Critical listening and altered states

Great post thanks.

In this case audiophilia is an affliction in which, just like other addictive drugs,  tolerance may be reached which means even greater amounts/better equipment needed to maintain the high.

 

Now, the above contingent on what are the goals for any particular audiophile, perhaps the equipment itself brings about certain levels of ASC. No doubt humans can lust after material objects, think about how many humanize these objects, men often give their cars women’s names. My neighbor has males names for my cars.

It is not the gear pieces who gave me ASC.

It was music rendition translated in an  acoustically relatively correct manner...

"timbre" is not only the sound corresponding to a know non electrically amplified instrument, even if in many case it is for sure. It is more complex.

Timbre inform us about the vibrating sound source state, be it a MooG synthetiser or a Yoruba drum...

Timbre is also not only a tonal color microdynamics varying in space but it is through the deformation or distortion of information caused by any stereo listening a dynamical "volume" in space which also create an ASC by his mere existance not as a mere localized noise in Nature but as an artificial "sphere" of  artful meaning in our room if all is acoustically under control.

Acoustics parameters also not only the music content can create a strong ASC especially their convergence.

Consumers in a race to upgrade are not in an ASC but are perturbed by the boredom caused by their lack of  acoustic control over their experience of music from which they evade by purchasing easy "solutions"...

"Each perception can be a creative act" ... I’m going to have to muse on that one!

Perception may be a robotic act of recognition by the "robotic ego"  as in recognizing a known store on a known road...

Perception can be too an act of creative imagination who use apparent randomness to extract a known or new pattern...

 Do you remember your first book with figures to put colors on but only after using the numbers associated to a point  to form a figure ? Do you remember your amazement to see order born from apparent  chaos because of a hidden  road map linking all points with numbers?

I remember it as if it was yesterday...

 All our perceptions are most of the times a mix of the robotic ego actions and of the creative imagination...

 We dont perceive "things" which   we had not created or participated to in some way, but we can recognize  also known pattern as if in a sleepwalking state with very low creativity...Each perception may be a door to ecstasy but life will be unlivable if we were stuck on a trip...

Musical perception and  acoustical perception may be such acts of imaginative creative perception...

People with low understanding of the working mind can call them illusion, placebos, hallucinations, it is not even wrong... But truth ask for more study and more involvement in our own thinking perception than accusing our perceptions of lies...

We think also  with our senses... A blind can think and recreate with imagination  the world pattern and densities with echo-localization...

i takes acoustics as seriously meaningful as music...The two activities imply ASC... A flow state of creativity like in any art... Listening is an art which create meanings...

No doubt gross timbre inaccuracies would induce stress. I believe more marginal timbre inaccuracies aren't a major concern for most. How often do most of us listen to non amplified or non sound reinforced music? I presume most of us generally hear live music where the instruments are both amplified and sound reinforcement is being used. In general I much prefer my home system sound to live concerts, sound quality superior and I can control my environment.

 In speaking to environment I'd posit our listening room settings have a great influence on our ability to enter into ASC. By this I don't mean acoustic room products, rather the esthetics of the room, also time of day, I much more enjoy night time listening, my room completely blacked out, and I have various light shows I can enable to fit the mood. Complete quiet also best, the lower the ambient noise levels the better, 30db vs 50db is a very meaningful difference for hearing the lower level info and/or quiet passages, especially important for classical.

Speaking of acoustic control, I spent years analyzing how different room treatments affected the sound. As part of this I learned to visualize sound waves, from this I began to hear how sound waves excited the molecular structure of my listening space. Taking these visualization helped me to hear how my entire room (over 30' L), mostly the space behind listening position affected the sound. As an aside, my first visualization of molecular space came from LSD trips out in nature, what in all likelihood was pollen in the air lit by moonlight was perceived as something far more meaningful. With LSD one loses all perception of time, I recall starting trips at perhaps 7pm, the sun could be rising and I'd be sitting in one place the whole time, its like one single thought consumed me that entire time, I never recall any perception of repetition.

I like the reference to boredom, no doubt ASC cannot be accompanied by boredom. Repetition can easily induce boredom, two reasons why I like the robot picking the music, one is its mostly completely random, surprise displaces boredom, two I don't have the need to interrupt the 'flow', with me having to choose the music I have to consciously make the choice, this takes away from the 'flow.'

I appreciated very much your posts and experience...

I am retired and i did a set of intense experiments in acoustic 7 day /7 for 2 years... I tuned 100 Helmholtz resonators and learned about the importance of their  localization in the room and the way i must used them to modify the pressures zones of the room to my liking...

At the end the soundfield was like surrounding me and each tone was a volume in space, in an opera i could see the singer singing and walking in all my room near or far from me.

i adjusted mechanically my resonators of various size from a straw to 8 feet with big volume because like you i learned how to feel  the sound wave zone of pressure and the comb filtering induced by the geometry of my room and his size.

I l;earned how to localize the many devices i used, not only resonators, but a balance between diffusion/absorbtion/reflective panels (homemade) and devices.

it was a trip because each evening the music became more and more alive, and with a process of trials and errors i reach an optimal level...

i am pretty sure you understand me...

Thanks for your interesting testimony...

No doubt gross timbre inaccuracies would induce stress. I believe more marginal timbre inaccuracies aren’t a major concern for most. How often do most of us listen to non amplified or non sound reinforced music? I presume most of us generally hear live music where the instruments are both amplified and sound reinforcement is being used. In general I much prefer my home system sound to live concerts, sound quality superior and I can control my environment.

 

 In speaking to environment I’d posit our listening room settings have a great influence on our ability to enter into ASC. By this I don’t mean acoustic room products, rather the esthetics of the room, also time of day, I much more enjoy night time listening, my room completely blacked out, and I have various light shows I can enable to fit the mood. Complete quiet also best, the lower the ambient noise levels the better, 30db vs 50db is a very meaningful difference for hearing the lower level info and/or quiet passages, especially important for classical.

 

Speaking of acoustic control, I spent years analyzing how different room treatments affected the sound. As part of this I learned to visualize sound waves, from this I began to hear how sound waves excited the molecular structure of my listening space. Taking these visualization helped me to hear how my entire room (over 30’ L), mostly the space behind listening position affected the sound. As an aside, my first visualization of molecular space came from LSD trips out in nature, what in all likelihood was pollen in the air lit by moonlight was perceived as something far more meaningful. With LSD one loses all perception of time, I recall starting trips at perhaps 7pm, the sun could be rising and I’d be sitting in one place the whole time, its like one single thought consumed me that entire time, I never recall any perception of repetition.

 

I like the reference to boredom, no doubt ASC cannot be accompanied by boredom. Repetition can easily induce boredom, two reasons why I like the robot picking the music, one is its mostly completely random, surprise displaces boredom, two I don’t have the need to interrupt the ’flow’, with me having to choose the music I have to consciously make the choice, this takes away from the ’flow.’

THC. FTW