What exactly is critical listening? Who does it?

Your question is surprising, given how many times I’ve seen you on the forum. You express a common misconception about critical listening. It’s not about habitually listening in a way that is always dissecting every single instrument or constantly evaluating every sonic aspect. That would indeed be exhausting and detract from enjoyment.

Critical listening is best understood as "listening with a specific, often temporary, goal in mind for system improvement." Think of it like this:

Imagine your audio system is a garage. You don't reorganize it all the time; you do it when you need to. At the beginning; when you've added a lot more stuff to it; when you've changed things around in it or have different priorities. You don't reorganize a garage most of the time. You just use it for other purposes.

Same with an audio system: sometimes, you need to "critically listen" to set it up  or re-organize it. You might focus on a particular section (e.g., the bass response), identify what’s out of place (e.g., boomy bass), and make adjustments (e.g., move the subwoofer). This is a focused task with an end goal: a better-organized garage.

Once your "garage" (your audio system) is optimized to your satisfaction – perhaps the bass is now tight and well-defined, or the vocals are clear and present – you don’t need to keep "re-organizing" it. You simply enjoy the improved space.

Who does critical listening? Well, anyone seeking to improve their audio experience. This could be audiophiles, audio engineers, or even casual listeners who notice something isn’t quite right and want to fix it.

Does it bring enjoyment? Some enjoy the process of analysis. Others -- it sounds like you -- find thinking analytically to be irritating or difficult and not pleasurable at all. To each their own. But in either case the *outcome* is a more satisfying listening experience. Once you’ve addressed the issues, you simply relax and enjoy the music without your brain nagging you about imperfections. It’s about getting to a point where the "quality of what you’re listening to" sounds good enough so you can stop being critical and just appreciate the music. 

It's just OCD man, pure and simple. Enjoy what you like and forget the rest. 

Right, and don't think critically about anything else -- diet, medical care, car purchases, choice of friends, or anything being done in society. That's all "OCD," too. Just melt into a puddle of knownothingism and ride the wave of blissful ignorance.

@sns I like the distinction you make between critical thinking and analytical thinking.

The idea that a critique can be "simple appreciation" is a tricky concept. To my understanding, "critique" involves at least two layers of experience, both the very simple *having* of the experience (resonating with the music) and the more reflective secondary *reflection* about the experience.

So, critique is multi-layered and this is not what some want in their listening. They want to just "enjoy the music" and that means *not* reflecting on it ("appreciating it" as you put it). This is why it’s conflated with "analytical thinking" which is thinking put to a purpose -- judgment about better and worse.

That said, one can understand the conflation, no? After all, appreciation is also (at least implicitly), depending on a comparative. To say, "Ah, now that’s really nice" is to imply that it’s "nicer than usual" which is comparative.

Personally, I cannot just immerse in music in a one-level way -- mere resonating. I move between that kind of immersion and the other, appreciation-listening. Still, going that additional step, to analytical thinking, can be hard to keep at bay, for me.

That was a helpful clarification ("critique" vs. "analysis").

My biggest issue is with the claim listening purely for the music is the highest/best mode or goal of the audiophile. How can this be when the very essence of this hobby/obsession is sound quality.  So now we're supposed to ignore sound quality and transcend into this blissful world where sound quality is of no consequence. 

I agree 100%. Such statements seem like ways to avoid analysis. Then again, there's someone who has not dodged analysis, Mike Lavigne who says,

"critical listening is a tool. not the goal."

Mike's post laid out in nice detail the iterative back and forth which brought his system to a happy state of completion. Now, I don't know how you take his comment, in its wider context.  I, for one, would not have put it as definitively ("the" goal). After all, there is positive enjoyment of sound as well as of musical content.

So, one counterargument to the music-first is roughly that: viz.,  sound-is-a-positive-good-too.

Another route is what we might call the "sound and music are inseparable" argument. Your comment about having multiple elements go hand and hand speakes to that. 

(Consider someone enjoying the juicy-sweet-crunchy taste of an apple. If I said  "Ok, but aren't apples really about the crunch?" they would look at me as if I didn't understand what it means to eat an apple. To me, your comment conveys that kind of point.)

True critical state of listening is a mindful state where one recognizes all these imperfections yet accepts them on their own terms. 

Agreed. Think of the difference between a perfectly symmetrical beautiful face and one which is beautiful but interesting, asymmetrical. Hawthorne got to the heart of the falsity of perfection with his short story, "The Birthmark." 

Certainly for most of us there eventually becomes a time when certain flaws cannot be ignored or intolerable. 

This happened to me when I started listening to a much higher percentage of symphonic music. The flaws (or shortcomings) were now too pronounced in the speakers and I needed to make a change.

I'd add one other point which might give a bit more room for the "listen to the music argument." There are times I get lost in the music because of its (let's say "semantic") content. This is akin to watching a movie and forgetting you're watching a rectangular screen, or reading a novel with a certain size and type of font. The goal of "getting lost in the music" is, on this interpretation, about forgetting the media (even the pleasurable aspects of that media) and letting the semantic content completely suffuse your experience. That kind of consummatory experience is one we all have and which is a legitimate goal. But -- here I return to your point above -- it's not a "superior" goal or the "only" goal. 

Is transcendence or suspension of consciousness considered to be the highest form or goal of listening to music reproduction on a high end system? I’d suggest setting and propagating this as a goal is a disservice to the audiophile community, this invites discontent by setting a nearly impossible goal. 

100% agree with your statement, not only because it invites discontent, but also because it is merely posited as the supreme goal, without justification. Let 1000 goals bloom!

Who the hell cares about sound quality anyway, really pretty silly in the whole scheme of things

Of course, in the moral scheme of things, this is true. But it’s very hard to care half-way about something we love. I’m in Siena right now and people here are NUTS for the Palio. Their whole being is wrapped up in it. To me, it seems like collective lunacy -- but then I think, "This is who they are, to themselves. This is their identity."

What I like about audiophiles is their ability to care so much about the fabric of what makes life enjoyable. I like the fact that they’re "serious" about it, that they care enough to debate and argue (with civility, of course). Would mindless scrolling on a phone be better? 

This is not a vocation or a moral mission, but it is a serious hobby, with real stakes, and profound payoffs. 

For me, critical listening changes future listening. It improves apprehension, enlarges vision, refines discrimination, and creates new standards. Music gives me the object full of meaning; listening critically involves grasping potentialities in that object which were unseen. Subsequent experiences of listening are thicker, richer. 

In other words, listening is not just a mere medium for emotion. My ability to listen, critically, helps me discriminate among goods. And as soon as I begin to compare such goods -- this singer sounds more detailed, that soundstage is more realistically presented, that bassoon sound richer and full of character, etc. --  I am doing criticism. 

Criticism requires inquiry into the conditions and consequences of the outcome valued. It is needed to enhance perception and to allow for appreciation of the same thing over time. Again, it accomplishes this by uncovering new meanings. Criticism is the path from "merely enjoying" something to enjoying it as reflectively validated.

Criticism allows me to choose more knowingly because it reveals the conditions and consequences involved. It also makes it possible to express my likings in an informed way. Criticism is the main reason an audio forum, even the hobby, can exist at all.

@westborn Regarding Socrates, here’s my take. It’s a common misreading to think that Socrates’ claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living" is about "self-improvement," generally. It's not really "be all that you can be," in our modern self-help sense; rather, it’s actually deeply intertwined with his view that "It is better to be dead than wicked."

An unexamined life is one where someone passively accepts societal norms, desires, and opinions without critical reflection. They don't "think about stuff," crudely, but more specifically, they don't think about values -- what is honesty or courage or compassion. They either ignore the world around them or just say "whatever" or even, "everyone is different." Meanwhile, they become increasingly  ignorant about what is really good or evil -- and so become vulnerable to acting (or passively accepting) what is morally wrong. They "turn a blind eye" to the pain and suffering around them, and their possible complicity in that suffering.

In other words, the ignorant person -- the one living an unexamined life -- either tolerates or passively allows evil acts. This is a form of self-harm, in Socrates’ view, as it harms their most valuable possession: their character (or soul, in his Greek version).

Socrates thought that  our moral integrity was paramount, far surpassing physical life or material possessions. To live in an unexamined way, then, is to become vulnerable to wickedness, and this inflicts the greatest possible damage  on oneself.