What was your "humbling moment"?

[LightninBoy]

You are young and successful. You've owned some gear, auditioned more at the high end dealers, read all of the articles. You think you know your shit and your ears are golden, maybe even platinum. Then it happens - you are proven so wrong about something that it shakes your faith in your ability to perceive sound. If you lean towards one side in the objective/subjective spectrum, maybe it even challenges some of the dogma on your side and makes you see things from the other side for a moment.

I've had a few of these, but one in particular has given me an appreciation for those who seek euphoric sounds that are not on the record. The song "In the Morning" my Norah Jones has a neat (Hammond?) organ intro. It sounded *so cool* in my HT room. A couple of the notes rang with such clarity, I thought I could reach out and touch that organ. I'd listen to that over and over again - even demo'd it to a few folks and they all reacted to the same passage. Then one day I was doing something behind the speakers when that song started. And that's when I heard it - a rattle from my right speaker when those glorious organ notes hit. Turns out the (metal) back plate was a little lose and was resonating at those notes. It sounded so clear and real because it *was* a real instrument in the room: a metal resonator. Well, it was an easy fix to tighten the back plate and it stopped resonating. That organ intro still sounded great, but gone was the "magic" when those couple notes played.

I still think of this experience when I hear people extol the audio virtues of tube gear that are intentionally designed for euphoria. Or the sound of vinyl, where the limits of the medium create a specific, and for many a nostalgic, sound presentation. Also, when I hear folks talk about speakers that have cabinets that purposely resonate. I'm still firmly in the objectivist and "high fidelity to the recording" camp, but having that humbling experience enables me to grok the other side.

Anyways, I've been yapping on this board like a know it all for the past few weeks. But I'm not alone. So lets all take the collective piss out of ourselves and talk about when we've been humbled about all this audio stuff. Who's next?

 

[BillG]

If I want that sort euphonic experience, I engage an analog simulation plug-in I purchased for $25USD some years ago on my source computer.

I'm a high fidelity enthusiast and was fortunate enough to begin my audio education by reading numerous articles written by recording and mastering engineers. The subjective audiophile take on the hobby never appealed to me as I've quite the science focused mind, and I quickly understood that they had no idea what they were talking about - I was barely 13 at the time.

 

[LightninBoy]

Well, that post perfectly illustrates why I started this thread.

Please lets not make this another subjectivist vs objectivist rat hole. Let's lighten up and talk about when we were wrong about audio and how it changed our perspectives if at all.

 

[BillG]

A little shy about controversy, are we? I'm not...

 

[soundwave76]

Mine was a test where I resampled a song from lossless flac to different bitrate mp3 versions and I started to hear a difference in sound around 60-90kbs. Can’t remember the exact figure but it was well below 100. I recommend this test to all!

 

[PaulD]

I clearly remember many years ago (25 years maybe) late one night mixing a song in a studio that I wanted to change the HF EQ on a track just a tad, it was a vocal track I think. I listened and tweaked until it was *just* right, only to look across the board (SSL G series) 30 mins later to realise the EQ had been bypassed the whole time... I had imagined the different sound by concentrating too hard on it. We can convince ourselves of almost anything in audio, because it is ephemeral. At that stage I realised I was too tired to do meaningful work and I went home to bed! I also learned to listen more attentively (and imagine changes less)!

 

[egellings]

Taking part in a blinded ABX style test with preamps I thought had different sound qualities. Well, they didn't. I felt so shot down.

 

[dfuller]

I don't know if it humbled me, but rather made me realize we're very vulnerable to groupthink.

This was from an engineering class I took at Berklee. We were comparing summing in Pro Tools HDX (64 bit floating point engine) to the summing of an SSL Duality console. I couldn't hear a difference - no surprise there, the SSL "superanalogue" thing is all about super low distortion (0.005% THD line input to mix output, according to the manual, so about 86dB SINAD through multiple summing amps and VCAs) and super wide bandwidth. But everyone else, professor included, swore up and down that there was a difference.

That left one of two things: 1, I didn't have "golden ears". 2, the more likely, there was no audible difference.

 

[dasdoing]

the fact that we hear manly direct sound above 1000Hz-ish......i.e.; the 500ms meassurement wont show what we hear

 

[Blumlein 88]

A group of audiophile friends comparing a new digital cable. A very expensive AES/EBU cable a local dealer had loaned to us. One of us had a Meridian DAC with multiple inputs. So we could connect the new wonder cable and the old RCA one and listen with a simple switch. We listened. Began to hear differences, and even agreed over a few songs of the strengths of this new cable. And were surprised the difference was so large.

The host then went over to switch back to the old cable and sheepishly informed us, "guys, we hooked up the new cable, but I apparently never did switch to it. We were listening to the old cable." Complete accident, but I think we all kind of paused over that experience a few minutes.

I've also had variations of the mixing a song experience described above.

 

[MattHooper]

I guess the closest is the various blind tests I've performed, where sonic differences I seemed to perceive seemed to disappear when I couldn't know what I was listening to. In one sense they "humble" me as a reminder of my being prone to perceptual errors. But on the other hand, the reason I engaged in the blind testing was knowing in the first place I'm susceptible to such errors.

 

[Tsuchi]

I clearly remember many years ago (25 years maybe) late one night mixing a song in a studio that I wanted to change the HF EQ on a track just a tad, it was a vocal track I think. I listened and tweaked until it was *just* right, only to look across the board (SSL G series) 30 mins later to realise the EQ had been bypassed the whole time... I had imagined the different sound by concentrating too hard on it. We can convince ourselves of almost anything in audio, because it is ephemeral. At that stage I realised I was too tired to do meaningful work and I went home to bed! I also learned to listen more attentively (and imagine changes less)!

Similar thing happened to me doing live audio. I thought I was EQing a vocalist, turns out the channel I was adjusting wasn’t even on. It was next to the active channel but I didn’t notice my mistake until 15 minutes later.

That was my first lesson in how easily our minds can trick our hearing.

 

[RealityCheck18]

So there I was,

It was a Friday night and the weather went from party time to monsoon time as us 20 somethings pondered a blown weekend. (Many years ago!) One of my neighbors asked about speaker wire, he wanted to reconfigure his room and needed longer cables. He was a budding audiophile with at least 3 or 4 magazine reads and knew how to play the piano. I was rather bored so offered him a shot at blind testing speaker wires for the answer. Might as well throw in CD players and amps into the mix--speakers if the rain continues (it did) There were three of us to provide various equipment but needed a "disinterested party" or basically a person that absolutely did not care. Luckily, most people don't care so we bought off another "disinterested party" with promises of free pizza and beer.

On Sunday afternoon, there was four of us with the answer--we could not tell the difference between speaker cables, CD player DACs and decently built amplifiers. One bright spot, we could tell the difference between speakers so we had that. We also learned it is a serious pain in the butt to get speakers at the same sound level and the listening room looked like hell with matresses, blankets and all sorts of absorbant material that allowed the room to measure better. Maybe the speakers didn't "resolve" enough? Well, none of us planned on paying more than the winning speakers in the future as beach weather was approaching and we had other hobbies that we considered more entertaining than audio (cough, cough)

Another valuable lesson I learned was if you want to keep a neighbor away from you, bribe him into being a disinterested party for a blind audio test. He avoided us for at least a month or two after that!

 

[Blumlein 88]

Reminds me of a student in university volunteering for tests in the psych department. It didn't pay much, but a couple of those was a enough for a cheap date on Friday with a girl. Most of them it turns out were hearing or vision related. You never were told exactly what it was about nor the results however. You went in, took the test and got paid.

 

[watchnerd]

Or the sound of vinyl, where the limits of the medium create a specific, and for many a nostalgic, sound presentation.

It's not a nostaglic presentation -- extra reverb is injected from the speakers playing music into the TT / cartridge, creating extra sympathetic resonance, not unlike your vibrating metal speaker part.

 

[Chromatischism]

The above is similar to mine: I found I loved the vibration I get through the floor from a couple of well-placed subs and thought it was due to SPL at certain frequencies (mostly in the 25-35 Hz range). While that is true, it turns out there was another effect happening and it took me a long time to put two and two together. Turns out, smaller, lighter, yet higher-powered subs physically shake the floor like actuators. What I had learned to love I found I could not recreate without similar equipment. At least I'll save money by skipping isolation pads/mats/feet.

 

[watchnerd]

I clearly remember many years ago (25 years maybe) late one night mixing a song in a studio that I wanted to change the HF EQ on a track just a tad, it was a vocal track I think. I listened and tweaked until it was *just* right, only to look across the board (SSL G series) 30 mins later to realise the EQ had been bypassed the whole time... I had imagined the different sound by concentrating too hard on it. We can convince ourselves of almost anything in audio, because it is ephemeral. At that stage I realised I was too tired to do meaningful work and I went home to bed! I also learned to listen more attentively (and imagine changes less)!

I had a similar experience where I was painstakingly EQ'ing some headphones by ear, making micro adjustments to music, only to realize I never plugged them in and I was listening to speakers with headphones on the whole time.

 

[Leporello]

I had a similar experience where I was painstakingly EQ'ing some headphones by ear, making micro adjustments to music, only to realize I never plugged them in and I was listening to speakers with headphones on the whole time.

I was adding treble to my headphones with the tone control of my amplifier. Results were satisfying and as expected - only then I realized the phones were connected to my computer.

Playing with software eqs and their bypass buttons has produced similar embarrassments quite often.

 

[MattHooper]

It's not a nostaglic presentation -- extra reverb is injected from the speakers playing music into the TT / cartridge, creating extra sympathetic resonance, not unlike your vibrating metal speaker part.

That's an interesting concept and given the mechanical nature of vinyl playback, seems plausible.

That said, my turntables have been placed in a separate room, down the hallway from my listening room. And even at lower volume levels the sound remained pretty "nostolgic" with my previous micro-seiki turntable. Frankly, if there was a difference in sound from when I had the turntable in the listening room to when I placed it in a different room, I didn't notice it. (My current turntable is less overtly nostolgic...that is less obviously distorting...than my earlier one, but still does the "vinyl sound" thing, despite not being in the listening room).

 

[tmtomh]

I compared several early/original 1980s CD pressings of Peter Gabriel's IV/Security: the West German target mastering; the UK Virgin mastering; and the original Japan mastering. The UK Virgin was the most detailed and dynamic, while the Japan disc was super-smooth but almost too much - it sounded almost "syrupy" to me and while not at all compressed, lacked some of the "wow" dynamic swings of the UK. The West German target was sort of in-between, not as clear as the UK Virgin, very slightly less dynamic, but still more impactful and "sharp edged," to so speak, than the Japan. I sold the West German target and the Japan CD and kept the UK Virgin.

A few years later I had the opportunity to compare the actual waveforms (something I usually do but for some reason had not done at the time as part of this particular comparison). It turned out that the UK Virgin and Japan CDs are bit-identical to each other. The differences I heard between them and the West German target were real - the West German is indeed a different mastering - but the differences I heard between the UK and Japan CDs themselves were completely imaginary. And in my subjective comparison the Japan sounded more different from the UK than the West German target did!

As noted above, I usually compared waveforms, but ever since then I have made sure to do so 100% of the time: I learned that even significant audible "differences" that I hear might not be real and there's no situation when it's completely safe to bypass examining the waveforms.