Weird question, but - any blind reviewers out there?

[kemmler3D]

I'm speaking a bit ignorantly here, but I've heard of instances where people who are born without vision, or lose vision at some point develop exceptionally acute hearing.

I don't think this gives them extended frequency range, but there are recorded cases of blind people who develop dramatically above-average hearing, up to and including the ability to "echolocate" very effectively.

I started thinking that I'd rather get a review of speakers or headphones from folks like that, than your average "golden-eared" cable-swapper.

Does anyone know of reviewers or testers that make use of hyper-developed hearing abilities due to blindness? Is this a thing, or am I just saying something a bit stupid here?

 

[sergeauckland]

Sadly no longer with us, but Angus McKenzie was a very respected engineer and reviewer. Totally blind. At one of my first AES meetings as a very young engineer, I was his eyes for the lecture he was giving. He could operate an oscilloscope by touch, just needed somebody to read the screen and tell him what the amplitude was.

Remarkable man.

S

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Does anyone know of reviewers or testers that make use of hyper-developed hearing abilities due to blindness? Is this a thing ... ?

If it is a thing, I would think that sighted listeners would have needed to develop similar sensitivities for the review to be applicable. It's a similar situation to tetrachromats who are UV-sensitive, and who can see colors beyond those that the average person can see. How do they describe them, and how does the average person relate?

Jim

 

[kemmler3D]

I would think that sighted listeners would have needed to develop similar sensitivities for the review to be applicable.

Sighted reviewers would hopefully be considered "trained" and have good critical listening skills / abilities.

However, my (loose layman's) understanding is that blind individuals sometimes repurpose parts of the brain that would be used for visual information in sighted individuals. I think this would be hard or impossible to do through training if you still have vision. That part of the brain is still being used, after all.

Brains of blind people adapt to sharpen sense of hearing, study shows

Research from the University of Washington uses functional MRI to identify two differences in the brains of blind individuals -- differences that might be responsible for their abilities to make...

www.washington.edu

To put it another way... plenty of people have good, even great listening skills developed over time. I know of approximately zero sighted people who can catch a ball with a blindfold on, but I've seen a report on a blind kid who could do that.

I think certain blind people are simply on another level of hearing due to being able to expand hearing abilities beyond their typical "borders" in the brain. So I think their evaluations of speakers could be more interesting for that reason.

 

[Vincent Kars]

Most of them are but that is not about their eyesight.

 

[Cbdb2]

Like the blind guy who uses sonar to "see".

 

[kemmler3D]

Like the blind guy who uses sonar to "see".

Precisely. I think this isn't something most of us could be trained to do no matter how long we tried, because our visual "circuits" are still devoted to visual inputs.

So, you can imagine this guy would have a very easy time evaluating stereo image quality. Or maybe not... maybe his auditory processing of spatial cues is so good that stereo sound isn't ever good enough to 'fool' him. Either way, I'd be interested in his speaker reviews.

 

[mhardy6647]

Dunno, but Roy Cizek, responsible for the somewhat short-lived but well-respected Cizek loudpseaker brand, was blind.

Roy Cizek - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

These used the long-popular (and quite good) Peerless KO10DT silk dome tweeters (FWIW).
Interestingly, another New England brand, known as AEI, sold essentially the same loudspeakers at lower price via the then-popular (small-ish, regional-ish) chain, Tech HiFi.

 

[kemmler3D]

Dunno, but Roy Cizek, responsible for the somewhat short-lived but well-respected Cizek loudpseaker brand, was blind.

Roy Cizek - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

These used the long-popular (and quite good) Peerless KO10DT silk dome tweeters (FWIW).
Interestingly, another New England brand, known as AEI, sold essentially the same loudspeakers at lower price via the then-popular (small-ish, regional-ish) chain, Tech HiFi.

If those graphs are to be even half-believed, they put together a pretty nice design for the time.

 

[Titmouse]

I stumbled upon this channel at some point. Not sure if he has hyper sensitive hearing.

https://www.youtube.com/@ConvinceMeAudio/videos

 

[kemmler3D]

I stumbled upon this channel at some point. Not sure if he has hyper sensitive hearing.

https://www.youtube.com/@ConvinceMeAudio/videos

Interesting. Got a lot of subjectivist lingo coming at me when I watched one of his vids, though...

 

[Duke]

Dunno, but Roy Cizek, responsible for the somewhat short-lived but well-respected Cizek loudpseaker brand, was blind.

Roy Cizek - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I recall liking Cizeks very much back in the day. Not the most dynamic speaker, but arguably among the least flawed of its day, if my decades-old memory is trustworthy (as if!!). Very smooth sounding. Memorable in an era of many forgettable loudspeakers.

Legend (and/or my failing memory) has it that Tom Scholz used Cizeks in the creation of the first Boston album. Or maybe it was after their first album. Anyway I do recall that he used them at some point.

 

[mhardy6647]

I recall liking Cizeks very much back in the day. Not the most dynamic speaker, but arguably among the least flawed of its day, if my decades-old memory is trustworthy (as if!!). Very smooth sounding. Memorable in an era of many forgettable loudspeakers.

Legend (and/or my failing memory) has it that Tom Scholz used Cizeks in the creation of the first Boston album. Or maybe it was after their first album. Anyway I do recall that he used them at some point.

My recollection is essentially parallel to yours (FWIW).

I have a pair of the big original Cizeks (was it, at least ultimately, called the Cizek One?) in my basement, thanks to the generosity of a Bay State 'collector'. The activation energy barrier of dealing with the deteriorated foam on the baffle board has kept me from rehabbing them for nigh on two decades now.