Right, nonoise we are far more alike than different. I don't think we could mistake you for a dog. Sure, our traits vary to a degree mostly with regard to race. There is also some variability intra race in physical and physiological traits less so for the most important ones like seeing and hearing. Eye site is number one and it is deteriorating fast. Back in the old days say 120,000 years ago, people with bad eyesight got killed before they could breed and bad eyesight was minimized in the population. Today we give these young people eyeglasses and given that the environment is not near as dangerous in most parts of the world, they survive, prosper and breed fine, spreading their bad eyesight genes making more bad eyes. This was addressed in The Planet of the Apes. It has now been proven that loss of eye site at a young age greatly improves your hearing. The visual cortex cells in the back of your brain are rewired to the auditory and frontal pathways. Not only do you hear better but you think in hearing better, music. Stevie Wonder is a great example. Anyway, hearing on the other hand is not as important as eye sight and severe deficiencies usually do not appear until old age and we don't even notice the problem until it is far advanced. Most will tell you that it does not affect their appreciation of music and they can certainly identify superior recordings even when their hearing is rolled off steeply at 8000 Hz. The point is, it is not what what you hear but, how you interpret what you hear. You are not born with superior listening capabilities, you are trained to have superior listening. Being superior at it requires a lot of continued practice. Sounds sort of like an audiophile. If you stop practicing your performance will decline. You get rusty.
Another important addition is there is an emotional component to interpretation that can not be avoided. They you interpret sounds depends on your emotional state at the time. You interpret stuff differently when you are sad or happy.
So, as trained audiophiles we are excellent listeners. We hear things that others do not because we know what to listen for. I think that if there is any significant difference in the ability to listen it is based more on intellect than anything else. Imagine what earth would be like if all of us had IQs of 135.
What you think sounds "right" is plastic and very much depends on what you have been listening to. If your system is on the bright side a system that is neutral will sound dull. If your system is dull the neutral system sounds bright.....at first. Listen long enough and it will be the new normal. I find it interesting that in spite of all the tech we have the vast majority have no idea what they are listening to. They have never seen a frequency response graph their system and it will be anything but flat. You can see such a graph on my system page. This is typical of every system I have ever tested, all three of them. You never know. Seeing is believing. You can see that your bass is falling away at 50 Hz. Time for a subwoofer. Maybe your treble is down a bit farther than it should be. Repositioning the speakers might help. When you want to make improvements it always helps to know where you are going. Some people (raulirugas) think they can solve all their problems by listening. For gross infractions listening might be all that is needed but for the minor ones forget it. What you think you might hear is just as likely to be wrong as right and this is the best listeners! Then there is what you did about it. Did it work? How could you know if you had not heard the problem in the first place.
But after all it is just music ;-)
Another important addition is there is an emotional component to interpretation that can not be avoided. They you interpret sounds depends on your emotional state at the time. You interpret stuff differently when you are sad or happy.
So, as trained audiophiles we are excellent listeners. We hear things that others do not because we know what to listen for. I think that if there is any significant difference in the ability to listen it is based more on intellect than anything else. Imagine what earth would be like if all of us had IQs of 135.
What you think sounds "right" is plastic and very much depends on what you have been listening to. If your system is on the bright side a system that is neutral will sound dull. If your system is dull the neutral system sounds bright.....at first. Listen long enough and it will be the new normal. I find it interesting that in spite of all the tech we have the vast majority have no idea what they are listening to. They have never seen a frequency response graph their system and it will be anything but flat. You can see such a graph on my system page. This is typical of every system I have ever tested, all three of them. You never know. Seeing is believing. You can see that your bass is falling away at 50 Hz. Time for a subwoofer. Maybe your treble is down a bit farther than it should be. Repositioning the speakers might help. When you want to make improvements it always helps to know where you are going. Some people (raulirugas) think they can solve all their problems by listening. For gross infractions listening might be all that is needed but for the minor ones forget it. What you think you might hear is just as likely to be wrong as right and this is the best listeners! Then there is what you did about it. Did it work? How could you know if you had not heard the problem in the first place.
But after all it is just music ;-)