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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
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,011 posts
 
But, language and concepts arise from and exist within, to use hilde45’s words, something pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic, i.e. a conscious backdrop or ’ground of being’. This is where our direct experience happens.
You are perfectly right for sure...

i called that after Owen Barfield, "original participation"...And your remark is perfect phenomenological observation...

I will only add that this "grounding" is the root of will for Schopenhauer, the root of feeling for the Romantics, and the root of thinking for Nietszche...

Then we understand each other.....My first reply was  about the very important  difference between the Cartesian duality and the Goethean polarity....

You were right i react too swiftly sometimes because i like discussion and with my retirement from work and confinement i even argue with my shadow....

My best to you....
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
4,974 posts
 
Thank you, @xenolith for what amounts to your audio system CV! Wonderful. I don't want to introduce a detour to the OP, but "the recreation of the recorded event in our living room" is an idea I understand but it cannot, of course, be taken literally. The sound of an orchestra in your living room would have to be miniaturized; no one wants the Ramones in there, either; heavily produced multi-track recordings are not events but collages, and so what is to be produced by a system? Some kind of rendition-that-is-pleasing but not a "recreation." And EDM or ambient music, same thing. There are some ensembles that a system could be seeking to recreate -- a duo or trio, etc. But most people want their systems to do more than just create a holo-deck version of that limited menu of "recreate-ables." I do think there's something to the concept of "fidelity" -- a clarinet sounds like a clarinet in timbre and tonality and even spaciousness. But that is less than what some take to be implied by "recreation." Cheers!
dentdog's avatar
dentdog
498 posts
 
Xenolith, that sounds like a sweet amp. I remember remarkably the decrease in noise with my Audiopax M 100s. MC is correct as to the "quiet" in analog. Sorry but the digital is just unsettling in some way. I can't quite get at the music. Terry9 helped me with some ideas about my Linear tracker. Much thanks. And Almarg, God rest his soul. Total respect for him, as he probably helped more people on here than anyone.
But most of all, Silvio Pereira who rebuilt my pair of Audiopax amps that were badly damaged in shipping. They have the quiet that makes listening without fatigue such a pleasure. 
daj
87 posts
 
"You were right i react too swiftly sometimes" As do I. 

"It routinely produces drug-like levels of endorphins and occasionally tears of joy." Can't say I routinely find this, but I do know it's exactly what I am seeking. After all, who doesn't want to get high on their own supply?
stevewharton
111 posts
 
I've had some success with friends and family members providing constructive feedback

I've also has those that thought the plan was to sing along with the music or have a conversation during an instrumental solo 

As MC has mentioned many times critical listening is a learned process

What I found that helps is to play material that is preferred and enjoyed by the listener, which provides them the advantage of reference

I great example my youngest Son is 27 he enjoys blues and funk

My reference material for him is usually SRV, Robert Cray and the RHCP

I upgraded my DAC and gave him a demo

After the first song I said what do you think

And he was quit and slowly forming his response and he said I'm sorry Dad I'm not sure how to frame it but I'm having an emotional experience with this music

I've listend to this song a 1000 times since I was 12 years old and I've never experienced it like this

As he spoke his eyes were moistening and I was delighted that he could feel something in his soul from the music

I thought later about the words he used, emotional experience

That's what happens when we're in the pressence of true art, it taps our emotions and makes us feel something

I felt that my system brought the listener closer to the art

And for that both the consumer and the artist have benefitted 
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