How does one get "trained" ears?

[stehno]

Hello stehno,

There is an inside story to my response. It references reviewers who might not have hearing above 12k. And 12k was probably a compliment. There is quite a difference between this reviewer vs someone who spent decades studying and designing speakers. So yes.... I still want to LMAO

Many of us in this industry do things to protect our hearing as I'm sure Victor did

Humor is good. Perhaps "well-trained hearing" might be more appropriate than "well-trained ears". Not that the graph above has anything to do with the OP, it's probably still worth sharing.

 

[Leif S]

View attachment 30832

Humor is good. Perhaps "well-trained hearing" might be more appropriate than "well-trained ears". Not that the graph above has anything to do with the OP, it's probably still worth sharing.

I know the chart very well. It's the first thing we studied in sound engineering school many decades ago.

Hear is a link some may find interesting or maybe have even read information like this. There is a reason speakers go above 10k. You can train your ears yes. But if you can't hear....that can't be fixed.

https://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm

 

[morricab]

Jeebus you like to argue. I never said anything about the necessity to use calculus, but people who understand it generally understand what they're working on at a deeper and more intuitive level, and are in general better engineers.

In engineering school I was assigned to teams of idiots and also worked with the brightest, there's a stark difference, 10% of engineers actually have a good aptitude for it imo.

"necessity to use calculus, but people who understand it generally understand what they're working on at a deeper and more intuitive level, and are in general better engineers."

For engingeering and science this particular example I agree with completely. As a professional scientist, I work with other professional scientists and you learn really quickly who was pretending their way through school (and yes, you can pretend a lot and get through...even in science) and who really learned the "basic" material (it is only considered basic because it is in a text book...nevermind the geniuses who figured out all that "basic" stuff...I never ever take it for granted...I am in awe of them). Without a mastery of that basic material, connections to observations in research and cause/effect (eg. designing to get a particular sound) simply do not get made because underlying principles are not well understood. I have some really enlightening discussions once in a while at work with other well trained AND observant people...but most of them are hopeless and can only do the job on a very superficial level. Fortunately for them, they are often good at beauracracy...

I was surrounded in grad school by some really top people. We had one guy who also ran his own software company (he is now a multi-multi millionaire) who was doing a Ph.D in analytical chemistry for "fun". He wrote our data acquisition code and he and I together designed and built our TTL logic system controller (neither of us knew how to program a FPGA). My research adviser had a nack of picking very capable people (there were some duffs as well though) and we did some pretty nice engineering in order to do some pretty nice science. The duff guys stood out in our group like a sore thumb because there were half a dozen really good ones. They usually couldn't handle the pressure and dropped out. The tools we needed to measure the phenomena we were interested in simply didn't exist...so we desgined and made them ourselves. As a result, I have both an engineers perspective and a scientists perspective...they are not quite the same.

The same is true with all endeavors. My ex-girlfriend was a violin prodigy. She obviously had serious talent and by age 5 was on Polish television playing Mozart concertos. She won several major prizes in competitions in Europe and was the real deal in terms of playing technique (expression is another story) where she could go toe-to-toe with any name you care to bring up. She practiced, a lot, but probably less than some of the most driven of her competitors. However, she is better than 99% of them and a lot comes down to that insight we call talent. Seeing the inside of things in a way that others cannot. Only the top 0.01% though get the big contracts and concerts...and it helps a lot to be connected ultimately. However, she has now been 1st chair in a number of orchestras around Europe (she is now somewhere in Germany leading an orchestra).

You have read about the 10,000 hour rule? It takes at least 10,000 hours focusing on an endeavor to really get good at it. Now, how many of our audiophile brothers/sisters have put in that time investment really, critically listening? Many probably have...however, I have found that how that time was really spent is critical to reaching a true level of expertise in something. Just putting in the time is not enough...the talent is understanding what needs to be done to get to the next level, doing it and benefitting from the new insights that are unlocked from reaching that new level.

 

[morricab]

IMO, morricab's post was excellent.

Pessimistic? Well, that's in the eye of the beholder. Dedication, perseverance, persistence, soaking up info from multiple sources and venues, etc, are all indicators of hard work including analysis, evaluations, repeated experiments, do-overs, etc. I suspect some-to-many may perceive this as pessimistic. While, on the other hand, some-to-perhaps-few see this as an extreme form of passion or love for a given endeavor.

One life lesson high-end audio taught me (learned all on my own) was that extreme results can only occur from extreme efforts - Never by token or half-assed efforts. Perhaps that's the case with developing extremely well-trained ears or becoming a Nikola Tesla or Vincent Van Gogh type in their given industry. As morricab implied, every industry is filled with hacks, bush-leaguers, and also-rans and only a few rise above them. And high-end audio is no exception. In fact, I would attest that it's worse in high-end audio because the hobby is soooooo frickin' subjective and that includes the resulting measurements that some live and die for. What's perhaps even more pessimistic is, there's only room for one at the very top. Such is life.

But I also think it important to note:

1. Morricab makes a distinction between talent and skill and that was good because that distinction also applies to every other industry as well. Very, very few of us were born with the talent to accurately perceive and interpret what we hear. But very few of us with reasonable or better playback systems are unable to develop the skills to make up at least some of what we lack in talent.

2. As in every other industry, there are varying degrees of talent and/or skills. People routinely interchange the terms golden-ears with well-trained ears. I never use the term golden ears but I do know somebody who has the most well-trained ears I've ever encountered. Others I know with very well-trained ears don't even come close to this guy and compared to others, he is or was a relatively newcomer to the industry so maybe he had talent. Fairly incredible to observe actually.

As for me personally, I like to think I can hold my own with well-enough-trained ears. That may not be saying much but this much I can say: When Morricab says, "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." he ain't just a woofin. And I've heard many systems.




I'm tempted to respond to this in just a few words, but I suspect we'd be venturing down a whole nuther rabbit hole.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I knew it would be a controversial post...

 

[morricab]

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.

1) Psyhchology studies make it rather clear: It is IMPOSSIBLE to have an unbiased mind...Period.
2) I agree with not getting emotionally invested in gear...although I do find myself missing some gear sometimes because of a certain trait it had that I liked.
3) Sensibility? What is sensible about investing 10s or 100s of thousands to play music? Only if one is trying to create the illusion of real does it even begin to make sense...and even though only really as a human endeavor...like building rockets to go to the moon or something.
4) The first rule of humanity should be "know thyself"...and yet most people (perhaps me as well) have no clue about their biases and blindspots. One should realize that if one chooses to make this their hobby and they realize that they can't hear differernces for **** that they should seek out the help from someone who can. That is where ego blinds and the endless chase begins.
5) It is not enough to HEAR differences. That is not so hard to do for a lot of gear, even under controlled conditions. It is what you can make out of hearing differences that is important. Can you then relate which difference make the sound closer to live or closer to whatever you claimed goal is? This is where most people have no talent or skill. They get stuck at simply hearing differences and not how to put the jigsaw puzzle together.

6) I did not mean to say that going to live, unamplified, concerts is not important...it is or one has not got a good reference upon which to base decisions upon. Playing with a lot of gear (as I do and you do it seems vicariously) helps you to understand your tools to reach the goal and what characterisitcs they bring to the game. It also tells you which ones can be used and which ones need to be discarded as inappropriate to reaching your goal.

7) I am not sure it is possible to ignore the price tags and marketing noise. It always enters the discussion. It helps to shape bias (just look on this forum). I and you are also prey to it to some extent.

 

[morricab]

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.

Pessimistic? In what way pessimistic?

 

[morricab]

..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?

Depends on the kind of connections in that person's brain after 50+ years of listening critically to high end gear and, hopefully, lots of live music. Then the hearing loss, which was likely gradual, has been compensated for by the man's own brain. Afterall, what they hear live is also "rolled off" and it doesn't impact their ability to compare to live. Absolute hearing range is not that critical...it is how the data is processed that is important.

 

[morricab]

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.

Training alone is not enough Amir. Yes, it might be very very good at telling you WHAT is changing and then you can learn WHY that change in sound occurred; however, this is only a part of the story and not the whole story. The second half of the story is that now that you know how to identify subtle changes in a system and perhaps their underlying causes you still don't necessarily know how to connect that with real live music.

Part 1 of being an audio critic is understanding and being a good critical listener for differences in sound and their roots.
Part 2 of being an audio critic is knowing and understanding how that fits into getting more realistic sound.

Now, you have been trained and are probably pretty good at getting part 1 right. What about part 2?

Just like part 1 of being a mechanic is the diagnosis of what is wrong...part 2 is knowing how to get it right.

Critical listening is not just about being able to diagnose what is wrong with the sound from a technical POV, it is also being able to tell what is wrong with it from a musical POV AND knowing in which direction things need to change to be the musical POV more correct. If you don't know what is the more correct way to go then what good does it do you to find the problems? You will only swap one set of problems for another set.

 

[morricab]

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.

They might not need to know about the math per se, but the math was supposed to help them make the relationships between things: cause/effect, change with time, etc. more understandable. Even if they have forgotten some of the math now from lack of use, if they understood it well before then they will now intuitively look at those relations and have a pretty good idea what changing a variable hear and adjusting a constant there will do to the end result. Lack of in-depth knowledge means only superficial solutions.

 

[morricab]

no, it's not. this is art, not science or engineering. reproduced musical correctness is subjective. it's what you happen to like. not some objective thing. i don't ask pro audio guys what the best sounding high end audio gear is. they have mostly not paid any attention to it or view it with disdain. they don't get it, like you don't get it.

i don't know an audiophile/music lover who would fall under your 'trained' category. why? because it is not useful or relevant to do that training. if they have happened to have done it, they rose above it or factored it downward in their minds eye of judgment.

Well, you are wrong about it not being science or engineering. All that gear you have is nothing more than a culmination of science and engineering geared to deliver one thing...recorded music. The art is the music itself and could probably be enjoyed just fine on a number of lesser systems or even in the car (particularly compressed pop/rock recordings).

Psychoacoustics is the science of trying to understand the way humans hear and perceive sound. While of course your preferences are subjective, they can be looked at and studied in relation to the way the ear/brain functions. There are ways (incomplete and at this point basic) to objectify your subjective preference. Through correlation with measurement is one approach.

Most pro audio guys are no better at actually listening than the average audiophile. However, some are exceptional...as is to be expected from human population distributions.

 

[morricab]

Fortunately my preferred reviewers like using mainly acoustical music - sometimes very good recordings I also own.

This means that I learn very little from people like the famous Ken Kessler - but sometimes he supplies good entertainment.

I agree, reviewers that don't use acoustic music primarily as a reference (throwing in a well recorded rock album or electronic album now and again is fine) don't offer very much to me with their opinions.

 

[morricab]

LMAO

So true!!!

It is not true at all.

 

[morricab]

Seems to me some might already be missing the point about well-trained ears.

In 2008, I sat with Victor Comerchero, one of the original owners of ESS Speakers, who at the then age of 78 articulated in extensive detail both verbally and then in writing all that he heard and gave clear indication to me that he had very well-trained ears. In fact, it was of the very best evaluations I've witnessed firsthand.

Are you sure you really wanna LYAO?

Exactly... People seem to forget that those ears are also hearing the real world all the time and that reference is shifting along with the hifi listening. The brain compensates and the experience accumulated continues to be useful...assuming it was useful to the person in the first place of course.

 

[morricab]

Define "smart" and the picture becomes more complex. It's situational, typically, and it's not always clear what kind of intelligence will be dominate. Otherwise scientists would rule the world and every inventor would be richer than a non-in entor, etc....

You are assuming that scientists WANT to rule the world. The desire to want to control and dominate humanity is not necessarily intelligence...but it could be psychopathy. The willingness to do anything and everything to have power has not a lot to do with intelligence...however, if that person is also intelligent then look out! Plenty of scientific and engineering people have gotten very wealthy though...it is a technological world afterall.

 

[microstrip]

IMO, morricab's post was excellent.

Pessimistic? Well, that's in the eye of the beholder. Dedication, perseverance, persistence, soaking up info from multiple sources and venues, etc, are all indicators of hard work including analysis, evaluations, repeated experiments, do-overs, etc. I suspect some-to-many may perceive this as pessimistic. While, on the other hand, some-to-perhaps-few see this as an extreme form of passion or love for a given endeavor.

One life lesson high-end audio taught me (learned all on my own) was that extreme results can only occur from extreme efforts - Never by token or half-assed efforts. Perhaps that's the case with developing extremely well-trained ears or becoming a Nikola Tesla or Vincent Van Gogh type in their given industry. As morricab implied, every industry is filled with hacks, bush-leaguers, and also-rans and only a few rise above them. And high-end audio is no exception. In fact, I would attest that it's worse in high-end audio because the hobby is soooooo frickin' subjective and that includes the resulting measurements that some live and die for. What's perhaps even more pessimistic is, there's only room for one at the very top. Such is life.

But I also think it important to note:

1. Morricab makes a distinction between talent and skill and that was good because that distinction also applies to every other industry as well. Very, very few of us were born with the talent to accurately perceive and interpret what we hear. But very few of us with reasonable or better playback systems are unable to develop the skills to make up at least some of what we lack in talent.

2. As in every other industry, there are varying degrees of talent and/or skills. People routinely interchange the terms golden-ears with well-trained ears. I never use the term golden ears but I do know somebody who has the most well-trained ears I've ever encountered. Others I know with very well-trained ears don't even come close to this guy and compared to others, he is or was a relatively newcomer to the industry so maybe he had talent. Fairly incredible to observe actually.

As for me personally, I like to think I can hold my own with well-enough-trained ears. That may not be saying much but this much I can say: When Morricab says, "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." he ain't just a woofin. And I've heard many systems.




I'm tempted to respond to this in just a few words, but I suspect we'd be venturing down a whole nuther rabbit hole.

Can I ask you what you mean by "What's perhaps even more pessimistic is, there's only room for one at the very top. Such is life."?

My perspective is that the extreme pessimism is caused by an alternate, too narrow, view of the objectives of sound reproduction and the high-end, forgetting the limitations of the stereo format. Referring to Tesla or Van Gogh in this thread sounds nice, but IMHO is meaningless.

And yes, again IMHO we have many talented people in the high-end.

 

[beaur]

My wife and kids hate when I do this to them. They also always doubt even after past experience!

While I know I am somewhat capable of training myself to hear like a reviewer I decided long ago that going down that path robs me of my enjoyment of the music, which is why I am listening in the first place. Probalby how I ended up in the SET world. I can and do, however listen to many different types of systems as long as the music playing to enjoyable to me.

Over 30 years of being a trial lawyer I have trained my self to listen for inconsistencies.
Just this morning I heard my sister order an auto part. She owns a 2003 Ford Focus and her son owns 2015 Ford Fusion. I heard her order a part for a 2015 Ford Focus. She has come
to trust my listening acuity. She called back and sure enough I heard correctly. She intentended to say 2015 Ford Fusion.
You can in fact train yourself to listen . As an audiophile you are a music apreciater not a a critic or engineer.

 

[853guy]

How does one get "trained" ears?

I guess one just lies on the tracks and waits for the train.

 

[Steve williams]

Morricab

I enjoy reading your comments.......especially this one

Part 1 of being an audio critic is understanding and being a good critical listener for differences in sound and their roots.
Part 2 of being an audio critic is knowing and understanding how that fits into getting more realistic sound.

Now, you have been trained and are probably pretty good at getting part 1 right. What about part 2?

Just like part 1 of being a mechanic is the diagnosis of what is wrong...part 2 is knowing how to get it right.

Critical listening is not just about being able to diagnose what is wrong with the sound from a technical POV, it is also being able to tell what is wrong with it from a musical POV AND knowing in which direction things need to change to be the musical POV more correct. If you don't know what is the more correct way to go then what good does it do you to find the problems? You will only swap one set of problems for another set.

However having said this I cannot help but reflect on bear's post as for me and why I am in this hobby, it is a statement with which I can identify......

While I know I am somewhat capable of training myself to hear like a reviewer I decided long ago that going down that path robs me of my enjoyment of the music, which is why I am listening in the first place. Probalby how I ended up in the SET world. I can and do, however listen to many different types of systems as long as the music playing to enjoyable to me.

I would also speculate that most members here feel the same

 

[Bobvin]

I guess one just lies on the tracks and waits for the train.

Now that... that made me laugh!

 

[morricab]

Morricab

I enjoy reading your comments.......especially this one



However having said this I cannot help but reflect on bear's post as for me and why I am in this hobby, it is a statement with which I can identify......




I would also speculate that most members here feel the same

Understood. I am analytical by nature so I guess it comes naturally to me...