Harman's How To Listen software

[daftcombo]

Hi,

Amir posted this link a few days ago:
http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/

This software created by Harman and realsed in beta version in 2011 is a set of training exercices to test auditory capacities of EQ settings.

According to Sean Olive, to be a trained listener you need to reach at least level 8. And he has reached level 15!
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2011/03/harman-how-to-listen-listener-training.html

Anybody played with it?

 

[Hugo9000]

I spent a few hours with it a few months ago, but I haven't tried it again since then. I seem to recall that the difficulty ramped up pretty fast once you get to 5 eq points and combine dips with peaks etc. I wish the music used were orchestral or chamber music haha! It might have helped if I'd ever played with eq effects with my music in the past to give me a clearer idea of what different areas sound like.

I just tried logging into the software, and I can't remember what password I set, so I have no clue what level I reached. I'm sure it was quite low.

----
LOL I just made a new user name and password just to check it out again, and now I see that you can add your own music files for the eq to be applied to. If I had known that, I might have had more patience and have continued. I loathe the default 'music' selections in the program hahaha! I'd never use such things to evaluate a system for myself. I'll have to make some short clips from CDs I've used for my hi-fi scouting trips over the years.

Thanks @daftcombo for posting this and prompting me to look at this Harman program again!

 

[flipflop]

Took the training a couple of years ago and got to level 8 in everything except the exercise which requires a 5.1 channel sound card.
Sean Olive mentions in one of his blog posts that the task where you have to listen for dips was found to be the most difficult for listeners and I would have to agree with that.

 

[daftcombo]

LOL I just made a new user name and password just to check it out again, and now I see that you can add your own music files for the eq to be applied to.

I hadn't seen it neither, thanks! Though you'll probably need to take a few tracks & cut bits in Audacity in order to have them starting in the middle.
Lets us know if you find it easier with classical.
As for me, I think rock/pop is easier because you have bass, drums, guitar, voices pretty much together so you can almost try and hear if something is quieter or louder at every second.

 

[Hugo9000]

I hadn't seen it neither, thanks! Though you'll probably need to take a few tracks & cut bits in Audacity in order to have them starting in the middle.
Lets us know if you find it easier with classical.
As for me, I think rock/pop is easier because you have bass, drums, guitar, voices pretty much together so you can almost try and hear if something is quieter or louder at every second.

I think you're right, I'll have to work carefully to find the right classical pieces for this type of training! I just tried a 'soprano and a piano' piece, and it was so difficult! Kathleen Battle singing a song by Rachmaninov haha! Opus 21, No. 7, Здесь хорошо, commonly known as "How fair this spot" in English.

Perhaps I'll try some Ella Fitzgerald or Chris Isaak. I don't listen to much popular music at all. When I have auditioned loudspeakers, I've always used a few favorite opera singers whose voices I know really well, mostly Leontyne Price. Then I bring along a few favorite symphonic recordings, and some solo piano. If the tonality on my favorite voices and the piano sounds right to me, then I never really worried too much about other frequencies. If a loudspeaker can't reproduce Leontyne Price's voice convincingly, then I would never wish to own it, no matter how 'correct it may be in everything else. The Harman training in this free program is of course at a completely different level, as I've never spent that much effort trying to analyze the entire frequency range before!

 

[cookiefactory]

I spent a few hours with it a few months ago, but I haven't tried it again since then. I seem to recall that the difficulty ramped up pretty fast once you get to 5 eq points and combine dips with peaks etc. I wish the music used were orchestral or chamber music haha! It might have helped if I'd ever played with eq effects with my music in the past to give me a clearer idea of what different areas sound like.

I just tried logging into the software, and I can't remember what password I set, so I have no clue what level I reached. I'm sure it was quite low.

----
LOL I just made a new user name and password just to check it out again, and now I see that you can add your own music files for the eq to be applied to. If I had known that, I might have had more patience and have continued. I loathe the default 'music' selections in the program hahaha! I'd never use such things to evaluate a system for myself. I'll have to make some short clips from CDs I've used for my hi-fi scouting trips over the years.

Thanks @daftcombo for posting this and prompting me to look at this Harman program again!

Wait, you can upload your own tracks? Are you using the Windows version? I ask because I'm on Mac and haven't seen anywhere in the software to upload my own music.

 

[Hugo9000]

Wait, you can upload your own tracks? Are you using the Windows version? I ask because I'm on Mac and haven't seen anywhere in the software to upload my own music.

I had to open the program tonight to see how I did it, as I couldn't remember lol:

So, you choose one of the task options and click "Practice" from this screen here:

This will pop up, click on the "Choose" button from this screen:

That will take you to this, choose "Add File":

This was the last one I used apparently, so it opened this local folder on my computer, where I had placed one track. I just used a high quality MP3, I can't remember now if it allows use of FLAC, I don't think it did. I assume the version of the software that Harman uses internally allows lossless files, but who's going to quibble with free software haha, and for this type of testing and listening practice, I doubt that it would matter. My choice of file here was exceptionally difficult due to being just a single soprano singer with piano accompaniment. Once it got beyond the most basic of EQ changes, it was giving me a headache from the difficulty in pinpointing the changes. The best choices are material with wide-frequency content, and something you like well enough or can at least tolerate listening to over and over and over again for this kind of listening training. lol

Anyway, then it will let you name your new program selection however you like for your tests, I just called it "Kathleen Battle test file" for the sake of these screenshots:

Then click "Finished" and you can use that file as well as their default files for the various tests.

Oops, forgot to answer your other question: Yes, this is with Windows, but I would imagine if there is a version for Mac, it would probably have the same functions. Hope it works for you!

 

[cookiefactory]

I had to open the program tonight to see how I did it, as I couldn't remember lol:

So, you choose one of the task options and click "Practice" from this screen here:
View attachment 40308

This will pop up, click on the "Choose" button from this screen:
View attachment 40310

That will take you to this, choose "Add File":
View attachment 40311

This was the last one I used apparently, so it opened this local folder on my computer, where I had placed one track. I just used a high quality MP3, I can't remember now if it allows use of FLAC, I don't think it did. I assume the version of the software that Harman uses internally allows lossless files, but who's going to quibble with free software haha, and for this type of testing and listening practice, I doubt that it would matter. My choice of file here was exceptionally difficult due to being just a single soprano singer with piano accompaniment. Once it got beyond the most basic of EQ changes, it was giving me a headache from the difficulty in pinpointing the changes. The best choices are material with wide-frequency content, and something you like well enough or can at least tolerate listening to over and over and over again for this kind of listening training. lol
View attachment 40312

Anyway, then it will let you name your new program selection however you like for your tests, I just called it "Kathleen Battle test file" for the sake of these screenshots:
View attachment 40313

Then click "Finished" and you can use that file as well as their default files for the various tests.

Oops, forgot to answer your other question: Yes, this is with Windows, but I would imagine if there is a version for Mac, it would probably have the same functions. Hope it works for you!

Thanks, you went above and beyond! I definitely appreciate it

 

[Octalman]

The Harman training is an informative personal exercise. With tests claimed to be arrived at scientifically does it provide confirmation or debunking of one's hearing/brain as a valid discriminator and judge of loudspeaker goodness? With a medical hearing test showing equivalent to a 15 year old and musical training, certainly expected to do well. However, approached with and open mind and eagerness to learn.

Confirmed my preference/bias toward a loudspeaker with accurate mid-range. Low and high ends need to be very good, but not exceptional.
Other tests, Bright/Dull, Full/Thin, Reverb/Dry, Colored/Uncolored, Noise/Noise Free, Hum/Hum Free results revealed high discrimination accuracy.

Also did the Klippel listening test. Scored -51 for audibility threshold. In the end, both tests told me to continue relying on my own ears.

 

[spacevector]

HI @amirm, the recent mega-discussions about your listening impressions in speaker reviews made me look into this program. Its rather well made and I am grateful that Harman provided it freely.

The question I have you is: Do you regularly revisit this program to continue to qualify as a 'trained listener' and keep your listening chops sharpened?

 

[whazzup]

HI @amirm, the recent mega-discussions about your listening impressions in speaker reviews made me look into this program. Its rather well made and I am grateful that Harman provided it freely.

The question I have you is: Do you regularly revisit this program to continue to qualify as a 'trained listener' and keep your listening chops sharpened?

Not sure if @amirm saw this, interested to know too.

 

[Mike-48]

I wonder if other Windows 10 users have got the Harman program to work as expected. I installed it last night and tried it today. Sometimes, it works; others, I can't get any sound from it; and sometimes it crashes. Windows reports "incompatible program." Is there perhaps a newer version? The one I have is 2.0.4.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Anybody played with it?

I spent a few hours on it and could see the value in it. But it wouldn't save my progress for some reason, which made it very frustrating and discouraged me from returning to it.

That was a few years ago on a different PC. Maybe I'll revisit it again now. Thanks for reminding me of it

 

[thewas]

Also the "Philips golden ear challenge" site and tests were quite nice, shame they discontinued them.
http://www.audiopolitan.com/blog/philips-golden-ears-challenge-how-good-are-your-listening-skills/

 

[andyc56]

I wonder if other Windows 10 users have got the Harman program to work as expected. I installed it last night and tried it today. Sometimes, it works; others, I can't get any sound from it; and sometimes it crashes. Windows reports "incompatible program." Is there perhaps a newer version? The one I have is 2.0.4.

The Windows version of the program was developed under XP, and does some things that are illegal in Vista and up, which introduced User Account Control (UAC). UAC disallows programs from writing files to "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Program Files (x86)" or any subdirectory of them unless the program is run with admin privileges. Before UAC, it was common for apps to write configuration and other information to the same directory as the program's executable file, or a subdirectory of it. But this has been disallowed since Vista. Modern versions of Windows try to work around this problem by silently writing the files to a different directory than what the program specified, one that's not subject to UAC. I think it's a directory under AppData. But this just causes even more confusion because it doesn't notify the user that it did so, and programs generally don't know that the file was written to a different directory than what the program specified to the OS.

I told Sean Olive about this back in 2011, but apparently development of the program had nearly ceased by then. I've since slightly changed the workaround I suggested in that post, which at that time was to create a folder called "C\Old Programs" under which all programs that aren't compliant with UAC are installed. I now call this directory "C:\programs-no-uac" so that it contains no spaces. This fixes problems in some utilities rooted in Unix that don't like spaces in their path, for example XAMPP. So it kills two birds with one stone.

It's been years since I've run that Harman program, so there may be other things needed to make it run right, such as specifying XP compatibility mode. But the installation directory tweak should at least fix the most vexing problems.

 

[Mike-48]

I've since slightly changed the workaround I suggested in that post, which at that time was to create a folder called "C\Old Programs" under which all programs that aren't compliant with UAC are installed. I now call this directory "C:\programs-no-uac" so that it contains no spaces.

Thanks, Andy! I did something like that, and so far it works like a charm.

 

[Leeb]

I really think it is a good program, but it would need some serious update to fix all the bugs and crashes.
One issue I can't find a workaround for is loading my own tracks in it. I load them, it works, if I close the program once, I have this error showing up and have to delete the three Harman folders on my C: and reinstall again to fix it.

Does anyone have another program to recommend?

 

[MediumRare]

The Windows version of the program was developed under XP, and does some things that are illegal in Vista and up, which introduced User Account Control (UAC).....

I told Sean Olive about this back in 2011, but apparently development of the program had nearly ceased by then....

It's been years since I've run that Harman program, so there may be other things needed to make it run right, such as specifying XP compatibility mode. But the installation directory tweak should at least fix the most vexing problems.

I wonder if he’d be willing to let some CS students rewrite it as a school project?

 

[Wes]

training your hearing is the worst thing you can do

it can lead to expensive buying and prevent you from listening to the music qua music

 

[amirm]

Maybe we should develop our own open source version. Any volunteers?