What exactly is critical listening? Who does it?

@immatthewj 

way earlier.

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.

Agreed completely with @ozzy62 

I can also become more focused on the music if I were multitasking.  Sometimes it get my attention and I then sit down or stop what I was doing to enjoy the moment more.  

RE: "So, my question is why is this a superior mode of listening, what makes it inherently superior? And why is consciousness of sound quality or qualities necessarily a critical mode of listening?"

I don’t think either kind of listening, critical or pure enjoyment, is superior. Each has its place. Critical listening has it all over enjoyment listening if the goal is to describe the sound to others in ways that they can relate to -- but other than that, enjoyment listening is the default mode, at least for me.

As to your 2nd question: purely my opinion, but when "consciousness of sound quality" dominates one’s mind while listening, this allows one to be critical--as in discerning, receptive, paying attention to all aspects of sound. When I’m doing pure enjoyment listening, of course I’m conscious of sound quality as well, but not in a way that dominates my thinking. Rather, my feelings of pleasure and enjoyment of the music dominate my thinking.

I suppose critical & pure enjoyment listening aren’t mutually exclusve: just a balance that shits to critical or enjoyment in a given circumstance. I have experiences with headphones in particular where I cycle from critical to enjoyment listening and back again. For example, tonight I’ll hear the Verite Open headphone via either the Wells Milo headphone amp (SS, very powerful and smooth) or the Icon Audio HP8 amp (transformer-coupled, an entirely different sound). Switching between amps, I always listen critically at first, to pick up key differences in how the amp sounds vs the previous one. But then I relax back into enjoyment mode.

Critical listening and enjoyment listening modes are not mutually exclusive