Do your ears deceive you?

@kevn Yes, that’s a certainty. Very few (none maybe) beginning audiophiles are capable of discerning acoustical properties which coincide with music reproduction at a high level unless hearing a audio system that can accomplish that. Being a musician does not qualify either.

After hearing 1000s of systems at shows, audio salons and friends homes, I am able to compare them with live acoustical music and determine what I like. Audiophiles have differences in music preferences as well as their hearing attributes/character so different strokes for different folks. I also have a great advantage over beginners having recorded in studios, performed and engineered recordings (simple) in major orchestral venues and appraised/inspected most recording studios in So. Cal.

I’m still not an expert though. Time/amplitude-dynamics/tonality-overtones/etc. are immensely more complex in music than photography is (with it’s more easily measured parameters). I’ve taken about 100,000+ photos during my worklife and began with the lowly Argus C-3 rangefinder at 10 years old (beat my parents who just pointed and shot with maybe 2 photos out of a roll being okay-my exposures were fabulous, too bad audio is so much more complex).  

@fleschler - and the greatest difficulty is attempting to gauge the difference of sound quality of a specific piece of equipment in a listening space that isn’t ours…. I’ve found it’s next to impossible to do that away from the specific familiarity of our own personal listening spaces - it’s the ultimate gift of complexity in this crazy hobby of ours 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

@kevn-

                                                  Every post = +1 

                                              and: worth revisiting.

                                          It helps, to love the journey!

                                                   Happy listening!

@rodman99999 ☺️🙏🏻

I’m still surprised that people cannot hear differences in cables. For me, nothing could be easier, and a few of my non-audiophile friends I’ve given cables to, hear it,  and they can even identify what they hear cogently.

But then, my friends were either conductors, play acoustic instruments or it was their major/minor in college, so they KNOW when a cable is correctly reproducing triple-tonguing, or dotted quarter notes. And given I set up their system, and eliminated noise by arranging cables carefully (which means, NOT on top of each other, especially a power cord touching a signal interconnect (speaker cable or interconnect) and an excellent anti-vibration platform (I have Critical Mass Center Stage footers). I think too many systems lack the resolution to hear this, but I still think it is more the noise that people induce by stacking components or, as I’ve already said, cables touching each other.

A good cable should make it clear that one is hearing a Stradivarius, not a Guarneri or an Amati. It would be helpful for people to at least have a passing acquaintance with live music - and I don’t mean the amplified kind. And the number of people familiar with live music seems pretty dismal to me. So, it is not a surprise that there is so much dismissiveness among the people coming into the High End in the past 20 years over things like cable.