Floyd Toole has made some interesting observations on musicians and their relative capability to assess audio playback gear, based on solid experimental evidence:
"Ando et al. (2000) found that musicians judge reflections to be about seven times greater than ordinary listeners, meaning that they derive a satisfying amount of spaciousness from reflections at a much lower sound level than ordinary folk: “Musicians prefer weaker amplitudes than listeners do.” "
…
"Musicians have long been assumed to have superior abilities to judge sound quality. Certainly, they know music, and they tend to be able to articulate opinions about sound. But what about the opinions themselves? Does living “in the band” develop an ability to judge sound from the audience’s perspective? Does understanding the structure of music and how it should be played enable a superior analysis of sound quality? When put to the test, Gabrielsson et al. (1979) found that the listeners who were the most reliable and also the most observant of differences between test sounds were persons he identified as hi-fi enthusiasts, a population that also included some musicians. The worst were those who had no hi-fi interests. In the middle, were musicians who were not hi-fi oriented."
"Figure 19.4b puts hearing loss into an easily understandable, and disturbing, context. Plotted on top of the ISO 226 equal-loudness contours are the hearing threshold measurements of listeners who exhibited high variability in their ratings of loudspeaker sound quality. All of these listeners were audio professionals, and many were part-time musicians."
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--all quotes from the first edition of Sound Reproduction.
Thank you for this, informative, very adult.
If nothing else, at least scholars above were putting "
listening to music through one's ears" as the main subject.
With all respect to everyone here whom I have argued with, ask yourselves, what is the point of Hifi or as a concept?
- I put it to you, that it is a
Trick show! Smoke and mirrors! All geared up to create a realistic
Illusion that one is hearing an actual piece of music, played by actual players, while in fact it is nothing but artificially created sound waves using a transducer.
- And to what end? Again, I put it to you, to satisfy one's ear/brain.
Realistically, for him to take his wallet out!
If you accept the above and keep that in mind at all times, it becomes very clear that
Science is used as a means to achieve that end.
It is ludicrous to suggest to a Hifi buyer/end user that what he hears is just an illusion, and he should not really trust his ears, but he should look at lab results and charts instead.
Lab tests, measurements, are just a means to check for flaws and mistakes - nothing more. Obviously, a device with a flawed lab test result is not going to sound good, but the reverse may not be true. (here it comes ...... all the name-calling!). In my culture (Amir's too) we have a saying,
A walnut is round, but not anything round is a walnut.
We choose what to measure based on scientific understanding of the design, to believe we have reached the zenith of knowledge is foolish and dangerous, as it would stop further research.
No I am not suggesting
there is magic in there we yet do not know! Not at all. We should use all our known scientific knowledge to consistently better ourselves, but loosing sight of the end goal is just short-sightedness.
Hifi was conceived to trick us into believing that we are listening to
real music while we are on a plane, train or in our homes.
Our ears, our brains, our desires together with our fallibilities are the major part and consideration of a Hifi system.
Please see the bigger picture.
Obviously the majority opinion here sees things rather differently to the way I do, although some obviously agree.
