Maybe critical listening skills are bad?


In another thread about how to A/B compare speakers for a home I was thinking to myself, maybe the skills a reviewer may use to convey pros and cons of a speaker to readers is a bad skill to use when we evaluate hardware and gear?

I'm not against science, or nuance at all.  I was just thinking to myself, do I really want to spend hours A/B testing and scoring a speaker system I want to live with?

I do not actually.  I think listening for 2 days to a pair of speakers, and doing the same to another pair I need to focus first on what made me happy.  Could I listen to them for hours?  Was I drawn to spend more time with music or was I drawn to writing  minutiae down?

And how much does precise imaging really do for my enjoyment by the way?  I prefer to have a system that seems endless.  As if I'm focusing my eyes across a valley than to have palpable lung sounds in my living room.

Anyway, just a thought that maybe we as consumers need to use a different skill set when buying than reviewers do when selling.

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by jakleiss

I have expressed this before, so forgive the redundancy. I am a Cognitive Psychologist and spent most of my professional life (now retired) measuring people's perceptions of products and correlating those perceptions with product design features to help designers and engineers improve the experience of their products.

It is important to consider that there are two different types of perception. One is based upon the a physical description of a given product and the other is based upon the emotional response of "liking" the product. Typically, two different types of people are used to obtain each of these perceptual judgements. Physical descriptions (probably what corresponds to critical listening) are typically provided by trained experts with proven sensory skills. "Liking" is provided by the perceptual judgements of untrained consumers who are the target audience for the product. The interesting finding in such research is that not all physical qualities to which experts may be attuned correlate with liking. In the end, product developers need only attend on those physical qualities that are associated with what the target audience likes. 

Now, sitting at home the target audience is a sample of one, you. So, the first question is, do you like it? Secondly, it is probably helpful to know why you like it if you want buy things that improve liking in the future. For that you need to know what physical qualities are unique to that experience. You, the listener, might or might not have the perceptual skills to do that. Either way, the first question is, do you like it?