Just another Orange fuse thread

The only reason threads like this get closed down is because trolls like George go out of their way to denigrate and incite others to levels of acrimony way out of proportion to the discussion. He even rejoices in the closing of threads, bragging about it like a 10 year old. Just go back and read his rants and you'll see.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe this is all a matter of perception? He sees himself as Don Quixote, chivalrously saving defenseless audiophiles from greedy charlatans. We see him as, "None shall pass!" the Black Knight in Monty Python, hilariously oblivious to having been (rhetorically) shredded limb from limb.

As Millercarbon stated too many people don’t know how to listen. That  not only applies to music ,their stereos but others as well. When I go to a business meeting with people I am not too familiar with I watch to see who are the talkers and who are the listeners. When they do talk a large portion of the best ideas come from the listeners.
Unfortunately there are people who have not only lack  listening skills they don’t even know how to communicate properly, they just rant . I like a good exchange of ideas and there are a lot of really knowledgeable people on this site that even though I might not agree with everything they state , I do listen.

Thanks and if you search out and read my review of the Blue fuse you may notice a pretty good example of not only how to listen but "how to communicate properly" as opposed to rant.

Far from shilling the review properly states my first impression was not all that good. The sound was deeper and more dynamic, yes, but yet not quite right. It was disjointed, chaotic, wrong. Forget exactly how I put it but it was something like that. Anyway, point is it didn't sound right- and I knew it!

So I flipped it around the other way and that was it. Everything fell into place. Beautiful. 

It never has gone back the other way. Why would it? If directionality was some vague hard to be sure thing then I'd be switching back and forth till the end of time or I got tired, whichever came first. If it was some random thing I'd never be sure. Instead, I knew first, then did the switch, then left it alone because it was right.

Also I've been at pains to make clear this is not some super power I was born with. It took a long time and a lot of work to develop. Why, and how in the world did this happen? It was as simple as this: when some people said they could hear, I listened to them.

Millercarbon posted:

Most of us here really enjoy listening to music and are here to share and learn anything we can that will help us make the music sound even better. A small but very noisy minority have other priorities. The stories like the people vary but the one thing they all have in common is an inability to listen. They can't hear worth a damn.

Read their posts, you will see. They never compare anything based on how it sounds, unless its to say something meaningless like its better or they like it. Never a word about imaging, sound stage, depth, attack, decay, timbre, tone, or any of the hundreds of things the rest of us use to describe what we're hearing. But they know that's the whole reason we're here, and so they are unbelievably jealous. Jealousy leads to envy and spite and so they joke to relieve the tension in their sorry lives and attack those of us with ears who they see as the reason they have to be so miserable.

Holds up well, I'd say.

Thanks, guys, and much appreciated.

It really is a skill. Said it before, bears repeating. Again and again.

Its a skill, and a hard one to learn at that. A lot of the usual assumptions simply do not apply. Like, listen to musical instruments. I grew up learning to play. Mostly french horn, but also trumpet, sax, harmonica, piano. Makes you real good at discerning pitch and tone. Which sounds good but in hindsight handicapped me for years. All the years I listened for what I was good at listening for, under the false assumption that was all that mattered. 

Problem is, all musical instruments, whatever attack and decay, whatever timbral or harmonic character they have, its all natural and to some extent under the control of the performer. In any case its all natural. Being real good at hearing the difference in the shape of your hand and how far into the bell it goes in the sound of a french horn doesn’t exactly carry over into hearing the difference in liquidity and image depth from faster diodes in a solid state amp.

Its a whole different set of sonic attributes. And it doesn’t do any good to say that just because you can’t hear them, or more to the point aren’t aware that you’re hearing them, that they aren’t important.

One thing I did early on was drag my wife around to act as impartial observer to check my evaluations. Actually a more negative opinion since she wants to spend even less than I want to spend. Which is, for the record, zero. Yet time and again we got the same result- she couldn’t say exactly how, but the better sounding gear always sounded better. She preferred it. By enough to be worth paying more for. Even though she couldn’t say why or how.

This has been demonstrated so many times in the years since its beyond doubt. People can and do hear these things, and people definitely do prefer better- even though many times they cannot express their feelings well enough to say exactly why. That part took me years. Truth be told, still working on it.

Most of us here really enjoy listening to music and are here to share and learn anything we can that will help us make the music sound even better. A small but very noisy minority have other priorities. The stories like the people vary but the one thing they all have in common is an inability to listen. They can't hear worth a damn.

Read their posts, you will see. They never compare anything based on how it sounds, unless its to say something meaningless like its better or they like it. Never a word about imaging, sound stage, depth, attack, decay, timbre, tone, or any of the hundreds of things the rest of us use to describe what we're hearing. But they know that's the whole reason we're here, and so they are unbelievably jealous. Jealousy leads to envy and spite and so they joke to relieve the tension in their sorry lives and attack those of us with ears who they see as the reason they have to be so miserable.

I keep trying to tell them listening is a skill. No one has it, we all have to learn, and they can too. But for some its too late. All they will ever do is bash and criticize, insult and demean. Which admittedly are tools of debate. When all you have is a hammer though then everything is a nail. That's another thing they could stand to learn, how to add tools to their tool box. To learn how to learn. 

Fortunately while prolific and noisy they are few in number. One approach is to simply ignore them. As much fun as it is to debate, you will notice they never really do debate. They may talk and pose and pretend as if they want to, but watch, they never really do. So don't get sucked in. Just ignore them. They crave attention. Don't give it to them. Make them earn it. If you engage at all, ask what they have actually done. Because almost always its pure hot air. They have done nothing. Then ask them what differences they hear. Stick with what matters. Ignore the rest.