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.
"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?
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@mahgister, Thanks for your response. Indeed, I thought of your many contributions on this subject while re-reading this article before posting. >>The following article by noted audio engineer Ethan Winer offers a cogent explanation for why we believe what we hear. As Winer explains, two people each claiming to hear different things can actually both be right: |
Per 'training' and preference. One can choose to be self taught or base their choices on various external forces/influences. The self taught will listen to many systems and develop their preferences through experiential learning process.
One can't deny measurements are critical for audio component design. For the end user measurements can be important in properly matching individual components to make for a synergistic whole. |
Regarding the discussion pertaining to the value of trained listening in the evaluation of audio equipment, much now foundational research has been published on this topic, especially by the honored and well-known audio engineers Floyd Toole and Sean Olive. Here is a great summary article by Sean Olive that appears on his blog: Toole and Olive are both retired now from their research careers at the laboratories of Canada's National Research Council and Harman International. FYI, Toole has a forthcoming fourth edition of his seminal work, Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers, Rooms, and Headphones, that will be published in October. It will include contributions by Olive and other distinguished researchers. Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers,
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