Do we as audiophiles hear things "differently" from other listeners?

Hi Marc,

I have sure learned how to listen differently in the last nine months. Kind of embarrassing really,when I look back to what my system was and is now. It makes me wonder when myself and fellow audiophiles gathered to listen to my same speakers and thought it was some of the best sound they ever heard....and that was 1985,what the heck changed? Back then the imaging was great,but I could only get close to the music with special recordings, now I hear the performers breathe on major labels. Do I really want to get that intimate with a orchestra....you bet I do. Now I understand that there are foundational aspects of the hobby that can really make a difference.
So I look forward to my new horn system and take what I have learned and improve on it and I think I can actually do things economically. If I can succeed, then I know that what you and I hear is reality....imagine that.

We are a greedy bunch. Not only do we need good music, we need that music played back well. Yes IMO that makes us different from non audiophiles. Small differences matter to us more because we know and care about them. For those that just appreciate the end results and have no interest in what it takes to get them, the little stuff doesn't really matter. For those that have the interest but not the energy to deal with details, there are consultants.and contractors

Do we listen differently or do we hear differently...I suspect neither.
What we do value more than the general population is an ability to recreate the 'real' in our homes. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the general population doesn't really value this aspect as highly as we do....sure they like a basic sound quality, but that basic is very minimal compared to what we are seeking. ( which I think is most likely a good thing, or maybe not???)
Some people like wines and collect them, to most of us here, wine collecting holds little or no appeal. The oenophile thinks the same about the audiophile. ( apologies to anyone here who is both)

It's not audiophiles who hear things differently, it's non-audiophiles who do.

We ALL hear differently and it's the music that moves us whether on the radio, in the car or on our stereos and not the audiophile experience. Witness the dross that is played at hifi shows on uber systems.
Likewise we all see differently whether colours or response to a painting or view.
I think we can become too critical and pursue greater fidelity as an end, sometimes forgetting how we used to enjoy music on our simple systems of our youth.
Should we denigrate someone listening on their iPhone if they are having the same emotional response to their music?, no.

I often think the differences are overstated and that we probably all hear the same really, but then I'm faced with clear evidence that I'm nuts and other people aren't. For example, back when I lived in London (and this was in the early days of my audiophile career) I went to see the Tallis Scholars at Wigmore Hall. The gentleman sitting beside me was wearing a watch that had the subtlest of ticks, but as the concert wore on this ticking was all I could hear. I eventually asked him if he wouldn't mind putting it in his pocket and, luckily, he was utterly charming about it and was happy to oblige. However, he pointed out that he had never actually noticed that his watched ticked at all.

So, years of audiophilia have, at the very least, made me acutely aware of extraneous noises. This is not a good thing!

Very nice question! Some of my thoughts. Hearing is a very complex psychological process, involving not only the usual textbook psychoacoustics but also
involving a general cultural sensitivity and education of the listener! It is easy to imagine: The signals generated by the hearing mechanism
get their final interpretation by relatively high level psychological processes. As virtually all processes in our psyche are strongly
contextual, no reason to think hearing would be different.
This link psychoacoustics - education can be also used to picture another process: That of learning. Just like cultural education can be
learned/lost so can be listening abilities (on a fairly basic level of psychocoustics). One can train listening abilities and we all know that.
Look for example at people working with stone. They are very strong from carrying slabs of stone daily, they muscles adapt. The same is with
listening (or any other ability) - if one listens a lot the hearing and interpretational mechanisms get trained.
Now training. People who train will know it: You adapt to your training stimulation. And easily.
If you run hills, you feel strange and tired on the flat. If you spar with one partner, a different one, even much weaker, can make you lots of trouble.
You do machines at a gym, free weights can kill you etc etc etc. Same with our systems as a hearing training tools - we adapt to them.
That's why in my opinion it is critical to get exposed to other stimuli than our systems and preferably more complex to push up the learning curve.
Live, unamplified sound is of course a canonical example. Very pleasant one

Cheers,

Stacore said:

Very nice question! Some of my thoughts. Hearing is a very complex psychological process, involving not only the usual textbook psychoacoustics but also
involving a general cultural sensitivity and education of the listener! It is easy to imagine: The signals generated by the hearing mechanism
get their final interpretation by relatively high level psychological processes. As virtually all processes in our psyche are strongly
contextual, no reason to think hearing would be different.
This link psychoacoustics - education can be also used to picture another process: That of learning. Just like cultural education can be
learned/lost so can be listening abilities (on a fairly basic level of psychocoustics). One can train listening abilities and we all know that.
Look for example at people working with stone. They are very strong from carrying slabs of stone daily, they muscles adapt. The same is with
listening (or any other ability) - if one listens a lot the hearing and interpretational mechanisms get trained.
Now training. People who train will know it: You adapt to your training stimulation. And easily.
If you run hills, you feel strange and tired on the flat. If you spar with one partner, a different one, even much weaker, can make you lots of trouble.
You do machines at a gym, free weights can kill you etc etc etc. Same with our systems as a hearing training tools - we adapt to them.
That's why in my opinion it is critical to get exposed to other stimuli than our systems and preferably more complex to push up the learning curve.
Live, unamplified sound is of course a canonical example. Very pleasant one

Cheers,

Click to expand...

I find that a very good and persuasive analysis.
IME there is a very real learning curve and if you are not a musician as is my position you are relying almost entirely upon your ears and the music's affect on your emotions. The more you delve into this hobby the more you read and learn which is all part of the learning and listening experience. It's not really that different from other fields of activity where the more you learn the more you see, hear etc and become more discriminating.
What I found challenging on occasions was distinguishing between a different sound and a better sound and that. of course, is affected by personal preferences. Listening to live music in a good acoustic on a fairly regular basis seems to me to be an important part of the learning curve and an essential continuing reference for developing one's system.
The other key thing for me has been the discovery of the importance of reducing or eliminating sources of sound pollution be it electrical or mechanical and the extent to which the room affects the sound.

There is also a nice feedback mechanism to all that: The more capable becomes ones system, the more complicated music one begins to like.
So a perception of ones audio system both involves ones cultural education and simultaneously helps broadening it.
That's why I always look and listen carefully to systems of orchestra and opera lovers

Simply absolutely! Because as Jack points out cuz we care.
When friends and relatives visit and ask to listen. I may point out where a piano or a violin may sound more like the instrument in the flesh, they get it but it's like water off a ducks back.'that's nice' 'how's your father'

We are just more anal ytical...
I go to ballets with my ballet teacher/examiner/choreographer wife ..I enjoy the overall performance ..so does she but she picks it apart in her head way more than I...she wants to teach me the nuances , but I have resisted
I never ask her to listen to an upgrade ... she listens to music like I watch ballet

I am unsure as to weather we hear any differently, though if one can be genetically predisposed for strength and agility, why not better hearing ?
There have been more than a few occasions where I have noticed a sound in a noise filled room that no one else noticed...why is this ?

I believe we process sound in such a way we need to go to the next level to explore ways to get more of this satisfying input.
Some people I know will eat anything and have very little reaction, food is simply something they eat to quell hunger, others will go through considerable effort to prepare and enjoy a meal.
Why do we come to find these stimuli so appealing ? I am unsure as to weather its a matter of chance or do we seek it out unknowing we are predisposed to a particular satisfying input.

I can clearly recall at an early age exploring my grandfathers workshop, fascinated by all the hanging tools and the myriad of jars and those old dovetailed wooden cheese boxes full of nuts, bolts, screws etc.
He had an old Crosley tabletop tubed radio, the ones made out of Bakelite. I found its sound so intriguing, I was compelled to take out the speaker and destroy it, in an attempt to see what made it work.
I am sure he didn't appreciate that, but I believe it made him chuckle as his son had done the same with the home TV, taking it apart to see what made it tick, later my uncle grew up to become a TV repairman.
Nature or nurture, applies here. Did my uncle and I find our careers by exposure to stimuli in the same home environment or did we expressly seek out this stimuli ?
After all, there were other guy things in the household, like cars, why didn't we take apart the cars ?

My grandfather was a very hands on do it yourself guy, he took great pleasure in fixing something as opposed to buying new, growing up during the depression surely had an influence on his actions.
I have a hand shovel that he repaired by actually cutting and pounding out a piece of steel and brazing on a new blade, at this point in his life he had time and money, why bother ?
Because he enjoyed it, I believe a good dose of his DNA passed down to us.
However it came to be, no doubt skills are honed and pathways are refined, making out experiences stronger in our particular interests.
Greg

GT Audio Works said:

I am unsure as to weather we hear any differently, though if one can be genetically predisposed for strength and agility, why not better hearing ?
There have been more than a few occasions where I have noticed a sound in a noise filled room that no one else noticed...why is this ?

I believe we process sound in such a way we need to go to the next level to explore ways to get more of this satisfying input.
Some people I know will eat anything and have very little reaction, food is simply something they eat to quell hunger, others will go through considerable effort to prepare and enjoy a meal.
Why do we come to find these stimuli so appealing ? I am unsure as to weather its a matter of chance or do we seek it out unknowing we are predisposed to a particular satisfying input.

I can clearly recall at an early age exploring my grandfathers workshop, fascinated by all the hanging tools and the myriad of jars and those old dovetailed wooden cheese boxes full of nuts, bolts, screws etc.
He had an old Crosley tabletop tubed radio, the ones made out of Bakelite. I found its sound so intriguing, I was compelled to take out the speaker and destroy it, in an attempt to see what made it work.
I am sure he didn't appreciate that, but I believe it made him chuckle as his son had done the same with the home TV, taking it apart to see what made it tick, later my uncle grew up to become a TV repairman.
Nature or nurture, applies here. Did my uncle and I find our careers by exposure to stimuli in the same home environment or did we expressly seek out this stimuli ?
After all, there were other guy things in the household, like cars, why didn't we take apart the cars ?

My grandfather was a very hands on do it yourself guy, he took great pleasure in fixing something as opposed to buying new, growing up during the depression surely had an influence on his actions.
I have a hand shovel that he repaired by actually cutting and pounding out a piece of steel and brazing on a new blade, at this point in his life he had time and money, why bother ?
Because he enjoyed it, I believe a good dose of his DNA passed down to us.
However it came to be, no doubt skills are honed and pathways are refined, making out experiences stronger in our particular interests.
Greg

Click to expand...

To give an opposing argument

I think many people who call themselves Audiophile's cannot hear very well at all

awsmone said:

To give an opposing argument

I think many people who call themselves Audiophile's cannot hear very well at all

Click to expand...

True, most audiophiles I know are older...the older we get the more our hearing degrades.
Guess it really doesn't matter if we hear well or not, its a singular experience and enjoyed none the less.
I dont particularly care for the connotation "audiophile", it evokes images of equipment junkies.
I am sure a certain percentage of the audio populations falls under that description.
Regardless of why we get into the hobby, in the end we keep at it because years of refining our abilities, sets us apart form those who music does nothing for other than a "thats nice" reaction.
Greg

Two very good starting points to the discussion:

Stacore said:

Very nice question! Some of my thoughts. Hearing is a very complex psychological process, involving not only the usual textbook psychoacoustics but also
involving a general cultural sensitivity and education of the listener! It is easy to imagine: The signals generated by the hearing mechanism
get their final interpretation by relatively high level psychological processes. As virtually all processes in our psyche are strongly
contextual, no reason to think hearing would be different.
This link psychoacoustics - education can be also used to picture another process: That of learning. Just like cultural education can be
learned/lost so can be listening abilities (on a fairly basic level of psychocoustics). One can train listening abilities and we all know that.
Look for example at people working with stone. They are very strong from carrying slabs of stone daily, they muscles adapt. The same is with
listening (or any other ability) - if one listens a lot the hearing and interpretational mechanisms get trained.
Now training. People who train will know it: You adapt to your training stimulation. And easily.
If you run hills, you feel strange and tired on the flat. If you spar with one partner, a different one, even much weaker, can make you lots of trouble.
You do machines at a gym, free weights can kill you etc etc etc. Same with our systems as a hearing training tools - we adapt to them.
That's why in my opinion it is critical to get exposed to other stimuli than our systems and preferably more complex to push up the learning curve.
Live, unamplified sound is of course a canonical example. Very pleasant one

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Rodney Gold said:

We are just more anal ytical...
I go to ballets with my ballet teacher/examiner/choreographer wife ..I enjoy the overall performance ..so does she but she picks it apart in her head way more than I...she wants to teach me the nuances , but I have resisted
I never ask her to listen to an upgrade ... she listens to music like I watch ballet

Click to expand...

I think we like to give a bit more credit to our own special physical abilities than is warranted. Most certainly some have better hearing acuity and awareness of tone, just as some have significant deficiencies in this regard.

I liken the act of critical listening to that of anyone who becomes skilled and practiced in any hobby or sport. I've long worked from the perspective that the same sound hits all of our ears. The differences like in how we process and focus on that sound. Like any skill, it improves with experience, familiarity, and exercising the muscle; be that a physical muscle or mental processing power. There are endless products for very specific specialty sports, activities, and of course culinary/beverage interests. Some are predisposed to refine certain skills more quickly, but most all can hugely improve their skill in any such area with practice and experience. Some are more skilled users and less analytical, and certainly vice-versa.

Outside of hi-fi and sound reproduction, my other obsessive interest/sport/hobby is alpine skiing. It helps that I've been on skis since the age of 5, and have skied 35 of my 36 years since then. Having taken many weeks of lessons at Colorado resorts growing up and then getting lucky enough to ski with some who let me well past my previous comfort zone, I'm now a rather technical skier who can adapt to most any snow condition... if only I made enough time to keep in the physical condition to fully take advantage. The point here is that being as analytical and engineering minded as I am, I will immediately notice differences in gear, down to a lazy edge tuning. While many intermediates might try two different model skis and comment how one is "easier to turn" and another is "super fast," I'm thinking about separate details of how quick a ski is edge to edge, how is the turn initiation in different snow conditions, what shape turn the ski prefers and can be made to carve, and how stable a ski is in different snow and what parts of the ski are contributing to that feel. If for some reason I decided to bail on the audio world, I might go into designing skis.

I'm sure many of you have other interests and pursuits which you have similar acuity to gear and details. A great golfer will feel subtle differences in golf balls and club designs that I would only notice more generally, just as I'm sure avid tennis players would be very sensitive to every detail of a tennis racket, or a great chef of knife qualities. The point is that while we have interests and dispositions, these are sensitivities that are learned, practiced, and refined. I fondly remember a handful of experiences in local audio stores and playing with friend's systems in college and after where certain qualities of a sound system were initially pointed out and demonstrated in a way it finally clicked, just like the first time I got on a pair of skis with modern sidecut/shape allowing both edges to sweep through high speed turns like rails on a roller coaster.

It's nice to read various opinions.

When we go to the movies, are videophiles seeing things differently than other moviegoers?
Even among expert video aficionados the opinions vary. It's not a black & white answer; it's full of shades.

Maybe it's not our hearing or our vision that is different than other people, maybe it's the sound system's resolution and the video system's definition that deliver different sound reproductions and visuals?

Yes, our eyes and ears are not exactly the same physical geometry and of the same life's experience...from live rock music concerts and exposition to the elements...sun, thunder, sandstorm, hurricane, fire, underwater, flying high often above 30,000 feet, lo/hi temperatures, various altitudes from where we live, etc. We choose our hobbies because they bring pleasant emotions to the rest of our senses. ...Be it food, music, movies, speed, arts, reviews, paintings, sculptures, gardening, mountain climbing, philosophy, science, economics, sociology, dance and singing.

The systems are the ones reproducing differently between them, including the environment...the rooms.
Us we just hear and see things as their different design/build, different music recordings and film transfers, and in different venues.
The fine details are our expertise in our own hobbies' development and involvement and evolution.
Our listening and viewing abilities are our journeys to expand our sensory pleasures and emotions through exploration and dedication and time investment...our passion.

I cannot hear and see what others' eyes and ears are receiving; I don't live in their acoustics, in their visions, in their environment with their audio/video systems.
I can imagine from pictures and music videos as the limitation of my imagination.

Two thousand people are assisting to a classical music concert in a world class designed hall. Fifty percent are audiophiles. If we ask one thousand people assisting that same music concert if they are hearing things differently than the other half, the other one thousand people; what kind of answers are we going to get?

GT Audio Works stated:

I can clearly recall at an early age exploring my grandfathers workshop, fascinated by all the hanging tools and the myriad of jars and those old dovetailed wooden cheese boxes full of nuts, bolts, screws etc.

Do not recall you seeing my work shop GT although you described it. Except my cheese boxes are simply nailed. On the other hand, the drawers under the bench from an old sewing machine are dovetailed.

jn229 said:

GT Audio Works stated:

I can clearly recall at an early age exploring my grandfathers workshop, fascinated by all the hanging tools and the myriad of jars and those old dovetailed wooden cheese boxes full of nuts, bolts, screws etc.

Do not recall you seeing my work shop GT although you described it. Except my cheese boxes are simply nailed. On the other hand, the drawers under the bench from an old sewing machine are dovetailed.

Click to expand...

I suppose in an earlier era, quality even worked its way into a simple cheese box.
I dont live too far from that house, I would like to see if anything remains of that shop.
jn229...Does your shop have a hand powered drill, and an old set of WW2 headphones hanging on a nail on the wall too ?