Why audiophiles are different (explained with color)

Agree with millercarbon with a twist  that explains human behavior and characteristics -  You can  take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink the water. You can take a horse to water but it may decide instead to take a whiz in the water trough. Finally, you can take an ass to water and if it drinks the water it surely doesn’t become a horse; it is still an ass.

What I find fascinating about this discussion is there is mention of a book about audio, Robert something or other and how after reading it a new world of sound appreciation opens up.

What’s most fascinating about that is, we don’t learn that way. Especially when talking about nuance.

For instance, for anyone reading this who isn’t color blind go look at Pantone’s color of the year 2012 “Tangerine Tango” (DD4124). You have now likely seen a color that you haven’t seen before. I challenge you to describe it to a friend or family member who hasn’t seen it and have them use an RGB color palate on the computer to dial in the color you’re describing.

What you’re seeing is someone’s seeing (or in the case of audio listening) translated into words that are then filtered through someone else language filter to be reconstructed into what you have seen or heard.

The truth is you can’t translate nuance into words like that. When your friend or family member sees tangerine tango for the first time they will finally know what it is.

This is the same for auditory learning, you can’t read about it in a book. Someone has to distinctly point out the sound that you’re listening to and add a reference vocabulary to it. Otherwise what you might think of as tangerine tango, someone else might think is reddish orange.

So while there are terms that are descriptive of audio nuance, they simply can’t be reasonably exchanged through words in a book or on a forum. Sadly even if you were to encapsulate them on some audio medium to share, the tool that reproduced that sound would alter what it is.

Here’s a good example of trying to share pink that can’t actually be shared without being there in person.

https://youtu.be/_NzVmtbPOrM

.....’We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience. To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.’.....A.H.

Learning about the music and the way how it is created or about its internal structure (from musicians point of view) I find fascinating. Putting objective on describing reproduced sounds and even calling it 'discipline' is slightly pretentious, to say at least...of course, imho......

There is truth in some of what has been written in recent posts about the subjective nature of perception and the difficulty in describing those perceptions to others in a meaningful way. Not impossible to do so TO SOME DEGREE, especially if a well chosen (as much as possible) descriptive vocabulary is developed based on agreed upon perceptions. Example: at its most basic, it would not be difficult for there to be agreement when there is an increase in overall volume, or bass, for instance. Obviously things get much more subtle and complicated that. Still, it would be a good start to build on. I have done precisely this with inexperienced listeners with success.

However, all this points to something that I feel audiophiles have unfortunately gotten away from and which used to be one of the foundational ideas of this hobby: the use of the live unamplified (acoustic) music reference. First, and to point out the obvious, this is not an argument against the idea of wanting a type of sound from our systems that pleases us without regard to a live music, or any other reference. Anyone is obviously free to enjoy their music with whatever type of sound that he wants. Moreover, if a listener has no interest in music genres that are acoustic/unamplified in nature then this is probably all moot. This  is, however, an argument against the idea that it is NOT possible nor valid, to use the live acoustic music reference. It most certainly is.  The detractors should remember that for some listeners THAT IS the most pleasing sound and that this is not just an exercise in some sort of “academic” pursuit.

There seems to be a knee jerk reaction to dismiss this idea by citing the subjective nature of perception. The problem with that argument is that one’s subjectivity carries over to whatever the source of the sound is at any moment. In other words, if for example, a certain spectral balance, or aspect thereof, is heard a certain way when attending a live performance of unamplified music due to any idiosyncrasies in our personal physiological hearing “mechanism”, it will be perceived the same way when listening to a recording. A valid comparison can thus be made. Clearly, there are many variables present when listening to live unamplified music; different halls, seating position, different reproduction equipment, etc. However, there is so much more information, particularly in the areas of timbral and rhythmic nuance in the sound of live unamplified instruments/music that enough of it survives the recording process and our imperfect reproduction equipment to still be able to make a valid comparison between what is heard live and what is heard from our sound system. Substantial familiarity with the sound of live is of course necessary; something which may be impossible or unappealing for some to pursue. Add electronic amplification to the mix (😉) and it makes it much more difficult, if not impossible.

Harry Pearson was right.

Take the Max Luscher Color Test - a classic in psychology.