What does the source sound like...

[ddk]

i agree with him we are trained. Whatever the listening practices, all of us try to follow some. For example, if you learned from David what to listen for, or not to listen for, or to listen for something with toes in or out, that is training

This is the part that I disagree with Ked, I don’t train anyone how to hear. Peter has a lifetime of musical experience and deeper than mine in some respects. Showing Peter how to setup a tonearm, position speakers or giving him the opportunity to listen to some gear is far from training him or anyone how to hear in stereo. I'm still unclear by what @microstrip means by trained listener and audiophilia being an unnatural human condition. I have random strangers who come to the house for something and become curious about the system when they see it. Sometimes if the system is on I put a CD on for them and they'll sit back and listen for half and hour or so and forget they're here to do a job. Do you call this training? I remember the first stereo system aside from my parent's console, I was blown away with how it looked as much as how I found a new connection to music that I never had before. It wasn't anything special either, it was a Sony all in one cassette player that came with a pair of speakers you hung on the wall but that was it for me, I was hooked without any training. It was just a matter of exposure and it was a part of the experience of that night with other firsts .

david

 

[Gregadd]

One can be trained to corelate a particular sound to measurements.

 

[ddk]

One can be trained to corelate a particular sound to measurements.

That's a trained or experienced technician .

david

 

[bonzo75]

This is the part that I disagree with Ked, I don’t train anyone how to hear. Peter has a lifetime of musical experience and deeper than mine in some respects. Showing Peter how to setup a tonearm, position speakers or giving him the opportunity to listen to some gear is far from training him or anyone how to hear in stereo. I'm still unclear by what @microstrip means by trained listener and audiophilia being an unnatural human condition. I have random strangers who come to the house for something and become curious about the system when they see it. Sometimes if the system is on I put a CD on for them and they'll sit back and listen for half and hour or so and forget they're here to do a job. Do you call this training? I remember the first stereo system aside from my parent's console, I was blown away with how it looked as much as how I found a new connection to music that I never had before. It wasn't anything special either, it was a Sony all in one cassette player that came with a pair of speakers you hung on the wall but that was it for me, I was hooked without any training. It was just a matter of exposure and it was a part of the experience of that night with other firsts .

david

That is all training. Peter was trained before you and if he changed any way that is also training. The way you listen is also trained. The way Mike, I etc all listen trained, i.e we have our own way what to look for, and what to watch out for. It is just definition of training. Tbh I don't think micro follows any process or what to look for or what not to

 

[microstrip]

This is the type of listener training that Toole and Sean are talking about. If you never tried it you should, It's eye opening. It has no bearing on "life" training listening to your stereo.

The idea that you have to be trained to hear stereo makes no sense to me. So someone who has never heard a stereo in an untrained listener. Anyone who has is a trained listener? Trained in what??

Harman How to Listen

A blog for users of the listener training software application "How to Listen."

harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com

No, it is not. We should not mix Toole fundamental writings concernaing trained and untrained listeners with the Olive training course. They have very different aims.

 

[microstrip]

This is the part that I disagree with Ked, I don’t train anyone how to hear. Peter has a lifetime of musical experience and deeper than mine in some respects. Showing Peter how to setup a tonearm, position speakers or giving him the opportunity to listen to some gear is far from training him or anyone how to hear in stereo.

No David - IMHO this is exactly training. Re-read Peter texts - he explains how you helped his training. For me the best sentence and proof of your success comes from Peter "Everything that David had suggested I try, resulted in better sound." IMHO you should be proud of it.

My main rejection of your "training" is probably due to the fact that I praise mostly top digital recordings, something you are not interested, as you consider them inferior. BTW, I am not alone, many people have my preference. Peter was very clear in his objectives elsewhere, they fundamentally differ from mine. Or from Ked ones.

I'm still unclear by what @microstrip means by trained listener and audiophilia being an unnatural human condition. I have random strangers who come to the house for something and become curious about the system when they see it. Sometimes if the system is on I put a CD on for them and they'll sit back and listen for half and hour or so and forget they're here to do a job. Do you call this training? I remember the first stereo system aside from my parent's console, I was blown away with how it looked as much as how I found a new connection to music that I never had before. It wasn't anything special either, it was a Sony all in one cassette player that came with a pair of speakers you hung on the wall but that was it for me, I was hooked without any training. It was just a matter of exposure and it was a part of the experience of that night with other firsts .

david

You have a strange way of summarizing my words changing its meaning. Your first experiences had nothing to deal with training or stereo. F. Toole explains it in his book ...

BTW, this thread is not mainly on "sounding natural", but on how we interpret the recorded signals. How from something that is very different from real we create an enjoyable illusion. Some people never managed to make the jump from mono to stereo, they still prefer a single channel. And others debate why most of us prefer stereo to the more realistic multichannel.

 

[PeterA]

No David - IMHO this is exactly training. Re-read Peter texts - he explains how you helped his training. For me the best sentence and proof of your success comes from Peter "Everything that David had suggested I try, resulted in better sound." IMHO you should be proud of it.

Francisco, by that logic you should consider yourself trained by David because he gave you similar advice to try the Ching Cheng power cords and what kind of speakers would be appropriate with your ML3 amplifiers.

The fact that I did a lot of experiments initiated by the ideas of David Karmeli, and you tried some of his gear and for some reason don’t like the sound of it, should not lead to the conclusion that I was trained by Karmeli and you were not.

I just don’t understand this idea of training. I tried different power cords and experimented with speaker toe in and suddenly I’m being trained?

When I visited David, he did not once suggest what record I play or what to listen for. He simply wanted me to feel comfortable playing my own music that was familiar and then he asked me what I thought. Sometimes he didn’t ask, I just shared what I was hearing. I was learning by being there.

Is the individual free to learn on his own through his own experiential actions? Is the son who picks up the phone to hear “hello honey this is your mother calling” being trained by his mother to recognize his mother’s voice over the telephone?

If we are lucky, we will encounter people who know more than we do and from whom we can learn things. One just has to be willing And interested.

 

[microstrip]

This is the part that I disagree with Ked, I don’t train anyone how to hear. Peter has a lifetime of musical experience and deeper than mine in some respects. Showing Peter how to setup a tonearm, position speakers or giving him the opportunity to listen to some gear is far from training him or anyone how to hear in stereo.

No David - is this exactly training. Re-read Peter texts - he explains how you helped his training. For me the best sentence and proof of your success comes from Peter "Everything that David had suggested I try, resulted in better sound." IMHO you should be proud of it.

My main "rejection" of your training is probably due to the fact that I praise mostly top digital recordings, something you are not interested, as you consider them inferior. We have different objectives and preferences. BTW, I am not alone, many people have my preference. Peter was very clear in his objectives elsewhere, they fundamentally differ from mine. Or from Ked ones.

I'm still unclear by what @microstrip means by trained listener and audiophilia being an unnatural human condition. I have random strangers who come to the house for something and become curious about the system when they see it. Sometimes if the system is on I put a CD on for them and they'll sit back and listen for half and hour or so and forget they're here to do a job. Do you call this training? I remember the first stereo system aside from my parent's console, I was blown away with how it looked as much as how I found a new connection to music that I never had before. It wasn't anything special either, it was a Sony all in one cassette player that came with a pair of speakers you hung on the wall but that was it for me, I was hooked without any training. It was just a matter of exposure and it was a part of the experience of that night with other firsts .

david

You have a strange way of summarizing my words changing its meaning. Your first experiences had nothing to deal with training or stereo. F. Toole explains it in his book ...

 

[microstrip]

Francisco, by that logic you should consider yourself trained by David because he gave you similar advice to try the Ching Cheng power cords and what kind of speakers would be appropriate with your ML3 amplifiers.

The fact that I did a lot of experiments initiated by the ideas of David Karmeli, and you tried some of his gear and for some reason don’t like the sound of it, should not lead to the conclusion that I was trained by Karmeli and you were not.

I just don’t understand this idea of training. I tried different power cords and experimented with speaker toe in and suddenly I’m being trained?

When I visited David, he did not once suggest what record I play or what to listen for. He simply wanted me to feel comfortable playing my own music that was familiar and then he asked me what I thought. Sometimes he didn’t ask, I just shared what I was hearing. I was learning by being there.

Is the individual free to learn on his own through his own experiential actions? Is the son who picks up the phone to hear “hello honey this is your mother calling” being trained by his mother to recognize his mother’s voice over the telephone?

If we are lucky, we will encounter people who know more than we do and from whom we can learn things. One just has to be willing And interested.

Peter,

You were the one to introduce the word "mentor" in this debates. You extensively and interestingly discussed the type of training you had before. IMHO in this hobby "learning by being there" with a mentor is training. And yes, trying David suggestions and experimenting the CCs is training - it has shown me different ways of listening to reproduced music.

Sorry the phone question is absolute meaningless concerning what we are discussing.

Reading the F. Toole book was surely part of my training - learning a lot from the first part, disagreeing with most of the second part. Understanding why I disagreed was part of it.

You refer to "learn thinks". Can I ask you you what thinks you want to learn? Probably we have different objectives. And please answer me, do not let David answer for you, as it is becoming usual ...

 

[ddk]

No David - IMHO this is exactly training. Re-read Peter texts - he explains how you helped his training. For me the best sentence and proof of your success comes from Peter "Everything that David had suggested I try, resulted in better sound." IMHO you should be proud of it.

You started with "training people how to listen to stereo" now it's extended to everything else. With this logic any audio conversation among a group of people is training someone, so in this entire forum we're all in training. Peter achieved what he did by himself, I just made some suggestions. I'm happy that I made a friend in the process.

My main rejection of your "training" is probably due to the fact that I praise mostly top digital recordings, something you are not interested, as you consider them inferior. BTW, I am not alone, many people have my preference. Peter was very clear in his objectives elsewhere, they fundamentally differ from mine. Or from Ked ones.

Whatever you're rejecting is your prerogative, never tried to train you or anyone else. System setup or natural sound works for both digital and analog. I have a preference for analog but I also enjoy digital, in fact I listen to more CDs than I spend time listening to records. I also consider what I have as top digital.

You have a strange way of summarizing my words changing its meaning.

I'm quoting you not summarizing or changing anything;

"IMHO being an audiophile is not a natural condition of humans - we educate ourselves for this hobby, developing preferences."

Your first experiences had nothing to deal with training or stereo. F. Toole explains it in his book ...

It's my experience how does Toole know about it? For me his book is a resource for you he's the prophet, you quote him all the time rather than conversing from your own wisdom.

BTW, this thread is not mainly on "sounding natural", but on how we interpret the recorded signals. How from something that is very different from real we create an enjoyable illusion. Some people never managed to make the jump from mono to stereo, they still prefer a single channel. And others debate why most of us prefer stereo to the more realistic multichannel.

I didn't bring in "sounding natural" into this thread. I'm arguing with what you call training same as others.

david

 

[microstrip]

You started with "training people how to listen to stereo" now it's extended to everything else. With this logic any audio conversation among a group of people is training someone, so in this entire forum we're all in training. Peter achieved what he did by himself, I just made some suggestions. I'm happy that I made a friend in the process.

Always mainly addressing stereo listening in this forum, even I did not say it explicitly.

Whatever you're rejecting is your prerogative, never tried to train you or anyone else. System setup or natural sound works for both digital and analog. I have a preference for analog but I also enjoy digital, in fact I listen to more CDs than I spend time listening to records. I also consider what I have as top digital.

Digital is currently much more than CD. Fortunately many music recordings are now available in 95/24 and DSD. See your old opinion

What you're missing isn't because it's digital, a good CD playback setup will give you the magic and even challenge many analog front ends but you can't get blood out a stone and computer audio is a boulder! It's just the nature of the beast and you'll never get that magic from a computer front end no matter how much you spend or what you buy. It's easy money for a dealer but we refuse to sell them.

david

I'm quoting you not summarizing or changing anything;

"IMHO being an audiophile is not a natural condition of humans - we educate ourselves for this hobby, developing preferences."

Sorry, but your half quoting completely changed the changed the sense of sentence.

It's my experience how does Toole know about it? For me his book is a resource for you he's the prophet, you quote him all the time rather than conversing from your own wisdom.

I didn't bring in "sounding natural" into this thread. I'm arguing with what you call training same as others.

david

Our divergence started when I used the physical concept of sound field to explain the main difference between real and sound reproduction using two channels. And sorry I am not a partisan of rediscovering the wheel - I prefer to quote known experts to fundament my basic ideas - it is not a question of wisdom.

 

[ddk]

Always mainly addressing stereo listening in this forum, even I did not say it explicitly.

Fine, still the same objection to the premise of training to get used to stereo.

Digital is currently much more than CD. Fortunately many music recordings are now available in 95/24 and DSD. See your old opinion

Actually current opinion, I still think that CD is top digital not streaming. Of course not discussing glass other professional media.

Sorry, but your half quoting completely changed the changed the sense of sentence.

This is your entire post and sentence, I'm not half quoting.

The answers to the OP question lie in the fragility of the stereo system and lack of standards for stereo recording and playback. Stereo can't and does not want to recreate a facsimile of the concert soundfield , at best it creates an enjoyable illusionary sound reproduction.

IMHO being an audiophile is not a natural condition of humans - we educate ourselves for this hobby, developing preferences.

Our divergence started when I used the physical concept of sound field to explain the main difference between real and sound reproduction using two channels.

Please explain why doesn't a system have a sound field? Previously you mentioned you have a different definition of sound field from the ones I linked, what's your definition if we're not talking about the same thing.

And sorry I am not a partisan of rediscovering the wheel - I prefer to quote known experts to fundament my basic ideas - it is not a question of wisdom.

I think the main issue in communication here isn't discovering the wheel, it's the wheel itself. You're focused on the wheel's theory while the rest of us are actually working the wheel!

david

 

[Robh3606]

No, it is not. We should not mix Toole fundamental writings concernaing trained and untrained listeners with the Olive training course. They have very different aims.

Hello Micro

What are you talking about?? That is part of the Harmon training which Toole supports so how can you separate the two?? That's what is used to train people to do the blind listening tests for speaker evaluations and comparisons.

Please explain the difference.

Rob

 

[PeterA]

Peter,

You were the one to introduce the word "mentor" in this debates. You extensively and interestingly discussed the type of training you had before. IMHO in this hobby "learning by being there" with a mentor is training. And yes, trying David suggestions and experimenting the CCs is training - it has shown me different ways of listening to reproduced music.

Yes, I have indeed learned things about audio from others and from those who have more experience than I. Rather than continue to argue back and forth about "trained" listeners and "untrained" people who simply enjoy music, what does anything of this have to do with the original post and knowing what the source sounds like? I still contend that trained or not, people generally know what "natural sound" is, and what is the source we are trying to reproduce, if not the original musical performance, which most surely is a live performance of real people making real music that sounds natural. (a few exceptions for non acoustic music made my computer or amplified instruments in non natural settings).

You refer to "learn thinks". Can I ask you you what thinks you want to learn? Probably we have different objectives. And please answer me, do not let David answer for you, as it is becoming usual ...

I don't know what "learn think" is. I referred to learning things from those who know more than I. Sometimes I set out not knowing what I will learn. It is often a process of discovery and I don't know the destination. I do not know if we have different objectives. You seem to know what my objectives are, but I have no clue what yours are, so there is not much to discuss. You can keep trying to lecture though.

I do my best to answer questions asked of me. I do not ask others to do so for me. That is a rather overt insult. If and how David chooses to respond to your posts is his business. He likely feels as much consternation as I do about this thread and your contributions to it. I think I have written as much as I want to here. Please accept my leave as I go back to listening to music.

 

[bonzo75]

You guys are arguing over silly things. It is the definition of training. If you have a process, certain LPs you look at, where you sit, if you move around, play a solo piano, then violin, then multi instrument orchestra, etc you are a trained listener compared to a non audiophile. If you listen to some forum personality, reviewer, etc and try out their techniques and adapt some, that's training. That's all.

That Harmon test is also a way of training but that is not related to any music or audio sound it is just something someone drummed up where they got a high score. You might as well count calories eaten and say it correlates to listening ability instead.

 

[BlueFox]

And why should you care?​

What is in the groves, bits and magnetic pulses?

The music is ‘in the groves, bits and magnetic pulses’. For myself, the only thing I care about is that I can hear it without my stereo adding distortion beyond how it is recorded.

 

[bonzo75]

My main rejection of your "training" is probably due to the fact that I praise mostly top digital recordings, something you are not interested, as you consider them inferior. B

This is not a correct hypothesis, that someone who thinks digital is inferior will not have similar tastes as you on some other fronts.

If you had simply said you rejected David's training because he is into vintage and SETs horns, you quite enjoy your modern and/or SS gear, that would have made more sense. Or saying you haven't heard enough of those type of horns to benchmark tastes across the two of you.

I know people who listen to only digital or only vinyl, and both can have matching tastes with me, or with each other, on some other aspects.

I know you also have this theory by looking around at a few select posters and deciding that those with sets horns require a set up tuned to analog and not to digital. That's just a wrong call. Many horns do well with digital.

 

[andromedaaudio]

I think its all about exposure and not training, and its a natural thing .
If you hear something you like more then your own stuff you want it too.
If you have not been exposed to it , you dont want it.

A trained listener is one who switches gear every time a magazine comes up with a new reference.

I stay home i dont go to shops and shows i dont read mags
Im not exposed, so i dont have to buy anyting new , nice and cheap.

Or another take on it is, i lost the will to go to shows / shops/ read mags because nothing really changes .

 

[Gregadd]

The music is ‘in the groves, bits and magnetic pulses’. For myself, the only thing I care about is that I can hear it without my stereo adding distortion beyond how it is recorded.

I hope my response is not flippant or condescending but I will be happy when that day comes.

 

[tima]

For me if someone buys the stereotypical hifi show/magazine gear of Wilson, Magico, dCS, and/or listens to audiophile music to evaluate, I consider them untrained. Actually in a more dangerous territory than untrained, because at this stage they are harming themselves by picking up bad gear, something an untrained person wouldn't do.

You need your own personal Copernican Revolution.