people to try their cables in his system and was all smug about the fact they didn't do much, if anything. But the truth is the system performed so poorly and was so colored to begin with.
As far as engineers, I've found a sharp division between those who understand calculus and those who do not. I know, every engineer should understand it, but it's just not the case. Also, those with real life experience have a huge advantage... I got my degree after owning a welding and auto shop, which allowed me to quickly become proficient at designing assembly processes and come up with new ideas to improve existing processes. It allowed me to exceed the accomplishments of much more experienced engineers. As far as drive... boredom is probably the biggest factor. I was absolutely shocked at how little was required of me as an engineer and simply started doing more on my own to make the day pass a bit faster...
I am using a smartphone that does not make it easy to provide links. If you read you'll see he refers to multiple products. When I a am able I will post it verbatim.
You don't need any experience with live concert or much gear. Nor do those attributes you mention help you much if any at all. I am a trained listener and heaven knows I am not always sensible or humble.
To become a trained listener, you need to be trained. Training is domain specific and requires tools, technique, knowledge of what is being tested and time invested. It is like going to a trade school for a profession. It is not a zen thing that you teach yourself. And random experience with gear or going to concert is not helpful at all.
Ultimately unless you are already trained, you can't know what it is like to be one. It is not an experience we have until we have it. You wake up on the other side, hearing problems as if in slow motion and with clarity that never existed in your mind ever. This is why I also call this being a critical listener. You learn to ignore music itself and use it as just a stimulus. You need to be taught to get there.
Do trained music listeners have a better opinion than untrained music listeners. :b
Just kidding; of course trained listeners know what to listen for and also have volatile music emotions.
Just kidding; of course trained listeners know what to listen for and also have volatile music emotions.
I was very good at math and aced all of my courses. Yet I disagree with what you say as far engineers needing to know it. Vast majority of engineering work has nothing whatsoever to do with advanced math. If it did, no work would get done as everyone forgets all of their math soon after they graduate! We have an antiquated system of education that has nothing to do with reality. As an example you can design a CPU or entire computer or audio system without knowing a line of calculus. Any math you run into, if ever, you can go online and learn it then. There is no need to waste so much time in school learning advanced math. You can also use online (or local) tools to solve calculus problems.
Now, there are specialty jobs that do require it and then some but as a general rule it is not true at all.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I can see why you went there Steve. As I mentioned, unless you are a trained/critical listener, you don't have a first hand feel for what it is to be one.
But maybe an analogy closer to home may work. If you take your sport car to be repaired and the mechanic does a test drive, do you think he is focusing on finding a fault or enjoying the ride? It is the former, right? He wants to find the problem and fix it. That is the job at hand, not enjoying customer's car.
As an obgyn, when you examined women, I am confident you were able to put aside all of your emotions as a man and focus on the diagnostic task at hand.
It is this same skill and approach that you need to have in your toolbox to examine fidelity of the system. If you want to know if one cable sounds better than another, that is the task, not enjoying the music.
Indeed enjoying the music is a major distraction when you are in diagnostic mood. Professional video monitors have a switch where color is turned off. This is very frequently used to diagnose problems because color distracts and our eye is more sensitive to black and white information than color. A black and white image is far uglier but is the right tool for diagnostic. Same engineer would of course watch a movie in full color.
Just like a mechanic's ability to enjoy a car ride when he is not trying to fix it, I too can kick back and enjoy music. Sure if something is broken, part of my mind that is always analyzing will tell me that. Not to the same extent as when I am diagnosing fidelity but it is still there. That acuity cannot be forgotten as Greg mentioned earlier. That deficit is balanced by being able to arrive at far more reliable conclusions about audio than not compared to average Joe (I told you bonzo that I am not modest
). As such I would still get the skills if I had to do it over again.Hope you now see where I am coming from. If not, that is cool. I will live.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
You're the complete antithesis of a music lover. Your comments merely corroborate my comment. You don't enjoy music. As Greg said you can't get the sounds out of your head. You have no appreciation for music as we all know it. I feel sorry for you
You don't need any experience with live concert or much gear. Nor do those attributes you mention help you much if any at all. I am a trained listener and heaven knows I am not always sensible or humble.
To become a trained listener, you need to be trained. Training is domain specific and requires tools, technique, knowledge of what is being tested and time invested. It is like going to a trade school for a profession. It is not a zen thing that you teach yourself. And random experience with gear or going to concert is not helpful at all.
Ultimately unless you are already trained, you can't know what it is like to be one. It is not an experience we have until we have it. You wake up on the other side, hearing problems as if in slow motion and with clarity that never existed in your mind ever. This is why I also call this being a critical listener. You learn to ignore music itself and use it as just a stimulus. You need to be taught to get there.
I disagree. what a surprise.
i reject the idea that formalized training as a listener is preferred. i believe that experience and repetition in focused music listening are more useful methods at becoming a good listener. which then becomes a great assistance at system building and gear choosing.
i do respect that the use of certain specific methods of speaker or cartridge set-up might involve actual formalized training in that narrow area, when combined with a significant degree of experience and repetition.
experience comes in all shapes and sizes, as does repetition. we could spend all day defining optimal approaches to either and not cover it.
i can tell you that when i read about how something sounds, when attaching value to that feedback, I'm looking for the context of that writers/poster's experience at listening to music in a high end system as my guide to value. i could care less if that person had formalized training, in fact likely prefer they did not. i want something relevant to my world.
An understanding of calculus is indeed very useful. But I'd not go so far to say every engineer should understand it. Its difficult to do much in the way of analog design without at least grasping some of the basic tenets - for example that a capacitor's current depends on the rate of change of voltage, or that in a transformer the flux is the integral of the voltage over time. Digital designers probably don't need it if all they're doing is Verilog or VHDL. Ditto software engineers.
I do find myself in disagreement with Amir that calculus is 'advanced math' - calculus is school math. Advanced math for engineers would be Maxwell's equations - I've gotten by without an understanding of them.
I would suggest that the mechanic first & foremost "feels" the quality of the ride/drive & compares it to his experience & stored memory of said car's drive "feel". If there is something "sensed" here in the sound of the engine, ride, handling, responsiveness, etc he may go into "clinical" mode & focus in on details, aspects of a particular function. Usually different terrains, different types of driving are needed to get a full evaluation
It's like any diagnostic approach - nothing unusual about it - starts from the general & becomes ever more detailed as more information is gathered.
This is the same as is done when listening to audio systems - experience (& what one has learned from this) is the biggest factor in evaluating a system
If your enjoyment of the music is diminished because of a change of cable this signifies one needs to investigate further. This type of listening to the gestalt of the music is what is needed before one goes into analytic listening. This, to my mind, is the biggest mistake made in most system evaluations - people think that they need to immediately listen analytically & find the exact detail of why A sounds different to B - not so - this is the road to confusion for most people & why blind A/B testing invariably return null results.
Your focus on this aspect of listening is misdirecting the op & bandstanding your training for passing A/B blind testing for codec artifacts.
Why not give the op examples of audio files with these artifacts & point out where they are to be found & what you hear at that point in the audio file? This would be far more helpful than telling him/us about all the training that's needed
As I said, relaxed listening, listening to the whole gestalt is the first & necessary part of any audio system evaluation. Trying to bypass this by moving directly to analytic listening is the biggest mistake of many & possibly what the op is getting at by his question?Indeed enjoying the music is a major distraction when you are in diagnostic mood. Professional video monitors have a switch where color is turned off. This is very frequently used to diagnose problems because color distracts and our eye is more sensitive to black and white information than color. A black and white image is far uglier but is the right tool for diagnostic. Same engineer would of course watch a movie in full color.
Just like a mechanic's ability to enjoy a car ride when he is not trying to fix it, I too can kick back and enjoy music. Sure if something is broken, part of my mind that is always analyzing will tell me that. Not to the same extent as when I am diagnosing fidelity but it is still there. That acuity cannot be forgotten as Greg mentioned earlier. That deficit is balanced by being able to arrive at far more reliable conclusions about audio than not compared to average Joe (I told you bonzo that I am not modest
Hope you now see where I am coming from. If not, that is cool. I will live.
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