How do I get better at hearing?

[DanielT]

Classical musicians in particular are concerned with pitch, both as regards such things as vibrato and specific pitches.

And you can clearly hear yourself how bad it sounds when it's not in pitch, 2:40 into the video regarding pitch, out of tune, vibrato with slide guitar.
Feel free to watch part two of his video, he has fun comments regarding some familiar licks.

 

[Robin L]

And you can clearly hear yourself how bad it sounds when it's not in pitch, 2:40 into the video regarding pitch, out of tune, vibrato with slide guitar.
Feel free to watch part two of his video, he has fun comments regarding some familiar licks.

Excellent and very educational for a lunkhead guitarist such as myself.

 

[DanielT]

Excellent and very educational for a lunkhead guitarist such as myself.

OT
Plus I like his comments. I put part two with, starting with .. all the licks you heard in movies, ... movies with trucks with very large wheels in swamps ... by the way..if you walk along a country road and out of the blue you hear this ... you better get out of there quick because you know that when you hear that lick you know that nothing good will happen.
(not exactly word for word what he says but close)

He he.Spot on.

 

[Phoney]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but... as I mentioned in the Topping EX5 thread, I've got my first DAC/amp and am listening with my HD650s and everything sounds fine... about just as fine as it did before! As I said there:



Presumably you all can tell differences between the three different formats?

So, my real question is, can I train my ears to hear better? And if so, how?

At the moment my it feels like my ability to taste differences in wine - only the extremely obvious things. Which is fine, and means I don't require specific and/or expensive wines to be happy! Learning more about wine might make life more difficult! But, given I listen to music a lot more than I drink wine, I'd like to get better at hearing it.

When they are masking the files down to mp3, they will do so by removing tones that are the least audible when the frequency response curve is even (I'm guessing Harman ish for headphones).. This makes sense because most equipment should be kind of even on average. When the response curve is crappy, and theres a lot of peaks, the tones that were the least audible with an even response now suddenly becomes way more audible and therefore will be heard with lossless and not with mp3. Awful built in laptop speakers for example usually do have a very uneven response, and therefore you hear a difference. A lot of good headphones and speakers usually have a way more even response, and the difference between lossless and mp3 will be minor in terms of audibility. Which is funny, because there's a lot of people that think the more high end (or the higher quality) your gear is, the easier it will be to hear the difference between mp3 and lossless when in reality it's kind of the opposite.

When I first did this kind of test I was easily able to pick out lossless 5 out of 6 times with my built in laptok speaker, but when I tried with the Aryas it was impossible for me to hear the difference between mp3 and lossless. I even struggled to decide which one was 128kbs. This was eye opening for me. After this experience, I asked someone that I trust with the science behind things, and he told me the things above. So I'm not going to say it's true or accurate for sure, but it makes a lot of sense to me

I still use lossless for psychological reasons and just incase there will be some audible difference in some songs with some of my gear. It's not really that expensive anyways, so why not.

 

[Holmz]

i'm , bit of a max richter , myself summer has strong rhythmic string movement of mid bass strings pressing against my body , thou won't do that in real life , music bigger than life huh ,

the video you posted and timestamp at start of around same as the max richter version , so many versions . the max richter version is more like richter scale reading

How do you rate ^it^?

 

[Wseaton]

You guys can't go by bitrates....unless its the same algorithm.

Encoders, at least the better ones have got pretty good at compression, even at 128Kb. Computational horsepower is no longer an issue with todays processors and with so much commercial competition for streaming nobody wants to lose out to a pair of ear buds.

Same with H265 compression over H264.

Also, DAC/amp combos are often colored on purpose to differentiate themselves from competitors. They EQ upper mids a bit higher, and get rave reviews for having "more clarity" over another brand. 20-25 years ago the difference in 16-bit consumer DACs was like a kick in the head. Today, unless there's funny business going on in the analog stage differences are trivial.

 

[Zog]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but... as I mentioned in the Topping EX5 thread, I've got my first DAC/amp and am listening with my HD650s and everything sounds fine... about just as fine as it did before! As I said there:



Presumably you all can tell differences between the three different formats?

So, my real question is, can I train my ears to hear better? And if so, how?

At the moment my it feels like my ability to taste differences in wine - only the extremely obvious things. Which is fine, and means I don't require specific and/or expensive wines to be happy! Learning more about wine might make life more difficult! But, given I listen to music a lot more than I drink wine, I'd like to get better at hearing it.

One of the things you can try is some Vivaldi concertos, or Bach Brandenburgs. Anything really, so long as it has few different 'voices'. Brahms clarinet trio would be another goodie. Then set yourself up exactly between your speakers and with no light or low light. (Or close your eyes). In this set up you can really concentrate on the music. My thinking is that if you are able to listen to the music then the hi-fi will follow. That will in turn enhance the music etc.

 

[DeepFried]

But if there's no audible difference between my seven year old laptop's headphone socket and this "budget" £350 DAC/amp's output then what are we all doing here?

The purpose of a DAC is to provide an audibly transparent conversion of digital audio to analog. if the DAC in your laptop was already achieving that then you could spend any amount of money you like on any other DAC and get a result no more transparent than transparent. Where you're more likely to see a difference is in the headphone amp, and there more in the power delivery than in transparency, what exactly that means will depend on many factors including what headphones you're using and at what volume you listen.

At the end of the day, the DAC/amp driving your heaphones, provided they're not faulty in their implementation (and provide sufficient power for your listening volume) will make a vanishingly small contribution to the overall experience; where the headphones themselves, any EQ, and the quality of the audio stream will make up 99% of the experience.

The reason to buy a more expensive DAC is in the features, the input and output options, or in other words in the practical utility of the device.

 

[Freddy]

A good way of getting better at listening is just to listen. This sounds silly, but the more equipment you listen to the more you will coe to realise that some sounds good to your ears and others do not. Go to as many audio shows and auditions as you can. You will soon learn what appeals to you. I visited a number of shops, and demonstrations before I decided to buy my Sonnet Dac. I listened to a number that get good reviews on this site, in fact this was one of the reasons I joined this site in the first place. It was not the best Dac I heard, that would have to go to the Playback designs, but for the money it was by far the one that appealed to me most.
A fun thing to do is to listen to different recordings, for example played with original instruments as opposed to modern instruments.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Spend around £25 with Amazon on an ear cleaning kit, the biggest difference in hearing I’ve experienced. Lent it to my neighbours last week they bought one deliveried yesterday. Doesn’t matter how well anything tests if your ears are bunged up with wax.

 

[hardisj]

I use this.

SoundGym | Audio Ear Training Online

Audio ear training for recording musicians and sound engineers. Get a daily sound workout, enhance your listening skills, and get better results in the studio.

www.soundgym.co

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Presumably you all can tell differences between the three different formats?

That's a bit of a big assumption ... on properly done recordings the differences are truly subtle and in many cases not at all apparent.

I have a whole bunch of albums that I transcoded from vinyl into 192k MP3s ... play them side by side and I can't hear any difference. But, that's actually a good thing because I can simply relax and enjoy the music.

So, my real question is, can I train my ears to hear better? And if so, how?

Of course you can train your ears ... and the best way is to listen. You can take all the courses and follow all the tutorials you like... in the end you hear what you hear... and that should be good enough.

 

[fpitas]

Design, build and voice your own speakers. You'll soon hear every last flaw, whether you want to or not

 

[Nowhk]

After three pages of discussion on this topic, it seems quite clear that for listening and enjoying music, the audio system matter not so much (at least, when it satisfy some basic requirements).

I'll revert the question so: if they won't impact the listening of the music, why there are so many different gears/company/etc?

I believe that 99% of people that listen to music is because they want just "listen to music".

Note: I'm one that switching between different "decent" audio systems doesn't impact the way I enjoy the music...

 

[GXAlan]

Welcome to How to Listen!

Overview How to Listen is a desktop software application developed by the Harman Internationa l R&D group for the purpose of training an...

harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com

Didn’t see this posted. No idea if this is official, if the software has malware or not, but I do remember using this in the past and it was pretty interesting since it would show you the result of different EQs.

 

[egellings]

I think the question would be better worded by using 'listening' rather than 'hearing'. Hearing is just what your ear-brain system does. Listening is your paying attention to what you hear and then interpreting it. You can maybe improve that (listening) with training, but hearing is just the mechanism through which you listen. I don't know how you'd improve that unless a medical problem is at play degrading your hearing, and you attend to that.

 

[Haider]

To be honest why would you want to do that unless you want to work in that field; music is art, enjoy the art...I'd rather listen to Direstraits on Airpods than me singing on the finest HiFI system...

 

[Scrappy]

Practice? My kid (theater sound professional) has used this.

Moulton Laboratories :: Golden Ears

Years ago in college, a buddy and I would do some of these before hitting the bar, ha! Worth doin, I only use my ears for live show monitor shifts mostly. Occasionally I’ll listen to noise on big amplifier output boards

 

[Scrappy]

I use soundgym and tonegym. I don't think it reduces my enjoyment of listening - quite the opposite!

The first thing I ever did (and still do) is listen to a song or album many times, and focus on a specific instrument each time through. I find this not only helps my ear distinguish instrument tone, but also helps me hear better how that instrument is blending/ interacting with the others.

Another (weird?) thing I catch myself doing is listening to short reverberation or slap/flutter echoes in small or medium rooms.

You can also listen for comb filtering when someone is talking while you're both standing/ sitting next to a hard surface..

You can train your ears all day long! Just give yourself a goal and try it. Have fun

Flutter echo is pretty obvious. I used to have a Zippo lighter in my pocket all the time; the “Scnap” of that closing reverbates well