In pursuit of the golden ear.


Just how do you train yourself to attain that golden ear? How do you tell if the highs are extended, mids are warm, base with authority, musical, colorations, etc, etc? In order for you to make a judgment call, you must have a base to compare to. Logic tells me that best gauge to use is live music, vocals or instruments. But I believe that most of us are not train musicians nor do we have time to attend concert halls. Whatever bases we have comes typically from our audio equipment evolutio or from other folks' setup.

Please enlighten me on your golden ear secrets; I would like to move up from my copper ear to that elusive golden ear. Thanks.
springowl
Greetings,

I used to ponder the same question.

It all boils down to what audio equipment you've heard, and your ability to accurately analyze what you're hearing.

This evelution can be a doubled edge sword.

For example, there have been many times when I felt my system sounded as good as it possibly could.

Then I acquire a new piece of equipment that ellevates things to a whole new level and I couldn't immagine listening ever again without that piece equipment.

It's very difficult to know what your missing and the weaknesses in your system until you hear something better.

Hence the double edge sword because this can get quite expensive.

Once you go down this road, having a fair amount of disposable income would problably help the situation.

It seams many audiophiles become bitter or go into denial, when they figure out just how much it usually takes to achieve the higher levels of audio playback available today.

Unfortunately, spending a tone of money doesn't alway get you there.

One recent example I experienced was with my headphones.

I had been using Sennheiser 650s which I thought sounded about as good as any headphone possibly could, and I really enjoyed listening to them.

Then along comes the new AKG 701s, which everyone is proclaiming as the new BEST headphone. So I get a pair and low and behold, they were right.

The 701s blow the 650s away in every catagory. After listening to the 701s I can't understand how I could have ever tolerated the 650s, they just sound terrible compaired to the 701s.

If you haven't had this kind of experience yet, once you do, you'll fully understand to answer to your question.
first of all you have to have a collection of very good recorded medias.
if it's not recorded good than don't listen even if ya realy like it...
Thanks for all the comments, there's alot of good practical suggestions here to apply and ponder on.