How do I get better at hearing?

[Berwhale]

Your hearing is only going to go in one direction.
Keith

I never listen to them myself

 

[DanielT]

Your hearing is only going to go in one direction.
Keith

 

[DVDdoug]

You can look-up Ear Training but I agree it's probably a bad idea if you want to enjoy music. It's more for audio engineers & producers or for people like Amir who are evaluating audio equipment. There is also another kind of "ear training" for musicians.

We have all heard low-quality MP3s but I've intentionally made no effort to hear the defects in higher-quality MP3s. I have an iPod full of high-quality MP3s (LAME "V0") and every time I've thought I I'm hearing a compression artifact, the same "defect" is on the original CD.

...Back in the vinyl days I used to HATE the clicks & pops, and I since I was familiar with my records I new exactly when that nasty click was coming and I'd be waiting for it instead of enjoying the music. Most people were able to enjoy the music and ignore the defects. It wasn't quite as annoying when it was someone else's record and wasn't expecting the click.

I've also heard stories of musicians that can enjoy music without regard to the playback quality.

 

[DVDdoug]

I'm wonder if an AI robot equipped with sensitive sound sensors will be able to pick up the differences in sound from audio gears and then articulate them in terms of musicality, sound stage and other flowery sound descriptions, hmmm

You can measure real stuff like noise, distortion, and frequency response.

 

[Zensō]

I've also heard stories of musicians that can enjoy music without regard to the playback quality.

In my experience, this is true of most musicians.

 

[Ambientwks]

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

 

[DanielT]

Maybe I should point out that I only stated the fact. Such is life, for everyone, but I know no one, among my friends, who really cares about it. They and I are happy and still listen to music.

In fact, with today's opportunities of streaming I think listening to music is more fun than it used to be. Exciting exploration and lots of new musicians, artists and songs.... even older, also ..well everything.

 

[fabius]

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

https://www.soundgym.co/dashboard/gym is fun! I only played the three free games but it was very interesting. It could have done with a little more explanation as to exactly what each game was about - it's a bit in-at-the-deep-end - but you can figure it out. But $25/month, or $8/month is enough to make me think carefully about paying for it. Which often means I end up forgetting about whatever it is.

On the plus side, the Balance test did make me realise my HD650s were on the wrong way round I thought they'd been a little uncomfortable the past couple of days!

 

[TurtlePaul]

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of casual listeners will set the volume to 50-65 dB, but a lot of the focused listening for differences happen at 75-85 dB. I prefer listening at lower volumes (plus live in an apartment) but certainly understand that the “low” volume can mask flaws in music and equipment.

 

[Ambientwks]

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of casual listeners will set the volume to 50-65 dB, but a lot of the focused listening for differences happen at 75-85 dB. I prefer listening at lower volumes (plus live in an apartment) but certainly understand that the “low” volume can mask flaws in music and equipment.

This is a great point! One that is probably overlooked sometimes. Hearing the difference between -1 and -2 dB is arguably a lot easier than -11 and -12 or -21 and -22.

 

[bkdc]

Don't worry. You will be accepting of lesser quality and your pocketbook will thank you for it as long as you don't buy into the false propaganda of audio. Compressed audio saves bandwidth. High-Res audio files waste bandwidth. As long as the track is mastered at in high resolution there is plenty of headroom and the resulting CD quality file is indistinguishable from the original 192/24 file to human ears.

Almost every good ear can tell the difference between constant bit rate 128kbps MP3 and a WAV when played out of good phones or speakers. If you can't you are already getting old. My experience is that for MP3, LAME encoder at V2 setting (formerly alt-preset-standard which equates to a variable bit rate of approximately 190kbps) is probably the lowest setting for true transparency (this is when I tested myself 2 decades ago when I had near-perfect ears). Below that, subtle differences can be occasionally heard. The variable bit rate is important as LAME encoder (the best MP3 encoder on earth) knows which passages need encoding at a higher bit rate and which can be encoded at lower bit rates while still maintaining transparency. High quality compressed music files are indistinguishable from CD quality on blind ABX testing. And if there is a subtle difference, there is no telling whether you prefer the compressed version or the uncompressed version.

There are even tools that allow you to subtract the difference in sound between a WAV (or FLAC) and the MP3 and to try to hear what miniscule difference is left. It is essentially inaudible or so subtle as to be insignificant.

This goes to services like Tidal which stream "high-res" audio. This is marketing baloney. What is important is that whatever music being streamed, if compressed, was compressed in very high quality as to be transparent to a human ear and that it is delivered without error your DAC. Hi-Res streaming sounds better because the general low priced competition sounds like crap.... not because it's hi-res. But it won't sound better than the 320kbps MP3 stream from Spotify. And I venture to say that if you encoded an MP3 by yourself from a CD using Exact Audio Copy and LAME, your own MP3 may sound better than the Tidal stream.

 

[Andysu]

how could i hear anything with that stupid persons tv show with annoying music overdubbed just so he can get stupid tv ratings on his stupid tv show .

can someone do a better testing ? i think i could without the stupid annoying overdubbed background music .

and here in the uk we rise are hand or arm if we can hear the tone and the room was garbage for testing as i guess there are speakers behind at-screen from looking at the seating looked like a cinema or a conference room and the test would be should be done with test subjects ,
a) wearing same closed headphones
b) a HF horn placed in front of them say 1m

anyway the garbage trash tv show was 2013 and the way the stupid person says "play serious of sounds" i guess for americans sine wave is too technical for americans to understand ?

anyway rubbish show was 2013 and that 8 year old is now 17 and he has lots that 18KHz now . garbage tv shows like this really gets under my skin

national garbage yeah, i see those dinky crappy tv home theatre in box speakers behind that guy . no this test is not valid

 

[dasdoing]

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.

I wouldn't say you need better hearing in order to hear the diferences.
you need a more analytical hearing, you need to learn where to pay atention at.
as others have said, it doesn't realy make sense to learn to be able to hear the diference. it will on the contrary kind of take away from your pleasure. you shouldn't pay atention to subtle details when listening to music, since you wont "see the forest because there are too much trees" as the german say

 

[Loathecliff]

....
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?

With apologies to all on ASR, and to Chris Rea :- ........This is the road to Dell.

 

[Andysu]

also i hear in this garbage trash tv show if that sine wave is actually the one recorded in the video i hear artifact starting at 10KHz what might be sound card issue not able to play the tone correctly or i hear harmonic frequncuies been generated so not point with the rest of the tones now as i hear harmonic artifact tones and not a true fundamental tone . national garbage trash can't afford decent equipment got use those cheap home theatre in box speakers
i believe the sine wave used in the video is maybe overdubbed into the video , yes another american propaganda tv show , waste of my time , click bait . the camera videoing is recording the sound oh sure it is . otherwise there be dips and peaks with those sine wave tones . if you turn your heard side to side tilt it left to right or rise yourself up and down you would hear 8Khz going into a dip valley and can't hear it . sighhhhhhhhhhhh . i am perefct at listening myself , i like myself that is why i know the video is bullshit

 

[DanielT]

how could i hear anything with that stupid persons tv show with annoying music overdubbed just so he can get stupid tv ratings on his stupid tv show .

can someone do a better testing ? i think i could without the stupid annoying overdubbed background music .

and here in the uk we rise are hand or arm if we can hear the tone and the room was garbage for testing as i guess there are speakers behind at-screen from looking at the seating looked like a cinema or a conference room and the test would be should be done with test subjects ,
a) wearing same closed headphones
b) a HF horn placed in front of them say 1m

anyway the garbage trash tv show was 2013 and the way the stupid person says "play serious of sounds" i guess for americans sine wave is too technical for americans to understand ?

anyway rubbish show was 2013 and that 8 year old is now 17 and he has lots that 18KHz now . garbage tv shows like this really gets under my skin

national garbage yeah, i see those dinky crappy tv home theatre in box speakers behind that guy . no this test is not valid

It was mostly to show the principle. There are lots of tests online. Test a few , IF they show about the same thing so .... They can give an indication. If you then really want it verified, you have to see a doctor. Which, incidentally, there is no reason for, if we only talk about the ability to hear higher frequencies which, decreases with increasing age, because it is a natural part of aging and life itself.

 

[Andysu]

It was mostly to show the principle. There are lots of tests online. Test a few , IF they show about the same thing so .... They can give an indication. If you then really want it verified, you have to see a doctor. Which, incidentally, there is no reason for, if we only talk about the ability to hear higher frequencies which, decreases with increasing age, because it is a natural part of aging and life itself.

thank you , i do know this
being using this test for years . and using rew with closed headphones and aligning the headphones on the ears with 8khz as often the tone goes unheard as the headphones not aligned takes few secs to do so . all the tones below are heard easily

Free hearing test on line – Equal loudness contours and audiometry

This free hearing test on line is an interactive test to produce equal loudness curves or equal loudness congtours.

newt.phys.unsw.edu.au

 

[freemansteve]

The best way to improve your hearing is to send me £30,000 in a plain brown envelope.
I'll respond with certificate of hearing improvement.

 

[Robin L]

In my experience, this is true of most musicians.

I think Glenn Gould had something to say about the best music being experienced in silence, conjured out of memory or from reading the score.

"Audiophiles" often concern themselves with timbre, sonority. While many musicians are concerned with tone, I suspect more are concerned with playing the right note at the right time. Classical musicians in particular are concerned with pitch, both as regards such things as vibrato and specific pitches. One of many reasons the first rush of sales for CDs was among Classical music collectors.

There are musicians I have known/worked with who are interested in audio, and some are now recording engineers. I'd point in particular to the "Voices of Music" presentations on YouTube, where some of the musicians performing in the video are also responsible for the fabulous engineering. I suspect the most useful sort of "ear-training" is learning to read score. All the useful aspects of audio relate to music and music-making. Learning more about music has been my best and most useful ear training.

I've done a lot of recording. I'm really more concerned with balances than timbre. I'm currently assisting with a musical group that performs via zoom. All are varying degrees of amateur. My concerns are more "how do I lower the drum in the mix, how do I bring out the vocal?" and "where is that buzz coming from?" than "am I getting the drum sound right?" I suspect some musicians seeking the nth degree of sound quality from their voice or their instrument listen to the playback and say "the hell with it" on account of disliking the sound of their own voice or disliking what recording does to the sound they intend to produce. Some musicians are listening for errors. And some really don't care, knowing the music is only happening in real time, the recording is only a ghost of an echo. That what the Grateful Dead thought, and that's why they had a taper's section, because once it's over it's over and you can have it [they'll have a better copy anyway, just in case they strike fire]. Playback is only fun when everything comes out right anyway.

 

[Andysu]

I think Glenn Gould had something to say about the best music being experienced in silence, conjured out of memory or from reading the score.

"Audiophiles" often concern themselves with timbre, sonority. While many musicians are concerned with tone, I suspect more are concerned with playing the right note at the right time. Classical musicians in particular are concerned with pitch, both as regards such things as vibrato and specific pitches. One of many reasons the first rush of sales for CDs was among Classical music collectors.

There are musicians I have known/worked with who are interested in audio, and some are now recording engineers. I'd point in particular to the "Voices of Music" presentations on YouTube, where some of the musicians performing in the video are also responsible for the fabulous engineering. I suspect the most useful sort of "ear-training" is learning to read score. All the useful aspects of audio relate to music and music-making. Learning more about music has been my best and most useful ear training.

I've done a lot of recording. I'm really more concerned with balances than timbre. I'm currently assisting with a musical group that performs via zoom. All are varying degrees of amateur. My concerns are more "how do I lower the drum in the mix, how do I bring out the vocal?" and "where is that buzz coming from?" than "am I getting the drum sound right?" I suspect some musicians seeking the nth degree of sound quality from their voice or their instrument listen to the playback and say "the hell with it" on account of disliking the sound of their own voice or disliking what recording does to the sound they intend to produce. Some musicians are listening for errors. And some really don't care, knowing the music is only happening in real time, the recording is only a ghost of an echo. That what the Grateful Dead thought, and that's why they had a taper's section, because once it's over it's over and you can have it [they'll have a better copy anyway, just in case they strike fire]. Playback is only fun when everything comes out right anyway.

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