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Second opinions — how have others (including non-audiophiles) helped you?

Have been building a system since December 2020, just about at a place where I can rest for a while. Very enjoyable process of researching, trying, listening. Last phase, room treatments, are just about done.

Along the way, it's been very useful to bring in other family members and some close friends to listen and tell me what they hear. Most are non-audiophiles. But what jumped out to them helped me recalibrate what I was attending to and listen anew.

I was really trying to listen critically — sometimes with checklists of qualities to pay attention to. But myopia is a hard problem to see around, if you will. In some very important moment (including speaker tryouts), they pointed to obvious problems which I was missing.

Here's one recent example. I had been trying to tame some bass peaks and loaded the front of the room up with panels. I got those peaks under control — tight bass, well placed imaging, natural sounding instruments. Then, I had my wife sit down, and in a couple of seconds she noticed that things sounded "constrained" and "missing air." I pulled a couple bass traps out of there and things opened up — "Ah, that's better," she said. As I sat to listen, she was right. Better reverb, more space, lightness.

That's just one example. My question to anyone wanting to share is how other people (including non-audiophiles) helped you improve your system.
128x128hilde45
daj
87 posts
 
"Very deep observation indeed...

We cannot perceive adequately a phenomenon for which we have no concept whatsoever...And further we cannot improve our perception of this phenomenon if we cannot even name it..."

Agreed, more or less. Brain architecture, if it's not there there is blackness, void, nothingness, non-experience. Perception needs the processor, and language takes us into the conceptual realm. But there is also the immediate, gut level perception that needs no language. Language often gets in the way of and can distort the visceral, animal level, immediate experience of things. 
bob540
407 posts
 
No one helps me to listen at my home.  I am single, temporarily with one house guest that is hard of hearing (he has commented that the music sounds nice), and I rarely have other people over.  Most people I know want me to come to their house, I guess because they feel more comfortable there.  They couldn’t care less about fancy audio equipment anyway.

The people that have helped me have been on this forum, by virtue of their experience and familiarity with equipment.  Over the past year, I have come to realize that the advice is suited to different spending budgets, and while it is often recommended to “listen to different gear and see what you like”, I don’t have much patience with having to pack if up and send it back if I don’t like it. Also, I don’t go to high-end audio dealers because I likely won’t buy there (I expect a mark-up due to the overhead they must cover) and I don’t want them to feel like I am wasting their time.

I’m not all that fussy, so I prefer to research and rely upon positive reviews to tell me what might be best.  I expect non-ideal purchases to be part of the learning process, and I don’t tend to sink a lot of money into gear if I end up under-impressed.  In any event, I do appreciate the advice I have received from others on the forum. 
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,961 posts
 
Perception needs the processor, and language takes us into the conceptual realm. But there is also the immediate, gut level perception that needs no language. Language often gets in the way of and can distort the visceral, animal level, immediate experience of things.
Gut feeling and conceptualization are polarities in the human being...Not dualities... Polarities...

A duality is an opposition in language,a separating perspective; a polarity is constitutive of the complete phenomenon,a unifying perspective, like electricity and magnetism for example, or like day and night in Goethe color theory...

Then language NEVER get in the way, save if you let it do the thinking for you....

And you cannot explore consciously and in a systematic way the ACOUSTIC unknown country in audio experience with only your gut feeling at all...Sorry...

It takes also the possibility in us to put TAGS all along the journey, these tags are words and concepts...

I love God, Bach or my wife with my gut feeling but also with my brain...In silence or with poetry.... Each day his own and better with the two....





«When my wife kill me it is a duality, when i kiss her, it is a polarity, if she kiss me back tough»-Groucho Marx 🤓
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
4,974 posts
 
@boxer12  Enjoyed your response. I also enjoy tweaking, though since I'm still trying to discover the initial potential of my system, I feel like this is "pre-tweaking." It's like getting one's new car out on a straight rural highway and "seeing what she can do." Until one does that, one is still pre-tweaking, I reckon. Regarding "perfection traits" -- well, there's a way in which constant *worrying* is a psychiatric condition for audiophiles, and no one is better than audiophiles at confessing to it and claiming some shame. BUT, I love to play with the room, the stereo, etc. In a more forgiving spirit, the word for that is "tinkering," and it's a way of being involved with machines and systems that I have loved since I was a boy. I have no impulse to write it off as a "tic" of my personality. (Not that you said I should.)

@daj  Exactly my thought -- the notion that perception needs language to exist "adequately" (whatever that means) is, I think, a wrongful importation of the conceptual into something which is, if not completely pre-conceptual, at least pre-linguistic. And the stories people are telling here about non-audiophiles speaks volumes for their fully adequate perceptions *regardless* of their ability to express or describe them.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,961 posts
 
the notion that perception needs language to exist "adequately" (whatever that means) is, I think, a wrongful importation of the conceptual into something which is, if not completely pre-conceptual, at least pre-linguistic.
Reality is Alas! not a caricature...

Gut feeling and language are not dualities between which we must choose like between two competitive masters...

The integrality of ANY human experience ask for feeling and concept at the same times...

In acoustic experimewnts and experience it is evident like in human relations...



And the stories people are telling here about non-audiophiles speaks volumes for their fully adequate perceptions *regardless* of their ability to express or describe them.
The fact that my wife who think that my audio journey is an obsession is able to detect a positive change sometimes is absolutely not the proof that she could use her accurate feeling about sound for the sole guide.... She will not go very far with only his gut feeling.... Like most people walking blind already but pleased between different "upgrades" or "tweaks"....They called acoustical experience a "taste".... But acoustic is a science not a "taste"....To go passing a certain stage we need concepts to experiment, the ears opening itself to much more than to our own taste,but to acoustical new dimensions... 
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