hilde45-
I love this topic, OP. Well chosen and set up.
Here are a couple questions I'm especially interested in hearing your take on. These are earnest questions.
1. When you initially were trying to hear more, what was the reason? What motivated you to develop your listening acumen?
I love music. Reviewers and others were talking about things I couldn't hear. Even though I couldn't hear them, I was determined to have really good music at home and wanted this so bad I would do just about anything. Plus I often had the vague sense of some things begin better, but in a way that was more a feeling than anything that could be put into words. So there was the motivation to understand something new.
2.
As you were initially listening around to try to hear more, you say you
only heard differences between "receivers." But you were listening to
different kinds of speakers -- did the big differences between speakers
contribute to your eventual "aha" moment? (I'm wondering because
sometimes there are multiple things at work in effectuating a change,
and only later, in retrospect, do I realize the subordinate factors at
work).
No, the speakers and stuff had nothing to do with it. Receivers just sounded so distorted it was easy to write them off. Now being better at it I would say they are grainy, etched, congested, flat, and so on. But back then it was just they sounded bad. No matter what speakers. No matter what else.
The harsh part of this was I started out totally sold on the idea of building a Home Theater around a "good" AVR! I was NOT looking for stereo! I just wanted the classic good sounding HT that is good for music. Because I love both. It was a real hard lesson to learn, that AVR is such a wasteland of dreck. Real hard. But it is such a wasteland of dreck that this was the first thing I was easily and reliably able to hear!
3. Around the time you developed your initial, stable
checklist of audiophile terms to listen for, how did that affect your
ability to listen for pleasure? Were you simply in critical listening
mode all the time? Did you already possess an "off switch" for the
critical way of listening or was that something you figured out later?
Oh man this is a good one! In the beginning this turned me into the classic audiophile playing his "reference" CDs listening for this and that. Analytical listening got so bad that at one point I was turning my speakers over listening to compare stainless steel, mild steel, and brass studs. The studs that hold the Cones on the speakers. The studs inside the Cones. And hearing the difference. Another time listening to the Reference Recording From the Age of Swing I noticed the Radio Shack Bulk Tape Eraser improvement faded out after about 10 min. You have to be listening awfully close to the cymbals to pick that one up. Especially when no one is talking or even thinking about such a thing. But there it is.
So yeah, serious case of audiophilia nervosa. The cure it turns out is tubes and turntables. Well, sorta. There is a bit more to it.
4.
In the case of the seasoned audiophiles who couldn't hear a difference
in what sounded to you like impressive gear, did you find out what in
particular *they* listen for -- and could you hear it? Or was there no
difference in that case for you?
All I know is they said don't hear nuttin. My response was pretty much this thread: there are a lot of things people can hear that we haven't yet learned to hear.
Thus the question: How do you do it? How do you learn to hear what you don't know how to hear??
