"I Trust My Ears"


Do you? Can you? Should you?

I don’t. The darn things try to trick me all the time!

Seriously, our ears are passive sensors. They forward sonic data to our brains. Ears don’t know if the data in question represents a child crying, a Chopin prelude, or a cow dropping a cowpie. That’s our brains’ job to figure out.

Similarly, our brains decide whether A sounds better than B, whether a component sounds phenomenal, etc.

So, "I trust my ears" should really be "I trust my brains".

And that has a different ring to it, doesn’t it?

 

 

devinplombier

Showing 1 response by carlso63

I would not consider myself a 'true' audiophile because I have always had the philosophy that my goal is to create a sonic experience that I find the most pleasing - and not necessarily to try and replicate exactly what "...the artist intended / the music sounded like in the studio..." etc.

I would qualify that statement with the end result of me efforts being still fairly close to the intent of the artist and / or studio engineers... but for me, MY listening satisfaction is placed above trying to achieve the flattest response curve, lowest roll-off numbers, etc.

My only gripe is when 'true' audiophiles try to tell me that "you just don't know any better..." My retort is usually something like "is that knowledge of what is 'better' actually such a positive thing - when at least I can say that I am thoroughly satisfied with my system's performance, and I thoroughly enjoy the listening experience I have... while you are perpetually NEVER satisfied and always feeling like your system is 'unfinished' and 'not good enough yet..."???