I must be one who can hear the details at many more than 5 times as predicted by modeling. I routinely listen to individual instruments throughout entire songs and it's been my experience that the most enjoyable songs are those that are made up of instrumental parts that could basically stand alone as their own songs and a vocal part that sounds good acapella. So if that bass line is moving up and down the scale instead of being stuck on one note for many bars, if those drums are using cymbal crashes and riffs at appropriate times, if the rhythm guitar is also moving around on the scale, and if that lead guitar is somewhat mimicking the vocal melody and is played as something more than just a filler when the vocals are silent, these songs tend to be more enjoyable to me. When a bass line is just playing a rhythm on a single note for several bars or the drums are just a pounding beat (as is true in much of newer music), then these songs tend to be of less interest to me. I play music trivia and when one of my teammates says that a song that is being played is great and then I point out how uninteresting the bass line is, I've ruined quite a few songs for people. I don't try to ruin the song for them intentionally, but I do try to get them to hear the individual instruments and then they get it.
Learning to Listen: Neurological Evidence
Neurological evidence indicates we not only learn to listen, but actually tune our inner ear response based on neural feedback from the brain. We literally are able to actively tune our own hearing.
When we listen for a flute for example, this is more than a conscious decision to focus on the flute. This creates neural impulses that actively tune ear cells to better hear the flute.
This whole video is fascinating, but I want to get you hooked right away so check this out:
https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1340
“Selectively changing what we’re listening to in response to the content. Literally reaching out to listen for things.”
Here’s another good one. Everyone can hear subtle details about five times as good as predicted by modeling. Some of us however can hear 50 times as good. The difference? Years spent learning to listen closely! https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1956
Learning to play music really does help improve your listening.
This video is chock full of neurphysiological evidence that by studying, learning and practice you can develop the listening skills to hear things you literally could not hear before. Our hearing evolved millennia before we invented music. We are only just now beginning to scratch at the potential evolution has bestowed on us.
When we listen for a flute for example, this is more than a conscious decision to focus on the flute. This creates neural impulses that actively tune ear cells to better hear the flute.
This whole video is fascinating, but I want to get you hooked right away so check this out:
https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1340
“Selectively changing what we’re listening to in response to the content. Literally reaching out to listen for things.”
Here’s another good one. Everyone can hear subtle details about five times as good as predicted by modeling. Some of us however can hear 50 times as good. The difference? Years spent learning to listen closely! https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1956
Learning to play music really does help improve your listening.
This video is chock full of neurphysiological evidence that by studying, learning and practice you can develop the listening skills to hear things you literally could not hear before. Our hearing evolved millennia before we invented music. We are only just now beginning to scratch at the potential evolution has bestowed on us.
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- 102 posts total
winnaardt, We have a lot in common in the way we listen to music. I love picking out and following lines of different instruments and singers and use that skill to analyze my playback gear. The more I can hear into a piece and pick something to follow, successfully, is my way of judging the ability to separate notes and themes. If that is successful, then lots of other parameters can be more easily met and judged. So the easier it is to judge begets ease of listening which begets satisfaction. All the best, Nonoise |
hilde45- OP, thank you so much for this post. Adding it to my library and will learn from this. FYI, I've been having a back and forth with Ethan Winer and he keeps *insisting* that if his list of measurements show no difference between cables, then anything perceived is either part of a scam or placebo. Everyone who claims to hear a difference, he says, is a dupe or a shill. Everyone. I keep telling him that because the brain/perceptual systems are so complex, that he should not be so sure that he has the final word on what/how to measure for -- that he has to consider the complicated listener-perceiver side of the equation. He's a hedgehog; he won't budge. Ethan aside, this area of research is fascinating. Thank you for sharing this. If you ever find more, please share or DM me. Will do. Thanks. |
It was listening to the XLO Test CD track Poor Boy that triggered my awareness, of what I was hearing from some of the better CD players and amps. They were less etched and grainy than mine, but it took playing this all analog recording to make the connection.This is all good, but I’m not certain what "etched and grainy" means to you in terms of sound. Since I don’t know for sure what it is in acoustical terms that you were perceiving I have no way of knowing if I could detect it. If I could detect it, I assume I would get a similar perception of it as you do. But without knowing what it is there’s no way to be sure. I can tell you what comes to mind for me when I think of those words in terms of sound - static and interference tones, with a few harsh peaks here and there. That would be the grainy part in my mind. Etched, well that’s harder to imagine but I would assume the starts and stops of tones would be louder than the middle and maybe start and stop with clicks, like a CB radio effect. Are there any overtly etched and grainy sounding recordings that you can refer me to as a reference? I found this video where a guy etched grooves in a tortilla with a laser and played it on a record player. Sounds grainy and etched in a corny way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzCv_9eaoM |
- 102 posts total