Critical listening and altered states
What, in your experience, are the pluses and minuses of altering your state of mind for listening? This can include anything you've used to affect your everyday state of mind, from coffee, beer, scotch, tobacco, to much stronger — and psychoactive, dissociative — additives.
What do you gain by altering your consciousness in terms of what you notice, attend to, linger on, etc?
What causes more details to emerge?
What allows you to stick with a thread or, alternately, make new connections?
Or perhaps you like to keep all those things *out* of your listening; if that's you, please say a bit about why.
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- 279 posts total
Yep, the idea that past experiences of ASC would influence us going into the future. This was always part of my intention when seeking ASC, per the band 'Doors', opening the doors of perception. Some have called this mind expansion, I can think of so many ways in which this serves me well to this day. When one is consistently mindful of the known unknowns they remain curious, and we all know curiosity is the mother of invention. When one is curious much more likely to follow their own path, this can serve you well in your audio pursuit.
As per ASC and external substances, I've never listened to a high end system when under the influence of hallucinogens, just the live concerts.
@mahgister But on the other hand no piece of gear can replace acoustic control impact to gain natural timbre and sound spatial characteristics...
The equipment can greatly affect both timbre and spatial characteristics. Over many decades have been through much equipment, specifically amps, in order of use, class a/b solid state, class a SS, push pull tubes, SET tubes. SET tubes my final destination, this likely very much allied to their relatively high levels of 2nd order harmonic distortion, a pleasing, some say more natural timbre. I've also found spatial characteristics are much affected by equipment. I'd add loudspeakers make perhaps the largest impression on both timbre and sound staging. Roon acoustics are like the icing on the cake, they allow the full potential of the equipment to come shining through. |
You quoted me wrong sns.. This is my text :
Everybody knows that the first thing to solve is gear design quality and synergy and this cannot be replaced by acoustics magic... But AFTER the buying is done, nothing replace acoustics controls , no upgrade will improve the system room so much importantly and effectively ...Even for an upgrade evaluation it is better to have a good acoustics control of the room... I had insisted on this because the "disease" of audio is upgrading gear race...And acoustics ignorance... |
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- 279 posts total