From: Skip Osborne <osborne@software.org>
Subject: Re: Need help for buying a $5000 system(rebuts)
Originator: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Cc: osborne@software.org
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:13:02 GMT
	id <m0mKrR4-00017qC@Software.ORG>; Wed, 19 Aug 92 10: 54 EDT
	id <m0mKrTh-0002y7C@pebbles.Software.ORG>; Wed, 19 Aug 92 10: 57 EDT

>	what would be the 
>	purpose of taking along someone with better hearing to audition 
>	the equipment that you intend to buy, other than to convince
>	you to buy something more expensive than you personally can
>	appreciate?  is this really a practical method, or am i
>	asking a brazenly "mid-fi" question?
>
>	i don't know about you all, but i sure can't hear as well
>	as i used to...unfortunately i don't expect to hear better
>	with time.
>
>	duane

The wonderful thing about Music and/or the High End is that the hobby
is not intensely dependent on youthful, or even physically good,
hearing. I'm 50, and beginning to lose consonants when people speak,
but it's still quite easy for me to tell great speakers from very good,
or discriminate between different brands of interconnect.

The reason lies in the "semantics" of music, and your learned
perception of the subtleties therein. You're not born being able to
hear them, even if you're a young bat. The reason you initially put
yourself into learning mode for such subtleties is for the greater
enjoyment of music, because they translate into heightened emotional
impact. Once having learned to listen to them, you increase your
listening pleasure considerably with fine equipment.

I'll use an example from classical music, but I doubt your choice of
music lacks its own subtleties. If you listen carefully (and why read
audio.high-end if you don't), you'll note many places wherein one group
of instruments, especially strings, blends and weaves with another
elsewhere in the orchestra. You perceive the weaving to be a dialog
between different voices (remember the semantics I mentioned earlier?).
The more voices there are the more interesting it is to eavesdrop on
the dialog. There could be one voice (massed strings), two (high
strings and lower strings), three (violins, violas, cellos), or four if
you can separate basses from cellos.

Now, one differentiation of the absolute quality of speakers and other
components will be how well the violas separate from the violins on the
other side of the stage (easy), and from the cellos behind them
(harder), and from the basses ("harmonic integrity"), and from each
other ("great detailing").

At some point, maybe your perception changes...instead of "seeing"
instruments facing you, you might see them turn to talk to each other
(or not...that's between you and your temporal cortex). Thus does the
pursuit of great music and great equipment arrive at a goal...and it
doesn't take great ears - just using the ones you have, in a new way.
There are quite a few other aspects of recorded sound which are
similar, almost trivial, examples.

You may have to consciously try to hear this way at first, but once
you've trained yourself to listen for features, for the music's sake,
you will perceive the semantics of music clearly  on a good system,
without much need for the very high frequencies which you may be (and I
definitely am) losing. Fortunately, music doesn't depend much on
sibilant constants. So don't feel that anything other than a little air
at the top is lost - unless you dreamt of enjoying the semantics of
sonar....

Of course, you need good equipment to hear delicate features, and once
you learn to hear them you want more, so you get better equipment, and
the journey continues (with this kind of a loop in human behavior,
you'd expect to find more well-heeled hifi shop owners...). Sure, until
you can hear these things, the very best equipment is slightly wasted
on you; but, then, it would be wasted much worse on a bat :-).

Skip Osborne
Software Productivity Consortium
Herndon VA 22070



Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end