How Do You Learn?

If you are still looking for a dim light dabel have you tried a lava lamp?

Indeed we know that it is impossible to perceive "clearly" something, even to perceive it at all, without any name or concept about it...For example the fist Aztecs "perceiving" Cortès boats dont perrceive boats at  

Beauty. Got another one. Check this out.  

Carl Sagan recounts in his book The Dragon's of Eden how he asked his son at a very early age what is the first thing you can remember? And he said, "It was red, and I was very cold." His son had been born by c-section. So that was Carl. Then there's me.

As a little kid growing up, and I mean like couple years old, I had this recurring dream or vision, or memory, don't even know what to call it. The most fascinating sparkly gleaming lights shining, sometimes waving, with the marvelous sense of floating weightless and even better, a deep sense of Oneness. Don't know what else to call it. This memory/feeling would come and go and every time made me so happy, joyous, just the best feeling ever. Whatever it was. Back then, for some reason or other, I wondered about this more than anything else. What was it???    

Then one day my parents have friends over and I hear my dad, he loved to brag about me all the time, his first born son and all that. He is telling his friend how he didn't want me to be afraid of the water. So he took me to the pool when I was still a little baby. Had me floating in the water. How I was loving it, happy as a little clam, kept my eyes open even when he let me go under the water.  

Eureka! That was it! The lights, the floating, that was it!  

Best I can figure, this early memory was formed at a time when I was so young and unformed there was no way of making any kind of sense out of it. But it made such an impression it endured nonetheless. Until I knew enough to understand, and then wow, all at once it did make sense.  

Just as with the Aztec's the experience itself is not enough. We need information to understand, or else it is all meaningless shifting patterns of light. Or sound.

We learn music in different areas of the brain than other language skills.  Do we therefore learn to hear differences in the reproduction of musical sounds in a similar way?  I have no idea.  This is also different from what the OP intended, but a lot more interesting.

Indeed, it is so interesting I started not one, not two, but THREE threads trying to discuss this very topic! Two of them were trashed by the usual know-nothings so fast and thoroughly I had them removed. The third I had to close but left up since it had managed to accumulate information some might find useful.  

Among the many mysteries of learning to listen, there are THREE TIMES as many ear cells devoted to detecting frequencies ABOVE AND BEYOND our so-called audible limit (20kHz) and that is just for starters.    

Functional MRI shows we do process music and language in different areas. What I find most fascinating, why I started the discussions, there are many aspects of sounds we do not seem capable of hearing without the language to describe them.    

Which comes first, the words or the hearing? I know from experience I was unable to hear any difference between various DACs and CDP until after I read Harley's book (see above) and learned some of these terms. Then slowly, gradually, I began to become aware of some of these same sonic attributes I was hearing.    

Attack, body or sustain, decay. Resolution, grainy or liquid. Timbre. And a lot more. All these are there with every sound, be it cymbal or guitar string. At some point it hit me, the words became associated with the sounds, and from that point on they became increasingly easy to identify. Before this happened all I could say was one sounds a little better. But I couldn't say why, couldn't even be sure. That all changed and now it is easy, both to hear and almost always the differences are also easy to describe. It is more a question of how much time do we have and how much detail do you want? Where before it was just, "better, sort of."   

Pretty sure I know how this happens. How we learn. It is like I said before, repetition literally re-wires the brain. New neural connections are made. Like learning to drive a car or golf ball it doesn't "just happen". Nobody ever learned to hit home runs by just swinging the bat a lot. The usual advice people give to just listen a lot, while better than nothing just ain't gonna do it. You need to be actively listening, actively thinking about what you are hearing, not just comparing one thing with another but thinking about how what you are hearing aligns with terms like liquid/grainy, extended/rolled off, recessed/forward, etc.    

In other words I think how we learn audio is no different than how we learn other skills like rock climbing, performance driving, etc. We don't just go play a lot of tennis, we read books, watch the pro's, get a coach to learn how to swing the racquet, and then practice, practice, practice. But it does no good to practice the wrong technique. Bad habits are harder to unlearn than good ones are to learn. So the learning how to do it right part has to come first.

"How do you learn?" is one fascinating topic. I’ve read that learning involves making new connections between neurons, literally re-wiring the brain, which is why repetition is so often involved. But I don’t think that is what the OP had in mind. Even though it is literally the title. Kind of like the "What there is" thread. Both truly fascinating topics, unfortunately nothing to do with what the OP really meant.

It is all enough to make me wonder, "How do we learn to write what we mean?"

Case in point.

You need a solid information base. So an absolute requirement is: The Complete Guide to High-End Audio. by Robert Harley

Winner winner chicken dinner!   

I was gonna say that but didn't want to just give it away. There is so much in that book, the typical audiophile even after many years can pick it up and still learn a lot. Highly recommended!

On second thought there is One Source that stands apart as a beacon for everything you need to know. Behold! https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php

That's not a source. That's a list of sources. Might as well say, "Search Bar".

What do you mean? What are you trying to "learn"? There is no One source.