We are a product of our own experiences.
How Audiphiles are Different
So, I can’t spell Audiophile. Doh.
Again, moving this to a new thread to avoid polluting the OP that got me thinking about this.
A couple of events have intersected for me which made me realize just how very different audiophiles can be. Not just in their tastes but the very way in which the ear/brain mechanism is wired for them. This then profoundly affects their priorities in equipment and rooms. There is no one right way to be but those who argue purity of reproduction is the only reason to be an audiphile, well, I have news for you...
At a show many years ago the rooms varied a great deal in the amount of acoustic treatments. Some very expensive gear was in some really poor sounding rooms. From a couple of these rooms I overheard several participants talk about how great the demos were. I was a little surprised. I couldn’t hear anything. All I could hear was the ocean spray of the room.
After this somewhere I read about how exhausting meeting room and class rooms can be. Our brain is always listening through the room acoustics for words. This takes effort. In a reflective room we literally burn more calories just listening than we do in a dampened room. It makes it harder to study or listen, and we get tired more quickly. I’ve also thought about how musicians listen and how many of them don’t hear the recording or the room, they hear the musician's technique. Their brain’s entire symbol system and language is wired to feel technique and expression.
I have hypothesized these things:
- Some of us can listen through bad room acoustics much more easily than others
- Being able to hear minute differences (say in DACs) which don’t appear in steady state tests may very well be possible given long term averaging or some other feature we replicate in modern machine learning/neural networks.
- We train ourselves to be different types of listeners.
And as a result:
- Different listeners have different ear / brain wiring which focuses their preferences one way or another.
- At least to some degree this must be something we learn/train ourselves to do.
- If this is something we can train ourselves to do maybe we should be careful to train ourselves to listen for musical enjoyment rather than discriminating across equipment.
- We should embrace the diversity of audiophiles rather than claim a single purity of purpose.
- Charlatans and snake oil salesmen will never go away.
All of this is just about ear / brain mechanisms. It’s also possible some of us have physical receptors or a combination of different ears/different brains which cause us to hear differently. I remember chatting with a rare lady who was an audiophile and she pointed out that for years she couldn’t listen to DAC’s. They gave her headaches. This was about the same time that DAC’s started getting good at Redbook playback.
What are your thoughts?
65 responses Add your response
@secretguy - did you come out of the womb playing an instrument? 🤣 If not, think back - you might remember why it makes sense for non-musicians to listen to music and why what they think about what they're listening to is every bit as valid as what some musician thinks. It's not like all musicians think the same about everything.... |
Thanks - yes - a number of useful terms. I’ve seen these glossaries. My point was, which I just think is interesting, that many of these are actually metaphors taken from our other senses.
Yep, read it, and definitely a great introduction to going beyond big box retail audio. But I haven’t been able to forgive TAS since they published their 4-part fake news special on digital audio about a decade ago. Some of the most irresponsible journalism I’ve every seen. [OK well that was an overstatement for effect. The US is mostly irresponsible journalism these days] |
Yes, good observation. I recommend Robert Harley’s book, The Complete Guide to High End Audio. It gives a great overview of the pursuit and introduces the terminology. Also, this is a glossary from Stereophile http://www.integracoustics.com/MUG/MUG/bbs/stereophile_audio-glossary.html However, it requires reading the terminology and over listening time associating the characteristics with the terms. Typically this takes a long time. I have been learning for decades. |
This is a very interesting discussion. We do hear things differently, and we also value different things. I value having access to so many different pieces of music and artists and being able to enjoy them in so many different ways - stereo audio, multichannel, concert video, through tubes, SS gear, planars, cones, subs, no subs, etc. In that way I don't necessary have a preference for one sound (although in general there is a gear configuration with my planars that I love the best) but rather enjoy tuning and configuring the system to best fit the media. That's when I realize I've been being called to dinner for 30 minutes. I had an interesting experience a few months back. My good friend has a pair of KEF R3 speakers he'd be talking up, and he wanted me to fly down to have a listen (and for his birthday, to be fair). I said I'd come if he'd finally bite the bullet and buy some cost-effective separates to replace the Yamaha receiver he'd been using for 2 channel. When I arrived, he still had the KEFs on the Yammy and kept asking "don't they sound great?" I could hear some pretty tones - felt the tweeter had some potential -- but I felt I could hear some form of stuffiness or compressive quality in the midrange and high bass. The detail wasn't there, more like a traffic jam of sounds. He had the sound running from his Firestick (!) to his TV via HDMI (!) then through the ARC (!) to the Yammy (!) then out to his speakers. I feared I had some expectation bias given that awful signal path, and maybe was just confirming that with my feeling on the sound. When we got the separates in place, it was no comparison and he could hear it too. Everything was crisper and that traffic jam feeling I had was gone. OK that's a good story about improving sound from a terrible signal path. But what has stayed with me has been the question about what I heard in the before and after and how it wasn't frequency response, or volume, or timber, or even rhythm. It was something else, and something I don't think I could have heard had I not spent the last 10 years listening to my system. And I wonder what the exact differences were (albeit obviously the difference was vast) between the two signal paths that created such dramatic results. Compared to our other senses, we don't have a good lexicon to describe what we hear. And that goes not just to language but I think to our brains which don't do as well phenomenologically with audio as with our other senses. We tend to use metaphors like "bright." And in many ways the auditory memory seems more fleeting. While the sense is there - I could clearly detect the traffic jam feeling -- pinning it down, describing it, analyzing it, permanently retaining that aspect, quite difficult. That's why, in the end, it does have to be all about the music. |
Have you ever been at a concert where the orchestra sounds better after the intermission? Did the orchestra or your hearing adjust to the room? Have you ever been tucked away in the upper corner of the Musikverein in Vienna and found the sound of the Vienna Philharmonic to be just as ravishing as in the center stalls? Even though you couldn't see a single musician. There is magic in that hall. Did you ever listen through the noise on the Unicorn recording of Furtwangler conducting Brahm's German Requiem? And been moved to tears. * Mr. Rose of Pristine Recordings has worked miracles cleaning up this recording while preserving the emotion.
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Great TED talk. We're all different because art, as they say, is subjective, and music is, if nothing else, the epitome of art. I guess that makes all of us a bit of a solipsist as we can only speak of ourselves when it comes to music appreciation. Try telling that to someone who only hears "measured sound". 👍 All the best, |
Having spent many of my formative years singing in acapella choirs my ear/brain have become very sensitive to timbre and pitch. But interestingly (probably to me only) is that most ambient noise doesn't bother me at all. BTW I sing along a lot of the time while listening. To answer Erik's question...I think we are different simply because we love music to a degree where we will spend precious time/energy/treasure in our pursuit of a playback system that achieves a level where the magic happens. Regards, barts
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+1 @hilde45 And many of dearest non-friends are solipsists! |
+1 @denverfred Bill Evans...AWESOME! Great subject and discussion. Ultimately it is "To Each His Own..."
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This is true, but there would be no industry and nothing to talk about without a lot of commonalities. We may be individuals, but we're not solipsists.
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We start with a common interest, audio and hi-fi, We comment here on forums and we share experience and opinions. But I think something else takes over that is more significant than our common interest in audio. The temperament, arrogance, humbleness, patience or impatience and other human qualities weave into the conversation and ugliness comes out. In my opinion, it’s like road rage because the personality and "true self" emerges of any individual. Your fellow "audiophile" can be helpful or can be very rude and inconsiderate. They can be dumb and mean. One can walk away with the feeling, "I could be friends with that fellow" or one could say "I think that guy is a total jerk". So IMO that aspect I just mention has the ability to quickly "over ride" or "over shadow" any ideas about "audiophiles are different". Audiophile is a much smaller aspect of who we are.... |
Great stuff! You are actually, in the main, are referring to The Perception of Hearing. Perhaps you and others will find an article on page 42 of HiFi Critic, Vol.12/No.1 (Jan-Mar 2018) of interest? It was written from my personal experience, with only the odd typo edited by the publisher. Cheers! BP |
Your speakers absolutely should not distort at all. If they do, then they are not going to accurately reproduce the distortion of the recorded instrument. If you want to recreate that instrument as you claim you cannot be adding additional distortions. If you do, it is not the recorded instrument you are hearing. Perhaps you like that but then your musical pedigree loses its value in the argument you are presenting. If you are listening from the choir loft next to the pipe organ you aren't hearing the same thing as the audience either. |
My "ear" is an amalgam of having played music in concert bands, singing in choirs (school and church) and listening to all kinds of live and recorded music thanks to my parents. I can freely admit that some systems I’ve heard lately could be said to "sound better" than mine, but REALLY aren’t for me. What the "audiophile purity" standards lack is the literal feeling in your body of being within and amongst the sound. I’ve sat in a choir loft with pipe organ pipes very close-by. Or when I played sax, and our row was right in front of the lower brass instruments (trombones and tubas). If my speakers don’t give me any visceral feelings, if they don’t distort (to my expectations) the ways instruments do, I find them to be unreal and thus lacking in some way. (Not just loud volume, I know the difference) Accuracy is the most laughable term ever used by audiophiles, and we’re all sensitive to different distortions, differently. It’s true, we’re definitely not all seeking the same things. That’s the beauty of it, to me. |
@tannoy56 the answer to your question is obvious but does not match the original posts narrative. While we may have individual preferences around frequency response it seems, how we all hear is fundamentally exactly the same. |
I would add that I am always struck by difference between my gear preferences and my musician friends. I have a few friends that are fairly prominent Classical Musicians and they could care less about playback equipment. I’ve always thought that their minds must fill what their playback equipment is missing |
H.o., you could substitute 42 for 32 and it may be just as relevant in the long run.... The common element we all share is the enjoyment of music in all its' varied forms of approach and creation. This has been about us as a species since two rocks struck together made an interesting sound...and improved with a pattern of strikes. Not long after, the 'discussions' on How and with which rocks began.... ;) Siding with @mahgister, what and how I approach aural enjoyment is purely personal, as is what is played to accomplish that. You've yours, and more power to y'all. *G* As is what happens when the waveforms hit your ears and how you perceive that is entirely up to your synapses and the memories it stirs loose. Enjoyment of the hunt for what you use to recreate the music that does that follows the preferences you've developed.... You know what you want, but you don't know what you want....it just suks...wtf...*L* 'Equipment matching' X Listening environment / You = 42 ;) Or infinity. Pick your answer. Happy post-4th, J
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I think many listeners of my generation have developed an inbuilt noise rejection mechanism from decades of listening to vinyl. When someone points it out you can hear it, but otherwise it somehow vanishes into the subconscious part of the psyche. In a similar light, I live in part of Australia which abounds with several species of very noisy cockatoos*, parrots, crows and magpies. When I receive visitors they often point this out and I become aware of the incredible cacophony, however it soon blends into the background and I regain my tranquil state. *if you think heavy metal is hard on the eardrums try listening to a flock of sulphur crested cockatoos at close range… |
Some excellent points being made. Agree with points of OP. I think an important take away is that even expert advice may not be suitable for anyone else except those that "hear" like they do. Unless the two parties know each others' style of listening abilities and can express things in a way for the other's consumption. Another "noise" I have trouble with is visual. Yes, for me I can hardly hear the nuances of my music during a session if my room is too well lit, or new surroundings. I'm a visual-first person so this has to be squelched or my mind is distracted/overloaded. Just me maybe. It's why I like my rarely used, blank TV screen front and center and not art. |
Listening is also a test. An assumption is being made here to a degree that machine measurements are the objective truth, and that if one heard accurately the listening test would be identical to the mechanical test. The question is whether sound equipment is being made for ears or for machines. Anyway, here's another test, which I assume everyone has done at one time or another. Start listening to a recording on stereo equipment, then cup your hands behind your ears and note the difference. Then, recall that everyone's earlobes are shaped differently. |
my mind can push acoustics into the background for the most part. but what i can't seem to tune out - is noise, esp. if it is percussive in character [phonographic crackle]. that is the thing that got me to become an audio restoration technician. i never understood how some people can describe phonographic playback as coming from "a black background" when surface noise for me stands out like a sore thumb even on golden-ear systems. |
Musicians are trained to hear intervals, chords, arpeggios, BPM, the 16 known basic rhythms and their variations, intonation, pitch, technique and position. There may be other things to learn such as stage moves (taught as a serious elective at Musician’s Institute - GIT, BIT etc.), but expression is not a quantifiable discipline. It won’t be on the Ear Training final exam where in most schools, you’ll be transcribing an entire song in standard musical notation. And yes, ears and ear drums vary in size and sensitivity. Damage plays a part as well. There is also a phenomenon that some experience where they fill in the implied notes and do not realize until told, they are only implied. There is now a name for it, which escapes me at the moment. |
If audiophiles have personal preference for sound quality, and therefore we differ in how sound is perceived, how do you explain that most of the time we do agree on what good recording sound is like: we do agree on which music halls, around the world, do sound wonderful and the ones’s ( most of them) which don’t sound so good. ; and we do agree even that the Munich hi-fi show has by far the best possible sound quality rooms to offer and draws many audiophiles from around the world. Keep in mind that these are objective observations and not subjective based opinions. |
i think with experience we recognize when the circumstances limit the value of what we hear. the lack of room<->speaker synergy, or too high SPL’s, or non musical source or musical choice.....or......those things all together.....as sometimes happen. or maybe we are not in the mood to open our minds and ears. i find it good at shows to return to a room multiple times if i have an interest to give myself multiple times so it was not me. i rarely trust my first impression as i carry baggage into the session and i have to get past that.....and wake up to the music and get past my head space. let the music come to me as just music, not sounds. how do i feel? these situations happen at people’s homes, at shows, at dealers. it’s part of learning. and many times it takes time to ’get--understand’ the system balance and intentions. it might have completely different type of balance than your system so you need to be able to embrace that part of it. and it’s hard sometimes. it might not be just different, it could be bad. it can happen. |
Mike. Thanks for your post. You come across as very much the essence of an audiophile. What is important is dedication and open mindedness… then approaching getting the best sound by whatever method (frequently massive effort with a small budget when young and with greater budget as is available later in life). The objective maximum sound quality and enjoyment of music. I am listening to an Afro Celt album… one that I enjoyed so much when I was working in Japan… on a state of the art portable system with headphones in the mid 1990’s. It completely wraps me up in the memory and emotional context of the time. Everything about the sound I am hearing is so mesmerizing… my system is so many times better than thirty years ago… what does this have to do with your question? Nothing. Just really enjoying listening to,my system. |
@erik_squires - My intended point was only that we all experience sound differently, so it should be expected that audiophiles would all appreciate different systems/sounds and poor acoustics might be more critical for some than others. |
MikeLavigne, your knowledge, commitment, efforts, passion is what I appreciate, You can have a budget without knowledge, passions and commitment to this hobby is useless.It takes times to learn this hobby , money alone can’t do it, Like Steve Job said on his death bed with all his money and succes he can make people do what he wants, but his money and success he can’t make anyone die for Him. |
Well, certainly tube equipment seems to be moving in the direction of the mean IME. The tube equipment I owned in early 2000's was of the golden glow variety, extreme colorations. More recently various push pulls and SET's more alike than different, all going more toward a more neutral signature, far less significant colorations than I expected. |
I agree we can train ourselves to be better, or at least more discriminating listeners. So, for those who've gone through many systems and system iterations over the years, I wonder if those systems have progressed in such a way to only be subjectively better, in the sense it correlates better with only that person's listening preferences ? Or, have they progressed in a more objective trajectory, conforming to a wider audience's listening preferences? I suppose this also impacts audio manufacturers as well, at least those who voice their final product. Is there an ever growing wider disparity in equipment voicing, or is equipment evolving toward a mean, sounding more alike than different?
Bottom line. Are trained audiophiles evolving in a more or less differentiated pattern? |
thank you @danager and @mahgister for the kind words. trying to be self aware, i view myself as an audiophile who is all in with maximum effort to enjoy every part of the hobby, serious room and system building, and the music. secondarily i have committed lots of resources to support my efforts. i’d like to think i’m known for my commitment, not my budget, but i know that’s not how the forums work. i accept that. onto the topic, "how audiophiles are different"....especially how they listen. here are my thoughts. my views are that there are multiple natural perspectives for any listener. natural selection/evolution has resulted in our ability to listen selectively. for an audiophile it’s a skill that can be learned and improved. we can hear around things. vinyl listeners are able to ignore noise not associated with the music, but are sensitive to noise changing the music. we teach ourselves this. or....we cannot teach ourselves this and reject vinyl as noisy. it’s the way it is. but how does this effect system building and listening to gear? again; it can be learned. with practice we can find references to use to hear important differences. and maybe we have progressed sufficiently in our learning to have an aural memory in our head of particular music we hold up as a template. another level is to recognize how our body and all it’s senses are affected by the music. typically this requires longer listening sessions, where our feelings about the gear and music can evolve and settle. does the quick first impression hold up over longer time. it’s also why so few serious audiophiles use blind testing. that interferes with our natural normal reaction to the music. it adds a disturbance clouding reality of our feelings. adds stress. i can’t really say how other audiophiles process what they hear. but the above is how i do it. it how i make system and music decisions. and i love my process. it keeps me fully engaged. |
Reproduction is an ideal in electronic engineering...It does not exist in the same simplistic way in acoustic/psycho-acoustic... In acoustic experience, the recording trade-off choices of the sound engineer are taken mathematically exactly like they are ( reproduced from analog to digital or the reverse thanks to Fourier) but TRANSLATED in the specific speakers/ specific room acoustic "lingo " for a specific pair of ears.... There is no reproduction at the end but an acoustic/psycho-acoustic translation.... It is in this possible personal translation where the human subjective interpretative factor reside in the recreation of his own experience... What i like is now for the last 10 years in my case the results of my listening experiments...It is not ARBITRARY nor universal.... We must learn to listen, and it is not and never will be just a question about "accuracy"...Acoustic concepts are not reducible to electrical measures...Sorry... Accuracy is a multidimensional concept in acoustic/psycho-acoustic... Not so much in electrical engineering... Accuracy of timbre...Of dynamics... Of the ratio of LEV/ASW, accuracy of imaging.... Accuracy of what?
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I disagree with this so much, but it is so far afield from my core point that I will not answer it here. |
You are right! By the way i admired mikelavigne dedication... Our way are different but i am sure we will understand each other... I work with low cost devices and basic acoustic and psycho-acoustic... He work with high end gear in a dedicated acoustic... Different means same goal... By the way i am not envious at all about any audio system on earth.... Why? Because i am glad to be on the top low Price/S.Q. ratio... My system is average but not my three embeddings workings controls... My listening experience is not average at all... For sure it is not lavigne system but we can live without in our own sonic paradise...
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You are creating a false equivalence. How many tones, what frequency, etc. really does not matter if the artifacts are below human detectable limits which they appear for many products (not all) to be well below especially considering that loud sounds make quiet sounds at the same time impossible to hear. w.r.t. "what you like", that is a matter of taste, not a matter of reproduction. Why would I spend 10, 20, 30K+ for a piece of equipment that colors the music in a fixed way (that I may not always like), when I could get equipment that has no audible artifacts and color it myself, based on my mood and what music I am listening too? How does one even test for the right color, when most audiophiles don't adequately and certainly don't consistently do acoustics in their room so insisting on a test for flavor of a single component seems pointless and out of place. I would posit this is the failure of audio reviews, and reviewers and the ad-hoc ones on audiophile sites. The review of any component is just the end results of a collection of errors and the odds of you having the same errors are slim. When comparing two products that likely sound exactly the same, the brains invents a difference which too many gladly accept. |
