Hi
These discussions are philosophical in nature. They also point toward our fear of the unknown. It is an uneasy feeling to ponder the depth of our ignorance or worse our fallibility. Our ears are the devices through which we perceive sound. As for many of our limbs and perceptual organs they need to be trained to perform well. Not "used', trained . Untrained our ears are poor. Trained they become better but remain inaccurate.
As an audiophile, I have had to face my relatively plebeian hearing. I have had for many years believed that my ears were superior. It dawned to me around 2006 that they weren't. I have post this elsewhere but bear with me and let me repost it . I was in a room with a CRT TV (remember those? ) and there was no picture on it. It looked off and I was relaxing .. A young cousin perhaps 16 years old then came to the room and told me the TV was on .. I looked at the CRT, no picture and there wasn't any indication of TV being on... the cable box ws of course off... She insisted the Tv was on and proceeded to turn it off ... Well, she heard the TV from about 20 feet .. the flyback transformers tend to emit some sounds in the over 16 KHz range and for her it was pretty loud , for me it was entirely absent. I did not hear it at all. It was the beginning. a few years later there was a test of an audiophile comparing his super audio speaker cables with run of the mill cables. He couldn't tell them apart. I on my side was sure he would or that I would if I performed similar test ... I failed miserably.. Nothing scientific. Had a few friends, we level matched grossly and compared 6 AWG electrical wire with my seriously audiophile cables and I couldn't tell them apart either .. Later I tested myself on various software amongst them the foobar ABX ... Failed often to distinguish 256 KBps mp3 from CD .. Finally downloaded Harman "How to Listen" and am able to distinguish some of the artifacts.
Audiophile are often engaged in other activities involving the notion of "best". Be it car or wine or food, etc .. There is a search. I have some audiophile friends that would not use anything but a full -frame camera ( that includes me BTW) but can hardly tell the difference between a picture taken with a full frame and and a half-frame. The same people will talk about the special picture a Leica camera produces, of course once they know it was taken with a Leica... I have a photographer friend who played a cruel joke on some of us with pictures taken with an iPhone 7 Plus ( talk about a seriously good camera in this smartphone!!! ???). He was on the countryside and had only , of course, his cellphone .. and took some superb pictures and proceed to enlarge some of them ... We all thought it had to be his his Hasselblad or Nikon !! Well it wasn't ...
The point of all this writing is that this is a much more unsettling for most audiophiles to accept that our vaunted hearing is ...not. In the absence of serious measurements our hearing is what we have to use. Consider training our ears/hearing to make them/it more accurate. That is all we can do. It is thus IMO wiser not to trust them.
These discussions are philosophical in nature. They also point toward our fear of the unknown. It is an uneasy feeling to ponder the depth of our ignorance or worse our fallibility. Our ears are the devices through which we perceive sound. As for many of our limbs and perceptual organs they need to be trained to perform well. Not "used', trained . Untrained our ears are poor. Trained they become better but remain inaccurate.
As an audiophile, I have had to face my relatively plebeian hearing. I have had for many years believed that my ears were superior. It dawned to me around 2006 that they weren't. I have post this elsewhere but bear with me and let me repost it . I was in a room with a CRT TV (remember those? ) and there was no picture on it. It looked off and I was relaxing .. A young cousin perhaps 16 years old then came to the room and told me the TV was on .. I looked at the CRT, no picture and there wasn't any indication of TV being on... the cable box ws of course off... She insisted the Tv was on and proceeded to turn it off ... Well, she heard the TV from about 20 feet .. the flyback transformers tend to emit some sounds in the over 16 KHz range and for her it was pretty loud , for me it was entirely absent. I did not hear it at all. It was the beginning. a few years later there was a test of an audiophile comparing his super audio speaker cables with run of the mill cables. He couldn't tell them apart. I on my side was sure he would or that I would if I performed similar test ... I failed miserably.. Nothing scientific. Had a few friends, we level matched grossly and compared 6 AWG electrical wire with my seriously audiophile cables and I couldn't tell them apart either .. Later I tested myself on various software amongst them the foobar ABX ... Failed often to distinguish 256 KBps mp3 from CD .. Finally downloaded Harman "How to Listen" and am able to distinguish some of the artifacts.
Audiophile are often engaged in other activities involving the notion of "best". Be it car or wine or food, etc .. There is a search. I have some audiophile friends that would not use anything but a full -frame camera ( that includes me BTW) but can hardly tell the difference between a picture taken with a full frame and and a half-frame. The same people will talk about the special picture a Leica camera produces, of course once they know it was taken with a Leica... I have a photographer friend who played a cruel joke on some of us with pictures taken with an iPhone 7 Plus ( talk about a seriously good camera in this smartphone!!! ???). He was on the countryside and had only , of course, his cellphone .. and took some superb pictures and proceed to enlarge some of them ... We all thought it had to be his his Hasselblad or Nikon !! Well it wasn't ...
The point of all this writing is that this is a much more unsettling for most audiophiles to accept that our vaunted hearing is ...not. In the absence of serious measurements our hearing is what we have to use. Consider training our ears/hearing to make them/it more accurate. That is all we can do. It is thus IMO wiser not to trust them.
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