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Second opinions — how have others (including non-audiophiles) helped you?

Have been building a system since December 2020, just about at a place where I can rest for a while. Very enjoyable process of researching, trying, listening. Last phase, room treatments, are just about done.

Along the way, it's been very useful to bring in other family members and some close friends to listen and tell me what they hear. Most are non-audiophiles. But what jumped out to them helped me recalibrate what I was attending to and listen anew.

I was really trying to listen critically — sometimes with checklists of qualities to pay attention to. But myopia is a hard problem to see around, if you will. In some very important moment (including speaker tryouts), they pointed to obvious problems which I was missing.

Here's one recent example. I had been trying to tame some bass peaks and loaded the front of the room up with panels. I got those peaks under control — tight bass, well placed imaging, natural sounding instruments. Then, I had my wife sit down, and in a couple of seconds she noticed that things sounded "constrained" and "missing air." I pulled a couple bass traps out of there and things opened up — "Ah, that's better," she said. As I sat to listen, she was right. Better reverb, more space, lightness.

That's just one example. My question to anyone wanting to share is how other people (including non-audiophiles) helped you improve your system.
hilde45

Showing 2 responses by calvinandhobbes

calvinandhobbes
312 posts
 
I've found that some people inherently have good listening skills for discerning differences. For people around me, I've found that my mother has a particularly sensitive ear. I think my son does as well.

Despite not having listened to a whole of high-end audio, my mom can hear something and describe what she's hearing exactly as what's in my mind. I think people that have those skills for discerning differences, especially if they are not audiophiles that get all caught up in what the equipment "should" sound like are very helpful for overcoming the confirmation bias of thinking something might sound better or even different when it does not.

My wife is not into audio equipment at all, but by observing her responses to what's playing, I can learn a lot about the sound quality of the equipment that I'm testing in my system. She seems pretty attune to harshness. If she says 'your music is too loud', I will see if my actual volume is loud or not. If my music is on at a low volume level, I can tell that a digital component has some level of harshness (perhaps due to jitter or analog noise coming into the system). Also, if she starts singing to music that she likes, I can tell that equipment is doing in terms of being able to "follow the tune".

FWIW, I've been putting together a digital front end and my choices seem to all be trending in the right direction on this 'spousal acceptance test'.

WiFi > Ethernet (WiFi turned off)
Ethernet cable
USB cable
Addition of an Audioquest Jitterbug noise filter to the USB output
DACs: Denafrips Ares II > Chord Qutest > Chord Qutest running off of a battery > Denafrips Pontus II
calvinandhobbes
312 posts
 
Unfortunately, my mom lives several states away. My son is across the hall in our house though. He's pretty good with words...at least good enough that I can understand whether what he is hearing fits or doesn't fit with what I'm hearing.
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