At the 2018 AXPONA Ted had a room set up with his stuff using Magico
speakers. He demoed a song with his HFT thingies and his small bass
boxes and then removed them. I couldn't hear a difference regarding the
HFTs but I did think I could hear a small difference with the little
bass cubes. Then he shut off the Atmosphere thing in the middle and
WHOA! The soundstage collapsed and the entire presentation went flat and
dry. I looked around the room and everyone I could see looked shocked.
It was not a subtle difference. I am a skeptic about tweaks but this was
unmistakable. I could easily hear a difference.
I don't know
what the Atmosphere does but it does something. I can't make heads or
tails regarding the explanation on his website but I really want to hear
that thing again.
All his stuff is like that. Some more dramatic than others. But all works beautifully.
However, just as we aren't able to prove with measurement everything we are able to hear, so also we are not all experienced or skilled at recognizing every aspect of the music that we hear.
Not playing word games, but words are involved. There is a very real debate as to whether we hear first, or have the words first, or if these two seemingly unrelated things somehow happen together.
But when you think about it- music. What is the difference between music and any other sound? We joke about it with music we don't like, rap or whatever, and say, "That's not music." But seriously, where does this idea come from, that certain patterns of pressure waves are music while others are not?
It is very common for people to take things for granted, then use these assumptions to leap to others. The scientists did this years ago with MP3. They tested and measured and found "masking" and other supposed phenomena meant we can compress files down to a fraction, throwing away huge chunks of data, because measurement PROVES people cannot hear it.
We laugh at this today, because today we all can hear it. Probably pretty much everyone could hear it even back then. Although I remember well the mockery I got for saying this, so maybe not.
Anyway, point is that even though we do indeed "hear" everything, in the sense of the sound volume is loud enough to register, there are large chunks of what we "hear" that we do not have words for, therefore we do not recognize them, and so in a very fundamental way we do not hear them at all- in the sense that we recognize the patterns for what they are.
This higher level hearing is what we call listening. There is a vast difference between having good hearing and being a good listener. Hearing we can test with tones and meters. Listening we test with things like HFT and Atmosphere.
When you get to the point where you are able to hear all these things, then you will know. These abilities do not just happen. Sometimes might take quite a while and a good deal of effort to get there. When you do though then everything I just said will be crystal clear. Until then, go and listen. You will see.
