Do you trust your ears?

[treitz3]

Hello fellow WBF members and good afternoon to you all. This is a seemingly simple question.....or at least I think it would be. There are the objectivists and subjectivists, the double blind testing folks, the scientific studies for proof folks, then there is the measurement crowd. No matter where you along your audio journey, do you trust your own ears or do you allow the aforementioned to control the audio purchases for your rig?

With the seemingly endless discussions about data, measurements, scientific studies, DBT's and the like that are so prominent on this forum [and others], I just sit back and wonder if anybody just sits back and trusts their own ears.

What say you?

Tom

 

[amirm]

Hi Tom. Good poll . I answered assuming you meant do I *always* trust my ears. There are cases where I trust my ears 100% and many times when I don't. So I voted "no" given the qualification I added to your poll. I think we all trust our ears some of the time regardless of which camp we are in (e.g. if two speakers sound different). What separates us then is what percentage of time we do that and across what test scenarios.

 

[Bruce B]

I have to. My clients pay for that service.

 

[RogerD]

You have to....only a fool doesn't.

 

[microstrip]

For purchasing purposes I always trust my ears. What else could I use? Measurements I am not able to correlate with my preferences?

 

[puroagave]

im with Amir. i trust my ears most of the time to the extent i know what 'sound' i like but im willing to admit i failed an ABx test JA did eons ago at a stereophile show. beyond that i cant consistantly tell bewteen two cables of similar gauge/const etc. or the vast number of tweaks people swear by. i think i can reliably detect significant aberrations in freq response for instance, but nowhere near the precision of objective testing.

if you answered yes, how many of you can tell if your system or the recordings you're playing are 180 degrees out of phase 100% of the time?

 

[NorthStar]

I trust all my senses, plus my heartbeat.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I read with my eyes (measurements, etc.) and I listen with my ears (the music no matter what the format and the system).

Listening trumps reading every time.

 

[DaveyF]

IF you cannot trust your ears, then perhaps you need to see a ENT Doc

 

[MylesBAstor]

Hi Tom. Good poll . I answered assuming you meant do I *always* trust my ears. There are cases where I trust my ears 100% and many times when I don't. So I voted "no" given the qualification I added to your poll. I think we all trust our ears some of the time regardless of which camp we are in (e.g. if two speakers sound different). What separates us then is what percentage of time we do that and across what test scenarios.

Do you trust your senses eg. Hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling, etc?

I always find it curious that people trust what they see but don't trust what they hear. On a primal level, I think that we hear things way before we see them.

 

[Mosin]

Yes.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

The poll so far indicates that 73% of the membership trusts their ears. So it amazes me to no end to see endless debates on a degree of difference in a measurement. Who cares, really? You'll never hear the difference. Excuse my elementary approach to audio reproduction and remembering that if the music doesn't come first it doesn't much matter what I play it through.

 

[Steve Williams]

The poll so far indicates that 73% of the membership trusts their ears. So it amazes me to no end to see endless debates on a degree of difference in a measurement. Who cares, really? You'll never hear the difference. Excuse my elementary approach to audio reproduction and remembering that if the music doesn't come first it doesn't much matter what I play it through.

Probably because all of our objectivist members are either in church or still in bed

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Probably because all of our objectivist members are either in church or still in bed

I'm waiting for the onslaught....

 

[Mosin]

Probably because all of our objectivist members are either in church or still in bed

They are busy searching their houses for tape measures, so they can be absolutely certain their monitors are 24" diagonally. If not, someone at Best Buy is gonna pay!



Actually, I believe measurements do count, but I believe they should be used as points of departure, not an empirical standard of what constitutes a finished product.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Probably because all of our objectivist members are either in church or still in bed

this one went scubadiving,and yes i do trust my ears , but i trust measurements even more , like the air manometer/depth gauge for diving or the micrometer for my dayjob


ps . there is an exception namely set amplifiers ,they seem to measure mediocre but i like them a lot,i hope this sin doesnt put me in the subjectivist camp

 

[puroagave]

I always find it curious that people trust what they see but don't trust what they hear...

even then people fail. my art teacher would say "draw what you see not what you know." students would look right at a 3 dimensional object and still draw it flat in one dimension like a two year old.

 

[Snoop65]

I trust my ears and I can be honest about what I hear and don't hear.

 

[GaryProtein]

even then people fail. my art teacher would say "draw what you see not what you know." students would look right at a 3 dimensional object and still draw it flat in one dimension like a two year old.

ALL THE TIME!

That's because it actually takes talent to draw what you see with all its three-dimentional attributes.

That's why there are so many lousy so-called artists who can get by with crap like "The Scream."

It takes real talent--NOT publicity, to create work like Velazquez, Fragonard, Singer-Sargent, or Inness.

 

[NorthStar]

That's the thing; people will buy anything nowadays, even if it's pure crap.

Movies that completely suck can make several hundred of $millions in total revenues.
RAP music is a multi-billion dollars industry.
Paintings that sell for hundred of $ millions are totally ludicrous.
Audio cables ....

Voodoo-magic is a business. ...So yes I'd rather trust my own ears at the end.