Esteemed Audioholics:
I would like to put forward a thought that may spit in to the wind (and yes, tug on Superman's cape).
The audio hobby is chock full of opinions on what one needs to fix,replace, or buy to get the best sound.
I have noticed over the years a phenomenon in my own listening world that I am often the most unreliable piece of the puzzle in listening to music. I can have a system that's installed, debugged, tuned and playing music as well as it can. Yet, from day to day, from listening session to listening session, it will sound a little different. How so?
I would like to put forward that the listener is not an objective and consistent part of the audio puzzle. The listener is a bag of unreliable, changing, and totally wobbly bits of goo that often hears what is not there and ignores many things that are there. Human perception has such an impact on what we think we hear, we become unreliable judges in our own listening.
This isn't something to fix. Perhaps its what each of us should realize before we make snap judgements with just a single listening session about how something sounds. Or, it would perhaps point out the futility of basing decisions on the opinions of others when it comes to how something sounds.
Thoughts? Opinions? Ever had the experience of a system sounding poor one day, and great another?
Not only is the mind not the most stable/consistent part of the process, our ears are constantly bombarded by sounds and we often have no control over whether we will be exposed, or the SPL and duration. Ever have to be near a fan that's blowing all day long and felt that your ears were 'tired'? Yup. Ever been in an office where they used white noise coming from the ceiling to mask sounds from other areas, but it was definitely noticeable? That's another cause. Ever feel some kind of pressure on your ears when you weren't in a place that was sealed from the outside and there was no reason the air should have been pressurized? That could have been from high frequencies coming from an old TV, old alarm system that used Doppler Effect or test equipment/computer power supply oscillations.
One thing that can cause variations in our perception is in
how we listen. Critical listening isn't something a person just decides they can or will do- what are they listening
for? Hearing is very different from 'listening'.
I went to a local high end store last week and while they were unpacking a turntable to be set up, they had some music playing from an Aurender media server through Audio Research electronics and Vandersteen speakers, at a very low level. While we weren't speaking, I listened and occasionally moved in the room- I was standing almost in-line with the speakers and the vocalist still seemed to be behind the speakers (couldn't stand in-line, because the preamp was there and I don't think they would have appreciated me standing on it). I moved to the right & left and it still seemed to come from the middle, behind the speakers.
I asked if he hears a lot of comments about how so much detail is audible at such low SPL and he laughed before saying, "As a matter of fact, I do". So many people think their system needs to beat them over the head with the audio level when that's just not necessary when listening for fine details. Granted, some sounds aren't audible below a certain SPL because they would be masked by other sounds, many of them ambient, but a sense of space, placement and dynamics can still be gained by not cranking the volume control to WOT. It not only prevents the room's acoustics being a problem, it gives our ears a rest.
Critical listening is a skill and it takes time to develop the ability- it's not a matter of hearing a few electrons moving (or not) through a cable that comes with a story, it's more about learning to hear what's actually there. Tests have been conducted to find out if the so-called 'Golden-Eared Audiophile' can hear things others can't WRT response, threshold, etc- they can't. They listen, they don't just hear. Musicians and people who mix/record music listen differently, too.
