The Absurdity of it All

@jpeters568   

My whole thing is "just try it". If it doesn't make a difference, then you are good!

And because one person doesn't hear any difference, doesn't mean another who says they do are a victim of marketing.

Quick story to illustrate my thoughts on hearing vs listening.

I've been working on a speaker for a bit. A project I've been mulling about for a few months. Experimenting with a coax driver and a capacitor less crossover. Was trying to decide between two values of the resistor (8.2 ohm and 10 ohm). The high end was different. One went higher, but was missing the bit just below, the other didn't go as high but held the info up to that point. There was a distinct difference to my ears. 

I wanted an "unbiased" and "uninterested" opinion. I asked my 8yr old son to listen. Now, he has fresh ears and can hear a fly fart next door...  He heard the clarity of the speakers, and commented on that. I asked him if he could describe what the differences were and if there was one he liked better as I A/B'd the speakers for him (Mono - L/R channels). He couldn't. I asked if he could hear a difference. He couldn't.

Hearing is biology. Much like sense of taste is biology. Listening is a skill, something learned or taught. Like taste, being able to isolate nuances is very much a skill.

Prior to Covid hitting, a friend was going through cancer treatment/surgery. He was unable to work for the better part of two years prior to Covid arriving. He was scheduled to have his final surgery but that was canceled due to the pandemic. He is a chef, and when Covid arrived, he got pretty down. I started fixing his stereo so he could listen to his vinyl collection. The transformation in his ability to listen for nuanced changes in a speaker build/tuning is astonishing. (I've built a lot of speakers for him). He is 64 and we often joke about the biological limits our age has put on our hearing. He is listening with far greater acuity than ever before.

I feel like this is a journey, and not a destination. 

@kevn  

Distortions, I listen for distortions first.

Silence in a system is a good thing when there is no signal. Turn it up with no signal with everything hooked up and turned on. The nature of the hiss will be a clue as to what is causing it.

Sibilance is a useful one. Nina Simone has a certain way of presenting sssss's. And for whatever reason, when recorded this part of her singing can get quite shrill when played back. I listen for how much clarity there is in those parts.

When listening to mids, I listen for transparency and how "bright" "crisp" they are. Also, they can be placed slightly higher or lower in the register.

When listening to bass, I look for a sharp, tight bass. It can get muddy real easy. 

Try running a 60hz tone through the set up. Sit where you sit and listen to the timber of the bass. Then walk around the room. It will at some point become a droning mess, at other points it will almost vanish. There will me a place where it sounds really good. This is where room treatments come in to play. The room is not easy to control and as it has been said many times, it's the biggest part of the system. 

Try moving where you sit, try moving the speakers so you get the bass to sound the way it did when you walked around the room.

A lifestyle system, where you are filling the room with sound, is a different kind of challenge.

No 70 year old has a putter that is any good any more.

Dismissing science because it doesn't fit nicely into your scheme is your own mistake to make. Science does not know everything but it's information creates a foundation on which to build further knowledge. In saying , " I don't know," you initiate the first step in the learning process. There is a ton of information about sound perception available that audiophile tend to side step. There is a book that is relatively easy for a lay person to understand, "An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing" by Brian C J Moore. It is a very good place to start. 

mijostyn

Dismissing science because it doesn't fit nicely into your scheme is your own mistake to make.

It's odd how the self-proclaimed objectivists here get defensive when someone questions their holy "science." Challenging and questioning, collecting data and analyzing it, are all part of science. Blindly accepted common belief is not "science."

Science does not know everything but it's information creates a foundation on which to build further knowledge.

That's true, but what it thinks it knows is not infallible.

Perkri, The best you can do is to get the bass right at the listening position by doing all those things you mention.  As many here have noticed other than rebuilding your media room the best way to deal with the bass problem is by adding multiple subwoofers. Room treatments come into play at higher frequencies above 250 Hz. 

It is undeniable true that many fine systems are ruined by room acoustics.