Can we trust our ears?

bluedog posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

About 15 years ago I went to an artists exhibit with a friend of mine. We were in our early twenties and were both very interested in weird arts.

We were in a room where there was a barking dog on a video.

In the next room, there was a display asking some questions about the barking dog.

One of them was 'did you hear the dog barking'?

Yes of course I did - I thought.

Went back to the previous room.

It was absolutely silent.

Imagination.

I'll have some of what you were smoking

Bluedog ; As some one who is sharing thoughts about grappling with the idiosyncrasies of perception and then to be included into a backhanded comment about drug abuse, your comment is borderline troll/genius.   Pack it in .  

I've always relied on my ears and over many years they have sometimes told me that something that should be 'better' isn't, and that things that shouldn't make a difference do.  In the Naim world the most striking example I've experienced was my dealer popping round some dark, damp Friday evening with a Power Line suggesting we try it on the NASPC powering the control section of my (then) 282.  TBH I didn't think it would make any difference at all. Within 10 secs of the first track we both looked at one another and thought "bu**er!".  The reason the PL made a difference was academic.

More broadly I think our brains play a key role here. As some have already said, the power of expectation and peer-pressure can persuade us that we're hearing something that maybe isn't there or is very subtle. I also think our brains are very sensitive to 'normalising' what we hear and experience so that a tiny change becomes quickly recognisable.  The 'change' might not be qualitatively better but we focus on it.  That's why I think it always wise to try new kit etc in one's own system for several days i.e. so that the new box becomes normalised in the system enabling a more reliable assessment of whether the change is endurably likeable.  As part of this process, putting the old box/cable back in and normalising again is very wise before purchase decisions are made.

IMHO, if something is immediately noticeable,  then out come the test tracks that I usually listen to.

Put the kettle on and make some tea, then a 2nd listen using same tracks.....then it's the mirror test?

If I'm  smileling, then it stays.....if not repeat the process....... 

TOBYJUG posted:

bluedog posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

About 15 years ago I went to an artists exhibit with a friend of mine. We were in our early twenties and were both very interested in weird arts.

We were in a room where there was a barking dog on a video.

In the next room, there was a display asking some questions about the barking dog.

One of them was 'did you hear the dog barking'?

Yes of course I did - I thought.

Went back to the previous room.

It was absolutely silent.

Imagination.

I'll have some of what you were smoking

Bluedog ; As some one who is sharing thoughts about grappling with the idiosyncrasies of perception and then to be included into a backhanded comment about drug abuse, your comment is borderline troll/genius.   Pack it in .  

��

TOBYJUG posted:

bluedog posted:

Ardbeg10y posted:

About 15 years ago I went to an artists exhibit with a friend of mine. We were in our early twenties and were both very interested in weird arts.

We were in a room where there was a barking dog on a video.

In the next room, there was a display asking some questions about the barking dog.

One of them was 'did you hear the dog barking'?

Yes of course I did - I thought.

Went back to the previous room.

It was absolutely silent.

Imagination.

I'll have some of what you were smoking

Bluedog ; As some one who is sharing thoughts about grappling with the idiosyncrasies of perception and then to be included into a backhanded comment about drug abuse, your comment is borderline troll/genius.   Pack it in .  

of course you can trust your ears.

whether anyone else should is a matter of discussion

If your experience runs to fiddling with your hifi while nursing a rather naughty cab sav, listening to Fleetwood Mac Rumours yet again, and adjusting the bolt torque on your LH speaker driver with an allen key and a torque wrench (cos really you have to be repeatable and have the right equipment old chum) then no.

If you have designed IEC 60268-13 listening rooms, listened on statistically analysed blind tests to tens of thousands of products of all sorts, over 30 years, regularly go record things and then listen to them on your system,  then maybe...

The sound we perceive when listening to our systems changes if we change the tilt of our head or we move over on the couch a little bit. You notice a huge difference in the sound when you lean back in relaxation, especially if we combine it with casually crossing our arms behind our head (effectively enlarging our "ears"). These our quite dramatic changes in sound perception that we all encounter. I've never come across someone that listens to music tied down in a chair with a halo-frame around his head (a neurosurgical device that keeps your head in the same position).

The way we perceive music also depends on the time of day; when you're tired you perceive it different than when you are just out of bed. After extended listens the ears get tired too (a known phenomenon amongst audio mixers). At the end of a listening session your ears will perceive less treble, so testing a new cable at that time will result in a different experience than resting for an hour and then starting your session with that cable.

I do believe in better performance when moving up the Naim ladder, to a certain extend. The biggest difference I found whe moving from modest NAD gear to naim, was being able to hear subtleties in the music, most apparent when a song dies out. Also the timbre of instruments can be a lot easier to pick up on good quality systems and I started hearing sound outside the confines of the speakers. Really nice!

What surprises me though is people posting about lower noise floors or crisper highs when changing from one cable to the next, and then seeing the room these people are listening  in, lacking any kind of acoustic treatment whatsoever. 

A lot of audio fanatics say the gear makes up 50% of your sound, the room the other 50%. 

So I concur with above poster; if you have a perfectly treated room, with a fixed position of the listener with a fixed head posistion and preferrably listen to music at the same time everyday for a fixed period of time, you can trust your ears.

Yes, I agree with @Tef that hearing perception is very hard to analyse with any degree of consistency in real world situations. We move furniture around, sit in different places and generally mess with acoustics all the time, not to mention changes in electricity supply, air humidity and so on. We can deduct all these variables - dedicated listening room, mains spur, air conditioning and so on. . . . but I can't help feeling it's putting the cart before the horse. This is about MUSIC. That's why I think protracted listening is important, though not always easy to achieve. It's also why I think it's important to distinguish between three things:

- a system that sounds different to yours in some ways, but not better overall. 

- a system that sounds better than yours. 

- a system that will significantly increase your enjoyment of music. 

For me, only the third of those counts for anything. So there's a limit to my upgrading. I'm getting to the point where sometimes I can here something is better, but it won't increase my enjoyment, so I'm not interested. 

Agree with SolidAir - enjoyment is what it is all about for me too; I am in the planning stage for some upgrades but all will be judged against whether or not they increase my enjoyment, not because they sound "better".

Of course for some other people this will be different, HiFi can be a hobby too and that's great.

Perhaps one way of distinguishing between the two is room treatment - I agree with the fact that the room is important in what one hears, the difference is that the HiFi has to fit in with my room, not the other way around.

Allan.

I've always found the music sounds different depending on the quality of tea I'm drinking... ie Earl Grey sounds better then PG Tips...

In one sense I don't trust my ears at all. I have cloth ears and often fail to hear differences that others rave about. But on the other hand, it is nice to not be as critical as those with golden ears might be.

I think that we can trust our ears, but expectation bias is always a problem.  That is why long term listening is the only test.  Get the equipment and use it for a couple of months. If you are enjoying the music then you did a good job. 

Don't forget that people generally want to hear differences, especially if they spend serious money on their upgrade... 

There's a great book called "Perfecting Sound Forever" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfe...corded/dp/1847081401), abouyt the history of recorded music. (I hope this is not against the rules...)

In the book at a certain point they do a great test with a large group of audio experts (musicians, recording engineers etc, including the author of the book); they let them listen to high quality music files; lossless digital formats, first generation mp3, redbook cd etc on good quality headphones on a good quality playback system. No one can tell which is which.  I must admit I was sort of surprised by this. I can recall that people could tell some verisons of the song were different than another but not which was what.

It really is quite absurd to suggest that you can't trust your ears with regard to anything related to listening to music. 

I'm not sure why hearing-impaired musicians or recording engineers should be considered experts.  Since the mid 80s recording engineers have been telling us that digital recording is perfect and getting better all the time. And headphones? If your speakers don't sound better than a set of headphones, you have some work to do. 

Do I trust my ears?  What else do I have, besides my wife's ears, and she doesn't care. I'm lucky enough to live far away from any Naim dealers. The temptation to upgrade is minimized, making it easier to enjoy what I have. 

Our ears are just a conduit to our brain. Some peoples ears are more sensitive, and some people's brains are more adept at processing the information it receives. Our brain also determines/stores our preferences which is as important a piece of the puzzle as all the other things that determine whether we like one system over another. Our brain also stores information that guides, informs or challenges our preferences.

So the question for me is not whether I trust my ears, but do I trust my brain to process this information without being negatively influenced by all the other information I have stored up there. It has taken a good few years but I'm pretty comfortable I can, although when I was younger I was overly influenced by fads, ads and other people's opinions leading to some pretty poor choices for what I have now learned to trust what I like (what makes me smile).

For me it's not a case of whether some one else's 'ears' are more adept at defining whether something sounds good. This is because my ears are the only pair I have and it's no use me getting a piece of equipment that cannot pick up whatever subtlety or nuance that someone else can. Therefore, whilst I read reviews and comments in order to decide what I should actually audition, ultimately my purchasing choice comes down to how I perceive the sound and ultimately how I 'like' what I hear.  Although this not entirely true as my wife uses her other information gathering device, her eyes, to inform my brain whether that piece of equipment will ever make it out of the box in our house.

Solid Air posted:

Yes, I agree with @Tef that hearing perception is very hard to analyse with any degree of consistency in real world situations. We move furniture around, sit in different places and generally mess with acoustics all the time, not to mention changes in electricity supply, air humidity and so on. We can deduct all these variables - dedicated listening room, mains spur, air conditioning and so on. . . . but I can't help feeling it's putting the cart before the horse. This is about MUSIC. That's why I think protracted listening is important, though not always easy to achieve. It's also why I think it's important to distinguish between three things:

- a system that sounds different to yours in some ways, but not better overall. 

- a system that sounds better than yours. 

- a system that will significantly increase your enjoyment of music. 

For me, only the third of those counts for anything. So there's a limit to my upgrading. I'm getting to the point where sometimes I can here something is better, but it won't increase my enjoyment, so I'm not interested. 

Agreed, sorting out a collection of boxes (and cables) which result in our enjoyment of the resultant music being enhanced is really all we need to trust our ears to do. Simply said but tricky to achieve as those of you who have agonised over whether or not a new bit of kit does actually enhance our enjoyment will attest. As others have pointed out there are so many other variables that can affect the 'quality' of what we hear and our ears and brain have to disentangle all of this in order for us to make a purchase decision which can often involve a sizeable chunk of cash. So the last thing we want to do is make a mistake with our hard earned cash.

I mention enjoyment of music as the final deciding factor. However it is possible to be seduced by a short term 'impressive' demo (even at home) of a particular piece of kit. Now I like to listen and be able to enjoy music over an extended listening session. I have on occasion found that what was initially an 'impressive improvement' becomes overbearing and even irritating over a more extended listening period. Enter the evil of listening fatigue. I am now getting to the point where I appreciate a system that, in the short term may not wow, but has the ability to hold my attention and make sense of music over a longer listening session. Such a system should of course have the capability to kick butt when the music calls for it. My system is starting to do these things, which for me is impressive.

So now I ask my poor old aural receptors not only to tell me if a change of kit is 'better', but does it also enhance my enjoyment of music and will that enjoyment be sustained over a longer listening experience. As I said in an earlier post, our ears (and brain) are incredibly sensitive organs, and as long as we can indulge them with lengthy home demos we can indeed trust them to perform this incredibly complex analysis. Just as well as some of us spend a serious proportion of our disposable income on our HiFi.

Hi I have repeatedly compared 320mp3 with flac and can definitely tell the difference. In truth 320 is pretty good ..... until things get complex then detail gets lost and the sound hardens. You kind of tune into the effect..... Hi res to flac comparison is very easy. I find I get great pleasure in hearing old albums again on a better system.... I can pick out changes. But at the end of the day it's all about enjoying the music .... I find I am repeatedly impressed by well recorded CD red book std the important thing is the quality of recording.

Why should I trust my beat-up ears (three years of military service in the infantry without any ear protection never enhanced my hearing) when I can take the honest word of Hi Fi reviewers who know so much, had measured everything and never admitted of being wrong nor biased, especially when we share exactly the same musical taste? 

Speaking of trust, do we trust our brains to point out the absurdity when a minuscule incremental improvement of the sound ('massive' in audiophile language) is going to cost us a small fortune, or in other words, when we are about to make an UNSOUND decision..?

An extra pair of ears belonging to a musician friend who was kind to join me for an audio auditioning was much appreciated.

Good point Haim, however, the thing is ears.... are what you have been dealt with .... try taking a reality check listen to some live music ..... if it is any good I am sure there will be plenty of people enjoying it around you.... they must be hearing a pretty good version too. Measurements of speakers make me laugh..... +/- 1 dB etc.... hold on do your ears have a flat frequency response .... The important thing is are you enjoying what you hear .... allot of people obviously here obviously enjoy there systems .... but it is more than that ... they get a kick out hearing more almost as a hobby..... and why not its like pushing the envelope in tuned fast car..... anyway enjoy your ears!!!!!

Ears are what we have. We also 'hear' music with our body - resonance of bass and other frequencies is important.

However... I found that with advanced music system an unprepared listener may have problems processing all the information that suddenly becomes available. To illustrate this point a sharp-contrast example: take someone who only listened to MP3 from an iPod and place her / him in front of a full 500-series active system. The amount of information available will come as a shock to the sytem, to quote from Billy Idol.

Conclusion: ears - yes of course. But one also needs to learn how to listen to music, to appreciate its subtelties.

We definitely get used to a certin expectation and presentation.

When my son visits from deepest England he always takes a little while to "get into" my system since it presents so differently to the much more modest system he is used to.

Allan

Allan Milne posted:

 

We definitely get used to a certin expectation and presentation.

When my son visits from deepest England he always takes a little while to "get into" my system since it presents so differently to the much more modest system he is used to.

 

Allan

Nah... must be the north of the wall thing Allan