After 40 years of listening to live music and evolving a system that comes close to my memories of live performances I’ve learned a few things.
The first is to trust my ears the most. I have a friend who is an audiologist and has conducted thousands of hearing tests. He tells me what we are able to hear individually can be as different as our physical appearances. Unfortunately, unless we have the results of our audiology test, our ears do not come with specs.
Nevertheless, it’s fun to compare notes, although the language that has evolved to describe what we hear is colorful and at times difficult if not impossible to comprehend. With different perceptions and often indecipherable ways to describe them, it is no wonder that listeners can hear the same piece of music on the same equipment so differently.
A second learning is that a change in an audio rig as apparently minor as switching interconnects can impact overall sound quality significantly. I’ve had on the shelf a well-respected and awarded DAC/preamp. I kept it even though It sounded two-dimensional and gritty.
That is, until I switched interconnect brands. I then began to hear all the positives reviewers have said about my previously shelved device. Or is it the new cables that I’m hearing? Assigning responsibility is, for me, not nearly as satisfying as the fact that four interconnects made an amazing SQ transformation.
These learnings allow me to above all enjoy the music, and help me to avoid obsessing about device upgrades. I settled on revealing speakers early on and plug in and out other devices in the audio chain in varying combinations to see how they get along. It’s a game, a hobby.
I enjoy reading the often passionate arguments that ensue in the forums. They often reveal a human tendency to justify the validity of our acquisitions. Often, there are nuggets of information that are quite useful.
The search for accurate musical reproduction is an elusive target and likely one that is very difficult to achieve. The joy of being an audiophile is for most of us musical enjoyment and the pursuit, at whatever level of excellence we can afford, of a worthwhile challenge.
After 40 years of listening to live music and evolving a system that comes close to my memories of live performances I’ve learned a few things.
The first is to trust my ears the most. I have a friend who is an audiologist and has conducted thousands of hearing tests. He tells me what we are able to hear individually can be as different as our physical appearances. Unfortunately, unless we have the results of our audiology test, our ears do not come with specs.
Nevertheless, it’s fun to compare notes, although the language that has evolved to describe what we hear is colorful and at times difficult if not impossible to comprehend. With different perceptions and often indecipherable ways to describe them, it is no wonder that listeners can hear the same piece of music on the same equipment so differently.
A second learning is that a change in an audio rig as apparently minor as switching interconnects can impact overall sound quality significantly. I’ve had on the shelf a well-respected and awarded DAC/preamp. I kept it even though It sounded two-dimensional and gritty.
That is, until I switched interconnect brands. I then began to hear all the positives reviewers have said about my previously shelved device. Or is it the new cables that I’m hearing? Assigning responsibility is, for me, not nearly as satisfying as the fact that four interconnects made an amazing SQ transformation.
These learnings allow me to above all enjoy the music, and help me to avoid obsessing about device upgrades. I settled on revealing speakers early on and plug in and out other devices in the audio chain in varying combinations to see how they get along. It’s a game, a hobby.
I enjoy reading the often passionate arguments that ensue in the forums. They often reveal a human tendency to justify the validity of our acquisitions. Often, there are nuggets of information that are quite useful.
The search for accurate musical reproduction is an elusive target and likely one that is very difficult to achieve. The joy of being an audiophile is for most of us musical enjoyment and the pursuit, at whatever level of excellence we can afford, of a worthwhile challenge.