"I Trust My Ears"
Do you? Can you? Should you?
I don’t. The darn things try to trick me all the time!
Seriously, our ears are passive sensors. They forward sonic data to our brains. Ears don’t know if the data in question represents a child crying, a Chopin prelude, or a cow dropping a cowpie. That’s our brains’ job to figure out.
Similarly, our brains decide whether A sounds better than B, whether a component sounds phenomenal, etc.
So, "I trust my ears" should really be "I trust my brains".
And that has a different ring to it, doesn’t it?
I completely agree, brand name and price should not be part of the decision-making process. Maybe easier said than done, but this is an area in which we can train ourselves, if we so choose, to block / ignore those and other distractions.
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@devinplombier - " Colored sound is completely fine when it delights the listener" Maybe. Or maybe a particular listener doesn't know better. It is when the scale of good-better-best is used that we run into trouble, but preference I have no problem with. As you imply, there is no moral imperative to listen to a relatively uncolored stereo. |
This dont means that my 1000 bucks system sound better than a 10,000 bucks system because it is supposed to be my ears taste... This means that acoustic concepts and only acoustics concepts can teach us about what we are hearing and what we are not hearing.. Without an acoustic concept we cannot know nor understand what we are hearing...
Be it from a 1000 bucks system or a system at any price, the ratio ASW/LV matter and the way we can optimize it with a system of any price... It is the same for the concept of "timbre" ... or the concepts linked to each acoustic spatial attribute..
But for most " i trust my ears" means i can purchase a gear upgrade and i dont need anything save my "taste"... (subjectivist) It is childish... But there is worst, there are those who think they can trust only the gear specs and nothing else matter...(objectivists) This is ignorance worst than childish... Our hearing must be trained not ignored...
Acoustics and psycho-acoustics concept matter more than anything else.. Yes to buy wisely we need synergy between gear parts, using our ears and/or the gear specs, for sure to pick the right upgrade... But before upgrading we need to use acoustics to optimize what we already own , if not we will never know what our actual system is able to deliver in a specific room ...
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How about......"I trust my hearing"? IME, the most important element throughout the learning/listening experience, is to understand/develop to know, what "characteristics" of recorded music reproduction "are important to you". For me, well......the MUSICIANSHIP and the COMPOSITION. My system conveys both to me, to my liking |
. Once the speaker/room/listening seat tripod is accomplished successfully, everything else becomes much easier. Once you know, you know. 
My best, MrD.