Listen with your skin.

Do any of you recall the articles some years ago about the deaf gentleman who listens with his hands holding a balloon?  He had serious systems, and said he could discern differences in cabling.  I suspect that his experience included more of his body than his fingertips.

Bill

very informative indeed...

blind listening music with a balloon :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNrcb-9Gi8c&t=12s

This example show us WHY measured by tools objects are NOT perceived natural phenomenon... They are related but not reducible to one another... Sound are not mere quantitative waves in a medium but also qualitatively perceived information and desired symbolic phenomenon originating from sound sources event properties put in vibration mode... ...

« We must listen to the idea» -- Deaf audiophile in the video 🧐

Do any of you recall the articles some years ago about the deaf gentleman who listens with his hands holding a balloon? He had serious systems, and said he could discern differences in cabling. I suspect that his experience included more of his body than his fingertips.

Bill

I had the honor of meeting Bob at the PAF 2022 show. I did not know of him prior to our meeting. We were exhibiting there. While playing music for a room full of people I noticed someone waiting for a front row seat. He was caring a large bag. Once he was seated he pulled a large balloon looking object out from the bag. I had no idea that the gentleman was deaf. I thought he was conducting some sort of an experiment. After he listened (with the balloon) for a while, he put the balloon back in the bag and then approached me. He explained that he is deaf and enjoys music through the use of the balloon. It acts like a mechanical amplifier for his fingertips. He complemented me on our system and then described its attributes perfectly. From his description you would not know that he heard the system through touch. We spoke for a little while. What an amazing experience. Not only was his ability to enjoy music inspiring but also how adaptive and resilient people can be. I always believed that we experience sound (music) with our entire body not just our ears. Not just low frequencies but full spectrum. For me, life experiences lead me to that conclusion.

Thanks you deeply for giving us this part of your life,,,

Inspiring indeed!

i just want to add this article from stereophile :

https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-video-tribute-art-dudley

And a commentary submitted by " theanimal" under the article :

«The physical exists as a platform from which we may commune with the spiritual, so that we may experience “the sound of God talking.” Does God’s voice have second-order harmonics? Or is it clinical, incisive, perfect? Does our hermeneutic allow room for both to be true, perhaps for different people simultaneously, or even for our own experience at different times, according to our emotional needs? It’s this duality — yin and yang, liberal and conservative, man and woman — which builds unity out of tension that makes us whole. »

Just after Woodstock I was at another massive rock concert in the Poconos. They had these gigantic horn speakers and I recall seeing some guy he must have been tripping his patoot off standing in front of if not just inside the speaker as Grand Funk Railroad was blasting out a set and that dude was "shaking all over".

Hearing loss is quite common roughly 15% of the population over age 20.

Quick Statistics About Hearing | NIDCD (nih.gov)

So it would seem to me before spending big Denero on upgrading your system shouldn’t you get a hearing test first? If you have a loss in a specific frequency or across the board of your frequency range how might that effect your decision making relative to upgrading your sound? Here is an interesting article. You experienced folks might already be Intune with this information.

Hearing Loss, Music, and Brain Health - Hear Better Through Music (hearingtracker.com)