Learning to Listen: Neurological Evidence

winnaardt,
We have a lot in common in the way we listen to music. I love picking out and following lines of different instruments and singers and use that skill to analyze my playback gear. 

The more I can hear into a piece and pick something to follow, successfully, is my way of judging the ability to separate notes and themes. If that is successful, then lots of other parameters can be more easily met and judged. So the easier it is to judge begets ease of listening which begets satisfaction.

All the best,
Nonoise

hilde45-

OP, thank you so much for this post. Adding it to my library and will learn from this. FYI, I've been having a back and forth with Ethan Winer and he keeps *insisting* that if his list of measurements show no difference between cables, then anything perceived is either part of a scam or placebo. Everyone who claims to hear a difference, he says, is a dupe or a shill. Everyone. I keep telling him that because the brain/perceptual systems are so complex, that he should not be so sure that he has the final word on what/how to measure for -- that he has to consider the complicated listener-perceiver side of the equation. He's a hedgehog; he won't budge. Ethan aside, this area of research is fascinating. Thank you for sharing this. If you ever find more, please share or DM me.

Will do. Thanks.

It was listening to the XLO Test CD track Poor Boy that triggered my awareness, of what I was hearing from some of the better CD players and amps. They were less etched and grainy than mine, but it took playing this all analog recording to make the connection.

This is all good, but I’m not certain what "etched and grainy" means to you in terms of sound. Since I don’t know for sure what it is in acoustical terms that you were perceiving I have no way of knowing if I could detect it. If I could detect it, I assume I would get a similar perception of it as you do. But without knowing what it is there’s no way to be sure. I can tell you what comes to mind for me when I think of those words in terms of sound - static and interference tones, with a few harsh peaks here and there. That would be the grainy part in my mind. Etched, well that’s harder to imagine but I would assume the starts and stops of tones would be louder than the middle and maybe start and stop with clicks, like a CB radio effect.

Are there any overtly etched and grainy sounding recordings that you can refer me to as a reference?

I found this video where a guy etched grooves in a tortilla with a laser and played it on a record player. Sounds grainy and etched in a corny way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzCv_9eaoM

What you are asking is at the root of the Learning to Listen discussions: How do you learn to hear something you don’t yet know how to hear?

The first two were direct and to the point. Whatever it is you are able to hear today, there was a time when you were not. How did this happen?

With me, the words were there. Robert Harley has a great book where he talks about all these different terms. The smoothness of a sound lies somewhere along a continuum. Etch is harshest, then grain which can be coarse or fine, then as it gets smoother pristine, then liquid, and the liquid can be excellent clear water or go too far and be syrupy.

Anyone can hear these things, it is simply a question of learning. This discussion starts off with a video where we see the actual bio-neural pathways by which such learning happens. The question still remains, Why? How?

“Selectively changing what we’re listening to in response to the content. Literally reaching out to listen for things.”

That quote is from the video. He gives the example of the flute, but it could be anything. Note another time he talks about cells that respond very fast to transients. Very different from the ones we typically test hearing with. Those cells sense tones at different frequencies. We have way more hearing ability than just crude frequency. We can do way more than just pick out the flute.

Your question sounds exactly like where I was 30 years ago. You know all these terms, but where are they in the music? How do you learn to identify them? That is the big mystery.

Sorry we have to keep closing these threads. The one or two serious comments like yours and hilde45 get crowded out and worse. One so bad I had the mods remove it. The other one is closed but still there for viewing. Anyone seriously interested in the subject I would suggest it is worth the time to read, because you are not alone. Others have had these same revelations, epiphany, whatever you want to call it. When it happens it happens.

This video gives us the mechanism to understand some of it. When you decide to listen for something, anything (the flute) neural impulses physically alter the hearing mechanism to help make that happen. But you have to know what it is, you have to have something in mind. Which until you hear it and know you’ve heard it, how do you do that?

If you want to learn to pick out grainy vs smooth, well that is part of the burn-in process. Pretty sure you have already heard it. Just didn’t recognize that aspect of it. Tubes tend to be smoother, ss grainier. CD always grain compared to LP. Doug Sax mastered recordings are all liquid smooth. Ditto Sheffield.

Jennifer Warnes The Well, mixed by George Massenburg and mastered by Bernie Grundman is a lovely luxuriously liquid recording compared to Famous Blue Raincoat which is not grainy other than in comparison. That is one of the many things that makes this so hard. None of these things are objective absolutes. They are all subjectively relative. That is also what makes it so gratifying when you get it.

Thanks for this thread and video OP....