dadork, great explanation.
phjcollie, as you note in the posts below yours you can see why the industry works the way it does. People are under the illusion that they know what is going on. As a mental exercise try adding 16 +24 at the same time adding 48+32. Those are easy additions and some of us can do it in rapid succession but none of us can do it at the exact same time. Listening is no different. Listen to a choir, pick out one voice then pick out another voice. Try and listen to them together at the exact same time. Your mind can bounce back and forth quickly between the two but you can not listen to both at the same time unless you ignore the individuality of the voices listening to the choir as one voice like you would listen to McCoy Tyner playing the piano. If you want to listen to one note you have to switch to Monk. You can only listen to or, the better term is "study" one detail at a time. With the infinite number of details in any recording the likelihood of anyone listening to a recording exactly the same way, paying attention to the exact same details in succession is non existent. Every time you listen to a recording you hear it the same but listen/study it differently. This creates the illusion that you are hearing new things when you are only studying different ones. This is not my opinion but a well proven fact.
phjcollie, as you note in the posts below yours you can see why the industry works the way it does. People are under the illusion that they know what is going on. As a mental exercise try adding 16 +24 at the same time adding 48+32. Those are easy additions and some of us can do it in rapid succession but none of us can do it at the exact same time. Listening is no different. Listen to a choir, pick out one voice then pick out another voice. Try and listen to them together at the exact same time. Your mind can bounce back and forth quickly between the two but you can not listen to both at the same time unless you ignore the individuality of the voices listening to the choir as one voice like you would listen to McCoy Tyner playing the piano. If you want to listen to one note you have to switch to Monk. You can only listen to or, the better term is "study" one detail at a time. With the infinite number of details in any recording the likelihood of anyone listening to a recording exactly the same way, paying attention to the exact same details in succession is non existent. Every time you listen to a recording you hear it the same but listen/study it differently. This creates the illusion that you are hearing new things when you are only studying different ones. This is not my opinion but a well proven fact.