Amps and Women


I have been happily married for over 20 years now. I am the supposed audiophile, yet my wife ,god bless her, can pick out the differences in amplifiers in about two seconds. I change over from my Spectral stuff to my Classe stuff,"Honey did you change the system again?" She was not even listening seriously, she was doing something totally different. So the question I pose, and my wife is not the only one I have noticed this with, do women in general possess better listening/hearing capabilties then men?? That is why I take her(and usually with great resentment on her part.) to audition audio equipment. In fact, in all fairness, she narrows the choices pretty quickly.
shubertmaniac
I would like scientific proof that women hear better, ask anyone for some data on this.....oh wait, I thought I was Steve.....
Yea, so would I, lots of opinions floating around. Maybe "better" is the wrong term, "different " might be more apropriate.
Katharina,

It's an interesting question you pose, but its premise, I believe, is flawed. You suggest that women, inferior to men in physical strength, martial ability, what have you, needed to hear imminent danger as early as possible. Fine as far as it goes. But I do know a little of anthropology, paleontology and suggest to you that virtually everything that wasn't human, protohuman, anthropoid (pick your flavor) was just as capable of wiping out a man as a woman. Consider the "opposition": sabre tooth tigers, dire wolves, cave bears, mastodons, and whatever other creatures prowled the land, and you quickly realize that any of these critters was far too powerful for even the strongest of men to contend with. I think "rec" explained it best as a cultural thing that is changing as females get into areas once dominated by men; the attendant risks and benefits are still there. And that is manifest by the diminution of audio acuity he is now "seeing" as he tests the females in noisier occupations.

Let's not start a war here. My wife's hearing is demonstrably inferior to mine. Why? Haven't a clue, but it makes her of little use when I'm on one of my audition trips. But she's still a whole lot more sensible about this stuff than I am; I keep searching for the Holy Grail, while she says in effect, "isn't 98-99% of the way there close enough?" Good point.
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Very nice post, Adamanteus and I've rated it accordingly. I haven't got your training and I won't start a war either, but in the face of this mighty opposition, as you so rightly point out, was it really just our cortex, in interpreting signals though hearing, smelling, sight, whatever better than all those beasts and the Neanderthal men, that helped us to survive as a species? What your statement seems to infer, if I interpret it correctly, is something like no "need" for different sensual acuity between genders, because that would not have helped anyway against all that mighty opposition. Now what Katharina seems to imply is that the better the cortex is fed with information, the better its bearer has a chance to survive and since women, to her reasoning at least, had to lead a more "passive" existence, they needed a better "radar" to stay alive. So I think your post does not really fault her argument. To me the weak spot in in her assumption might be the passivity aspect. I think Ka's idea is fascinating, but I cannot say of course, if its valid or not.