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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 newbee

newbee
4,811 posts
 

Obviously critical listening skills are bad. Without them you might be able to just enjoy the music. Or not. Without them you'll never have to worry, or if not, you won't have the skills to fix a problem you can't diagnose. 

For OP, how do you distinguish critical listening skills from plain old ordinary ones? What skills do you use to set up a new system? Listen to music? Is it really a shortage of hearing skills or just audio sloth? 

Back under the bridge. :-)

 

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