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Listening Skills Part Duex: What are you listening for?

Had a few experiences lately that together were a stark reminder of something known for a long time, because I lived it myself.  

In the beginning, or at any rate going back to about 1991, I was unable to hear any difference between different CD players and DACs. Even some amplifiers, they might not sound exactly the same but I was hard pressed to say why.   

This went on for a long time. Months. Many months. Like okay a year. Whatever. During which time I was driving around hitting all the Seattle/Portland area stores listening to everything I could find. About the only difference big enough to be sure of was receivers. They for sure are crap. But even there it was hard to say exactly in what way. Just the difference there was glaring enough it was obvious this is not the way to go. But that was about it.    

All during this time of course I was reading Stereophile and studying all the reviews and building up a vocabulary of audiophile terms. The problem, seen clearly as usual only in the rear view mirror, was not really being able to match up the terminology with what I was hearing. I had words, and sounds, but without meaning, having no real link or connection between them.   

One day after yet another frustrating trip to Definitive I came home and put on my XLO Test CD and was listening to the Michael Ruff track Poor Boy when it hit me, THIS IS THAT SOUND!!!  

What sound? Good question! The better high end gear is more full and round and liquid and less etched or grainy. Poor Boy is Sheffield, all tube, and so even though being played from CD through my grainy etched mid-fi the tubey magic came through enough to trigger the elusive connection. THIS is "that sound"!  

Once triggered, this realization grew and spread real fast. In no time at all it became easy to hear differences between all kinds of things. "No time at all" was probably months, but seemed like no time at all compared to how long I was going nowhere.  

What happened? There are a near infinite number of different sonic characteristics. Attack and decay, fundamental tone, harmonic, and timbre, those were a few of the early ones I was able to get a handle on- but the list goes on and on.   

Just to go by experience, reading reviews, and talking to other audiophiles it would seem most of us spend an awful lot of time concentrating real hard on our own little list of these terms. We have our personal audiophile checklist and dutifully run down the list. The list has its uses but no matter how extensive the list becomes it always remains a tiny little blip on the infinite list of all there is.   

So what brought this to mind is recently a couple guys, several in fact, heard some of the coolest most impressive stuff I know and said....meh. Not hearing it.   

This is not a case of they prefer something else. This is not hearing any difference whatsoever. At all. None. Nada. Zip. 

Like me, back in the day, with CD.  

These are not noobs either. We're talking serious, seasoned, experienced audiophiles here. 

I'm not even sure it comes down to what they are listening for. Like me in '91, hard to know what you're listening for until you know what you're listening for.   

Which comes first?
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Showing 1 response by danager

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danager
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Which came first?

First for me had to be the wonderment of the realization of a basic stereo image. There are two speakers yet the voice is coming out of the space between them. I had listened and came to love the music long l before I became aware all of the other elements presented by “Stereo”.

I now realize that there is a reason the engineer is listed in the credits of an album. All those nuisances that I’ve learned to listen for are added by someone with a huge board with a lot of volume controls to add just the right amount of left, right volume and ambiance around the element. The sax you hear four steps left and six steps behind was never there. He was actually in a little booth somewhere playing into either a microphone or a group of microphones and then placed at a specific location after the fact.

Unless live recordings are recorded using a single binaural microphone (or two monorail microphones place in a fake head) and the performers aren’t individually miked the sound you are hearing is manufactured. So as I become more aware of the tricks used to trick my brain into building a facsimile of being there or bringing them into my room I pick up more and more nuanced things like reverberation and delay.

So the factors of picking up a listening skill depends upon the factors you are listening for and the desire to care about it. I use my wife as an example a lot because while she listens to music constantly the engineering aspect of it is of no importance more than "I hear the bass" but she definitely enjoys music as much anyone.


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