"I Trust My Ears"

The following article by noted audio engineer Ethan Winer offers a cogent explanation for why we believe what we hear. As Winer explains, two people each claiming to hear different things can actually both be right:

Why We Believe

A very good article...

I used this comb-filtering effect positively in my dedicated acoustics room in many ways with many resonators of different parameters and location... The result was stupendous...( i called this my mechanical room equalizer)

My headphone of choice the AKG K340 hibryd is extraordinary precisely because of his dual acoustic chamber with resonators playing positively with combsfiltering effect because Dr. Gorike was a physicist and acoustician...

Acoustics rule, not price not the gear but first and last acoustic (Yes gear design matter and source and synergy but not as much as acoustic and psycho-acoustics tools)

Once this is said , the combfiltering effect is huge...

but reducing all others factors to it to debunk audiophile is wrong sorry...

I used many "tweaks"  and they are not the result of combfiltering effect...

For example i used well located Schumann generator with positive impact...

etc...

Combfiltering effect and he is right here  makes objective judgment of audiophile products or acoustics  new parameters hard to really spot...

But when you play with combfiltering effect parameters and able to master them  you are able to perceive what comes from it and what do not...

His conclusion about the power of acoustics is right and it is what i said here for years but he explained it better than i did...

Subjectivist as objectivist miss the psycho-acoustics factors and the power of physical acoustics parameters controls...

Over the years I have seen many "religious" arguments in newsgroups and web forums. The science-minded objectivists assert that everything can be measured, and things like replacement AC wall outlets cannot possibly affect the sound no matter what the subjectivist "tweakers" claim. The subjectivists argue back they are certain they can hear a difference and the objectivists are simply measuring the wrong things.

It now appears that both sides have been right all along! Some things really are too insignificant to change the sound audibly, but often the wrong things have been measured too. The room you listen in has far more influence on what you hear than any device in the signal path, including even the loudspeakers in most cases. It makes perfect sense that the one thing neither camp has ever considered - acoustic comb filtering - turns out to be the real culprit.

Crocodiles had tastes and we cannot convince them their tastes are bad habits...

A part of our brain is a crocodile...

A higher part need concept to appreciate higher meaning...

Our physical hearing is biased physically and physiologically, but we own another pair of ears, not visible in the physical plane but existing in the more subtle plane...

Sound is not mere physical meaningless waves but it is which  convey the meaning we read in the vibrating sound sources about his own state (human voices states qualities,instruments states qualities,a fruit we tap to decipher his ripebness state etc) This information about the vibrating sound source from which we can respond by resonating ourselves,this information quality is also "sound", it is also linked to a pattern we can see observing water or sand vibrating to some frequencies (Chladni and Cymatics of Hans Jenny).

Music in contrast is not mere sound but live on another higher meaning plane of his own manifesting through physical and non physical perceived sound state meaning...

Then we must be trained and educated to understand music... calling our starting point "my tastes" is often only reflecting the social programation linked to the social programming engineering of "our tastes"...

We must learn in acoustic and in music what is "timbre" meaning,what is musical time (duration,beats,Rythms), why it is not physically measurable as a creative event... etc...

ghdprentice said it well...

We must train our hearing by tuning our brain with thinking concepts and setting experiments in a system/room with different musical styles..

Tastes are nothing except a starting point from the animal in us to the angel passing through us. Tastes must be educated.

Perception of an unknown event from which we had no prior concept cannot be recognized nor memorized. We need acoustics concepts to understand audio.