Golden Ears - a blessing or a curse

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I remember getting the then UK standard hearing test in school, a not so nice woman with a very nice Stax rig told me that I had exceptional hearing and that I should aim to become a musician.

Sadly however my inherent laziness did not show up on her tests, I gave up on the piano, cornet and finally the guitar over the next 30 or so years.

Never gave up on the hifi though :D

Oddly exceptional hearing has not a lot of relationship to being an exceptional musician, I work with sax players who were damn near deaf. One guy I work with plays two horns at once. One for each hearing aid! He tarts playing two at once starts around 3:00

Valiants of Vince Vance & The Valiants - YouTube
 
Believe what you want, but it happened, and it has happened with large numbers of people in other eneavors.

dave

Quite interesting what people know and believe..

I had gained several thousand hours listening to music before I got professional listening training in the Navy as a sonar operator. Then I got several thousand hours listening training as a sonar operator that completely changed my listening abilities also regarding music. The real trick as a sonar operator was to discover (hear) audio signals below the noise floor and then analyze and find the frequencies, engine type, numbers of engines, numbers of propeller shafts, numbers of propeller blades on each shaft, and also be able to distinguish the harmonic spectrum that was different between two identical built ships. Audio memory was in this instant very important as you then new witch ship - just as you can recognize voices of different persons. So when I got enough training I could identify and have control over tens of ships and by hearing (and brain) only - know their speed, heading, distance and instantly hear if a submarine opened the torpedo hatches or prepared to dive or surface..

After that there have been additionally thousands of hours of listening to music and listening to differences...

Are there any practical differences with all the "training"?
Yes of course, and I expect much more than many would ever believe :cool:
 
fas42 said:
Sensitive hearing is mainly a blessing - is easily as powerful as highly sophisticated signal analysis software, when one adjusts to the right level of focus ...
I'm sure some people do have sensitive hearing, but I have yet to meet someone who can do a 4096-point FFT in their head!! Otherwise GCHQ and NSA could ditch all their computers and just employ a few roomfuls of golden ears.

CopperTop said:
Yes, the same goes for vision.
+1!

Stuart will now tell us about his taste buds - minor difference is that he really can do what he claims.
 
oh ... it's valid allright

just not very consistent
sometimes you can
and sometimes you can't
and hence not fully reliable

main problem is to know when to trust it, and when not to
There are a few tricks to use - if comparing versions do a round, as soon as it starts becoming stale, completely forget about it, go away and do something completely different for a few hours, that uses a different part of the brain; then come back to it and quickly whip through all the versions. That's the sort of thing I used for Pano's interconnect test, where you can't do anything about the material you're using.

Otherwise, use really vicious material - if you've sorta convinced yourself that things are sounding good put on, say, Foo Fighters at high SPLs ... and see how that holds together ... ;)
 
Oddly exceptional hearing has not a lot of relationship to being an exceptional musician, I work with sax players who were damn near deaf. One guy I work with plays two horns at once. One for each hearing aid! He tarts playing two at once starts around 3:00

Valiants of Vince Vance & The Valiants - YouTube

True that.

Have you heard (no pun intended) of Evelyn Glennie?
She is a virtuoso percussionist who is profoundly deaf since age 12.
Still performs over 100x concerts every year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Glennie
 
RayCtech wrote:

"I had gained several thousand hours listening to music before I got professional listening training in the Navy as a sonar operator. Then I got several thousand hours listening training as a sonar operator that completely changed my listening abilities also regarding music."

A most interesting observation.

I am interested in how this changed the way you listen to music. Please elaborate.
 
most non-audiophiles usually
They must be the ordinary "Homo Sapiens", not the audiophile grade "Homo Sapiens Audiophilus"; poor, sad, pitiful bast..ds. The superior Audiophilus is far superior genetically, with greater powers of perceptions with all senses, particularly hearing, and has the other superior evolutionary trait of a small solar object in the lower-most part of the alimentary canal that emits immense radiation out of that close orifice.
Sadly, for me, I am one of the inferior, ordinary homo Sapiens.
 
My guitar playing is proof to the contrary.

As they say: There are exceptions to every rule! ;-)

Goes both ways too. The late Brian Jones became quite proficient at playing the sitar after locking himself away with it for two weeks.

A mate of mine plays mandolin and sings in his own band, guitar in another and previously played drums and keyboards in long defunct bands.
He is also a qualified violin teacher and a DJ.
I don't think he practices at all anymore even though he has the time because in the '80s he was involved in a number of top40 hits (writing & producing) which to the present day pays him enough to be financially independent.
 
My condolences.
Condolences | Define Condolences at Dictionary.com
Often, condolences. expression of sympathy with a person who is suffering sorrow, misfortune, or grief.

Condolences - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Condolences are an expression of sympathy to someone who is experiencing pain arising from death, deep mental anguish, or misfortune.

Noun An expression of sympathy, esp. on the occasion of a death.

I don't understand this in a similar way to not understanding how someone can claim to
doing nothing else but concentrating on "training" your listening
for 10,000 hours and expect such a claim not be held up to scrutiny? When scrutinised, the claim means that someone asserts they have dedicated nearly 60 weeks (in your case dave, between 4 to 5% of their waking life) solely to "training their listening".

I can only treat such a claim with complete cynicism and pessimism, as well as point out the total implausibility.
 
everything in your hole life is about training your abilities and with age, fighting to maintain them :p

That is quite true..
And the fight to maintain them have been something I really have investigated and researched with good results.

Thus 30 years after the 6th genetic mutation the sensitivity and frequency range are still better than most "youngsters". According to the ENT professor I have more than 15dB better wide band sensitivity than my recorded age statistically are regarded as normal..
 
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They must be the ordinary "Homo Sapiens", not the audiophile grade "Homo Sapiens Audiophilus"; poor, sad, pitiful bast..ds.

well, not sure I understand the 'need' for such statements


we all want to be part of this world of music, one way or the other
if you can't be a musician, then you may be able to build the electronics, or the instruments they need
or maybe be a 'roadie', setting up gear, tuning instruments, etc

if you can build the electronics you need yourself you are lucky too
but most will have to do with just listening to it

and I guess we all just want to be good at something :p

but these kinds of topics always end in useless mud throwing
and the reason ?
well, maybe thats what Alfred Adler found
 
Old Words Of Wisdom...

I seem to have lost a band in my hearing - that range of a nagging wifes voice.
A long while back 'New Scientist' had an article regarding hearing loss versus ageing.
It turns out males lose HF with age, females lose LF with age, and the turn up is that eventually neither can hear each other.
I related this article to an 85 yo customer........he thought for a bit and then replied.." Yes, and that can be good !"...we both laughed out loud.

Dan.
 
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