@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.
Excellent post!
My own remark
FIRST
To perceive something especially a change which can be subtle, and characterize this change positively or negatively ask for some pre-requisite...
We must use some cd or vinyl whe know very much by heart already
We must choose a recording with these characteristic: natural acoustic of the instrument sound, and human voices first with piano or orchestra or few acoustic instrument...
No pop, no rock, Why?
Because changes being detected they will ask to be judged by reference points... No commercial music sound natural, all is modified, and it is the TIMBRE natural experience which will be our signpost ALL ALONG the journey....
Distortions and sibilance are always detected easily if we use a known reference point: acoustic natural timbre in non amplified, or non electrical instruments and especially voices...
SECOND
Nothing can be clearly perceived and understood without a CONCEPT to seize it consciously and describe it... Then we must read about acoustic ...And If there is 3 working embeddings dimensions to modify and make cleaner with controls settings and devices : mechanical , electrical, and acoustical...
The most important one is acoustical...
Acoustic of a room is so powerful even experience audiophiles here underestimated it....
The room is not easy to control and as it has been said many times, it’s the biggest part of the system.
He is right absolutely....
For acoustic controls there is no easy road.... It takes time... this is the bad news... The good news is it is possible to ststematically afress it in a dedicated room without investing money only by hearing experiments with only homemade devices but it will not be esthetical...
The living room will ask for more money and even more difficulties because of the limitations you can impose in a living room...
The most useful piece in a system is not any piece of gear it is a dedicated room....
If someone is not being limited by money and he is so proud of his gear that his pleasure is boasting about it, his experience cannot help us...My system value is 500 dollars and i have hear better system than mine, it is easy to look for them on youtube....But if they are better in the absolute concretely it is an another story which can be telled only by acoustic means... In ratio S.Q. /price my system is one if not the best i ever listen to....
The goal is reaching audiophile experience for ordinary mortal with very limited money...
Then a dedicated room is the greatest gift.... By the way acoustic treatment with passive materials is mandatory but in a small room had his limits.... We must also controls timing of the wavefronts and ACTIVE means of controls could help tremendously: Resonators, ionizers, Schumann generators, BUT especially powerful : a mechanical equalizer based on Helmholtz acoustic resonators principles....An Helmholtz resonator can adress all acoustic problems in his own way: imaging, timbre, soundstage, listener envelopment factor in relation to sound width of the source...
Why?
Because a room is a very tigth pressure zone, like a set of strings on a violin....Each pipes and tubes resonastors introduce a different pressure which will damp AND enhance different frequencies...The set of tubes will be like a silent orchestra on his own, and the location of tubes and each pipes would be important and even the orientation of the variable neck position in the room linked to each pipes and tubes...
With a mechanical equalizer you modify the room for your speakers with your ears to control the fine tuning process...
An electronic equalizer is different and use a mic and is valid measure are for a millimeter precise location not for a human body location in the room...It can be a useful tool but cannot replace acoustic control by only itself.... A mechanical equalizer is PART of the room... It is an active tool modifiable through time... It is not esthetical for sure.... But some are more crafty than me...
This is my mechanical equalizer that teach me this: one could destruct acoustically a room/system or revive it completely with an audible effect very powerful with only a straw of very thin diameter, and short lenght at the right location or not....Then changing an amplifier will never be able to compete with this straw save going from a shitty amplifier to a better one... Nothing less will compare....
Acoustic is the key to audio experience if you had already choosen relatively BASIC good gear...But chosing good gear is the easy part of the journey...
The rest is marketing ignorance voluntary or unvolontary....
This is my experience....
