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Listener fatigue: what does it really mean?

Okay, so I used to think that listener fatigue meant that your ears just kind of got tired from listening to speakers that were overly bright. I don't have a good understanding of the make up of an ear, but I believe there are muscles in an ear that, I guess, expand and contract while we listen to music and I figured that's what it meant to have listener fatigue. Now, I'm thinking that listener fatigue is maybe more than your ears just getting tired but actually, your whole body getting tired and feeling drained. I experienced this time and time again listening to my paradigm studio's. They are somewhat bright and provide quite a bit of detail in my oppinion, so I'm wondering if, since there was such a great amount of detail coming through, that it was physically draining because I'm sitting there analyzing everything that's coming through the speakers. I would wake up and first thing in the morning, grab a cup of coffee and start listening to music (my daily routine) and 20-30 minutes later start nodding off and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I've been sitting here this morning listening to my new vandersteen's for two hours and can't get enough. I feel like I could listen all day and that I'm almost energized from listening vs. drained.

Soooo, what are your oppinions about what listener fatigue is and why it's caused?
b_limo
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
Ralph,Dynamic swings are heard continously in live music, this natural ebb and flow gives music the emotion I love. This dynamic character occurs at low, moderate and louder levels. This is so apparent when listening to musicians live.I can easily control dynamics when I play my trumpet. Are the dynamics that exist in nature a form of distortion? How is an audio component to reproduce dynamics without this distortion as you call it? How would a component convey dynamics without this identified distortion?
Regards
csontos
1,311 posts
 
I believe the ceiling is around 150 watts into any load.

Charles, playback distortion in a component has nothing to do with the original unrecorded source. The job of the play back system is to reproduce as faithfully as possible what was actually recorded, distortion and all. But you knew that:)
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
My point is that dynamics is an inherent part of music as is timing and the unique and individual tonal signature of a instrument. So how does a system reproduce(retain) music's dynamics yet avoid this distortion Ralph attributes? The ear/brain easily perceive gradients from soft to loud(dynamics) , so hearing a component portray this is due to distortion cues? Doesn't seem logical.
Regards,
csontos
1,311 posts
 
The system is stupid. It doesn't know how to do anything but play back the recording. Ralph was referring to an apparent sonic enhancement caused by the gear.
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
Charles1dad does have a point here. While I fully understand Atmasphere's point he makes about substituting distortion for dynamics (I agree that what many people call brightness is actually distortion), Charles is right that this is oversimplification. Any musician does not naturally associate those two terms at all. Different types of systems reproduce amplitude differently, some much better than others, and I don't mean just on the loud end, but also the very soft end, which is especially important when listening to acoustically produced music, whether orchestral or jazz. This is an entirely separate thing from distortion. This is one big reason, for instance, why many professional musicians still prefer lower powered amps coupled with very high efficiency speakers - this combo, generally speaking of course, reproduces the entire dynamic spectrum more easily and more naturally sounding. That's getting pretty old school nowadays, with all the higher powered amps and lower efficiency speaker designs out there, but that's how most of us musicians who play acoustic instruments feel.
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