Hi,
first of, sorry about long opening post. You may skip to next post it if you seek for listening tests.
I need to write about what motivated staring the thread in the first place, which is something that I think could help build common understanding through out the forum in long term and thus help all of us for what ever it is that we are seeking communicating here. So I think it's something important write, and to read, especially if you are interested in developing sound of your playback system
First some paragraphs for background followed by the more important stuff:
I've been intrigued and loving music for a long time, and interested about sound in general, thus I'm hanging around here on DIY audio at this point in my life trying to come up with a nice living room sound system.
I'm few years into building speakers and studying the stuff in general and have realized how hard it actually is to connect written concepts to perceived sound and vice versa. Like, how am I supposed to hear wide sound stage? As concept it is quite well defined and easy to understand, but am I hearing that in my system? How do I test it, how does my sound stage sound like and how do I quantify it, how wide it exactly is? Do I even want wide sound stage, narrow sounds better for some reason, why is that? How do I manipulate sound stage with practical limitations I have and what else is affected?
Sound stage is just one concept out of many and I could easily draw handful of questions from it that all require listening skills, understanding of what I actually hear! What are all the CTA2034 A standard graphs all about, how do they relate to perceived sound in my room? How does my room affect sound, how does speaker positioning change things? All of these would be quite confusing and bring questions like what am I supposed to be hearing? Do I hear my speaker controlled directivity, what does it actually sound like, what am I supposed to hear? It's very hard to get even the first start to it as more questions arise from confusion; is my system working, is my room such that it just doesn't hear, or is my hearing system different than average, or am I just unable to understand what I hear? What am I supposed to do with the CTA data, how do I evaluate what would work for me in my context? How big of a difference 1db on some graph makes, they look pretty much the same, which one is better suited for me or does it matter? What is more/less important to me, what I want to hear and what does that look like as a graph?
A lot of questions, and then a realization that I'm basically alone with this and that I need to figure out this myself as we cannot share our listening skill in a way. I mean we are talking about all the stuff and in that way it's all relatively easy to understand, but there is no shared auditory experience with the written discussion! So, since I'm having these questions do I really understand any of it? Personally, I just cannot connect auditory experience to most of it, which is core of the whole hobby, right, listening to music and also quality of it and then doing something about it?
If we were in the same room all together sharing the auditory experience and then talking it through perhaps it could be possible to share what we perceive and gain more understanding from each other. Especially if we knew each other past experience and listening skill in order to be able to communicate in a level that is suitable, not skipping whole lot of steps but gradually build understanding, stack on the current experience. Getting more experience and context dependent knowledge could help tune speakers, positioning and room acoustics leading to better sound. Not just different sound, but better sound.
But, through written text, hah, nice try How to even start? Where am I in this, whats my current experience, what is my context? If I read other people subjective descriptions, how do I know they are relevant in my situation and in what way? Problem is, everyone likely have different speakers, different room, different listening experience, different understanding, different ideals, different standards, different everything, and atop not sharing most of it while writing about things. Without sharing context it is basically impossible to get common understanding, either a writer or a reader does not necessarily know what their context is, at worst neither one does. Some advice could be true/fine in some context while false/bad on another and not knowing which one it is makes discussion without shared understanding of context just noise. To make meaningful communication both would need to be aware of the context and that both know what the context is the discussion is framed with.
To me this issue of unknown context appears as confusing information. Ever seen a thread where some people advice something, then somebody else appears giving exact opposite advice? I would like to believe nobody is lying or misguiding purposely, which to me indicates shared context is missing. I bet that if context was clear to all, then everyone would give pretty much similar advice and proper understandable discussion about it and how different context would likely change everything. Ever seen thread like that? Now, how to identify who does and who doesn't know the context in a discussion? Well, there is no other way than to start looking into mirror, make sure I'm aware about importance of context.
Alright, where to start then? Context varies, but auditory system is something we share in common (for most part). And physics of sound! Sound behaves the same as long as we share the same atmosphere. So, I think that we could communicate more efficiently if we could somehow better understand and promote context, and to do that we'd need to reliably know what we are actually perceiving, how to actually relate written concept to perception and vice versa. Since any given context could be unknown to us, never heard, we'd might still be able to discuss about it basing discussion on some fundamentals, like the hearing system, a thing that you always carry to any context. At least some confusion ought to reduce from the discussion if context was acknowledged.
I think at the core of it is to develop listening skill to somehow learn understand our own perception, and no other way to do it than listening tests. I think that if we all got to some basic level of understanding of our own perception by using some listening tests in our own context, it might be possible to use that as basis for common understanding. If only we all could learn something fundamental of our own hearing system using our own varying contexts and have a consensus about it. I do not know what the base level could be and if there is possibility to reach consensus, but even if there was no this kind of shared common understanding I think it is useful just to be aware about how context matters everything, and how it affects discussion in general. So, thank you for reading this far!
Alright,
At this point in time it is quite obvious to me that my playback system quality is as good as my listening skills so I'm trying to figure out myself what I am perceiving in my room, with my speakers and my own ears in order to improve my listening skill and my playback system. My process is basically take a written concept and then device a listening test that would allow usage of some logic, which would translate to some understanding of what I perceive and how it might relate to written concepts, in other words improve listening skill. Sometimes I just fool around and try perceive change, then try to figure out what might be responsible for that. Sometimes I purposely change something and try to perceive change, and then apply logic on that. Sometimes it would give wrong assumptions, some times right, and there is no way to know than plowing through using logic, sharing and discussing about it, learn from mistakes, gradually increase understanding.
Since I've got access to only my own context (speakers, room..), I thought it would be nice to share some listening experiments that I've found useful and fun that I have been using trying to get understanding. Sharing it here so that we could learn from each other. Have fun!
If you know some official listening skill resources, especially to study perception of sound, then please do share. Obviously any discussion and thoughts around listening skills welcome!
first of, sorry about long opening post. You may skip to next post it if you seek for listening tests.
I need to write about what motivated staring the thread in the first place, which is something that I think could help build common understanding through out the forum in long term and thus help all of us for what ever it is that we are seeking communicating here. So I think it's something important write, and to read, especially if you are interested in developing sound of your playback system
First some paragraphs for background followed by the more important stuff:
I've been intrigued and loving music for a long time, and interested about sound in general, thus I'm hanging around here on DIY audio at this point in my life trying to come up with a nice living room sound system.
I'm few years into building speakers and studying the stuff in general and have realized how hard it actually is to connect written concepts to perceived sound and vice versa. Like, how am I supposed to hear wide sound stage? As concept it is quite well defined and easy to understand, but am I hearing that in my system? How do I test it, how does my sound stage sound like and how do I quantify it, how wide it exactly is? Do I even want wide sound stage, narrow sounds better for some reason, why is that? How do I manipulate sound stage with practical limitations I have and what else is affected?
Sound stage is just one concept out of many and I could easily draw handful of questions from it that all require listening skills, understanding of what I actually hear! What are all the CTA2034 A standard graphs all about, how do they relate to perceived sound in my room? How does my room affect sound, how does speaker positioning change things? All of these would be quite confusing and bring questions like what am I supposed to be hearing? Do I hear my speaker controlled directivity, what does it actually sound like, what am I supposed to hear? It's very hard to get even the first start to it as more questions arise from confusion; is my system working, is my room such that it just doesn't hear, or is my hearing system different than average, or am I just unable to understand what I hear? What am I supposed to do with the CTA data, how do I evaluate what would work for me in my context? How big of a difference 1db on some graph makes, they look pretty much the same, which one is better suited for me or does it matter? What is more/less important to me, what I want to hear and what does that look like as a graph?
A lot of questions, and then a realization that I'm basically alone with this and that I need to figure out this myself as we cannot share our listening skill in a way. I mean we are talking about all the stuff and in that way it's all relatively easy to understand, but there is no shared auditory experience with the written discussion! So, since I'm having these questions do I really understand any of it? Personally, I just cannot connect auditory experience to most of it, which is core of the whole hobby, right, listening to music and also quality of it and then doing something about it?
If we were in the same room all together sharing the auditory experience and then talking it through perhaps it could be possible to share what we perceive and gain more understanding from each other. Especially if we knew each other past experience and listening skill in order to be able to communicate in a level that is suitable, not skipping whole lot of steps but gradually build understanding, stack on the current experience. Getting more experience and context dependent knowledge could help tune speakers, positioning and room acoustics leading to better sound. Not just different sound, but better sound.
But, through written text, hah, nice try
How to even start? Where am I in this, whats my current experience, what is my context? If I read other people subjective descriptions, how do I know they are relevant in my situation and in what way? Problem is, everyone likely have different speakers, different room, different listening experience, different understanding, different ideals, different standards, different everything, and atop not sharing most of it while writing about things. Without sharing context it is basically impossible to get common understanding, either a writer or a reader does not necessarily know what their context is, at worst neither one does. Some advice could be true/fine in some context while false/bad on another and not knowing which one it is makes discussion without shared understanding of context just noise. To make meaningful communication both would need to be aware of the context and that both know what the context is the discussion is framed with.To me this issue of unknown context appears as confusing information. Ever seen a thread where some people advice something, then somebody else appears giving exact opposite advice? I would like to believe nobody is lying or misguiding purposely, which to me indicates shared context is missing. I bet that if context was clear to all, then everyone would give pretty much similar advice and proper understandable discussion about it and how different context would likely change everything. Ever seen thread like that? Now, how to identify who does and who doesn't know the context in a discussion? Well, there is no other way than to start looking into mirror, make sure I'm aware about importance of context.
Alright, where to start then? Context varies, but auditory system is something we share in common (for most part). And physics of sound! Sound behaves the same as long as we share the same atmosphere. So, I think that we could communicate more efficiently if we could somehow better understand and promote context, and to do that we'd need to reliably know what we are actually perceiving, how to actually relate written concept to perception and vice versa. Since any given context could be unknown to us, never heard, we'd might still be able to discuss about it basing discussion on some fundamentals, like the hearing system, a thing that you always carry to any context. At least some confusion ought to reduce from the discussion if context was acknowledged.
I think at the core of it is to develop listening skill to somehow learn understand our own perception, and no other way to do it than listening tests. I think that if we all got to some basic level of understanding of our own perception by using some listening tests in our own context, it might be possible to use that as basis for common understanding. If only we all could learn something fundamental of our own hearing system using our own varying contexts and have a consensus about it. I do not know what the base level could be and if there is possibility to reach consensus, but even if there was no this kind of shared common understanding I think it is useful just to be aware about how context matters everything, and how it affects discussion in general. So, thank you for reading this far!
Alright,
At this point in time it is quite obvious to me that my playback system quality is as good as my listening skills so I'm trying to figure out myself what I am perceiving in my room, with my speakers and my own ears in order to improve my listening skill and my playback system. My process is basically take a written concept and then device a listening test that would allow usage of some logic, which would translate to some understanding of what I perceive and how it might relate to written concepts, in other words improve listening skill. Sometimes I just fool around and try perceive change, then try to figure out what might be responsible for that. Sometimes I purposely change something and try to perceive change, and then apply logic on that. Sometimes it would give wrong assumptions, some times right, and there is no way to know than plowing through using logic, sharing and discussing about it, learn from mistakes, gradually increase understanding.
Since I've got access to only my own context (speakers, room..), I thought it would be nice to share some listening experiments that I've found useful and fun that I have been using trying to get understanding. Sharing it here so that we could learn from each other. Have fun!
If you know some official listening skill resources, especially to study perception of sound, then please do share. Obviously any discussion and thoughts around listening skills welcome!
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Phew, that was a boat load Perhaps too ambitious, so let's not take it too seriously.
What I've found most interesting about doing all kinds of listening tests is that they give all sorts of meta knowledge in a way, teach about magnitude of things and makes aware sounds, heightens senses in a way.
Here is particularly interesting listening experiment. Take you mobile phone and play some white noise through it with its own speaker. Now, rotate the mobile in your hands, hear change in sound? Intensity changes, perhaps tonal balance, now experiemen is it due to the mic being further or closer to you or because it points to certain direction. Why it seems to have directionality to it, your hands reflecting sound?
What if you put the mobile front of your nose, how do you localize the sound? What happens if you put it close to your chin? or forehead? HRTF!
What is great about these tests is that they are real time, and you can change the sound at will which allows logic to be applied, see already starting to make connections to written concepts. They could be wrong conclusions, but thats fine, purpose here is to subject yourself to these kinds of variations in sound so that you start to recognize some of them, even if you don't know what they are and why they happen and how they relate to home stereo.
Perhaps too ambitious, so let's not take it too seriously. What I've found most interesting about doing all kinds of listening tests is that they give all sorts of meta knowledge in a way, teach about magnitude of things and makes aware sounds, heightens senses in a way.
Here is particularly interesting listening experiment. Take you mobile phone and play some white noise through it with its own speaker. Now, rotate the mobile in your hands, hear change in sound? Intensity changes, perhaps tonal balance, now experiemen is it due to the mic being further or closer to you or because it points to certain direction. Why it seems to have directionality to it, your hands reflecting sound?
What if you put the mobile front of your nose, how do you localize the sound? What happens if you put it close to your chin? or forehead? HRTF!
What is great about these tests is that they are real time, and you can change the sound at will which allows logic to be applied, see already starting to make connections to written concepts. They could be wrong conclusions, but thats fine, purpose here is to subject yourself to these kinds of variations in sound so that you start to recognize some of them, even if you don't know what they are and why they happen and how they relate to home stereo.
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Here is another for your mobile phone. Make a horn for your mobile phone: take a soda bottle and cut cone from it to make a simple "horn". Or 3D print one, make from cartboard, what ever you come up with. Now hold the "horn", cap of the bottle over your mobile phone speaker and start pointing at things. Point yourself to hear if there is more sound from the horn than other directions to see if it is working or not. If it does you've just increased directivity some.
Well, what can you do with this? Try shoot your walls with sound with it, and listen if you hear the reflection. Heard it? Try rotate your head 90 deg so only one ear points towards the reflection, hear it better? What about if you point the sound toward the floor? What about ceiling? hear any difference? Why is that?
You can test how your sofa reflects, or your acoustic panels... takes about two minutes to make lots of observations.
Another one, go close to a wall and point the sound toward it to hear the reflection clearly, then start backing out further from the wall, listen when you can't hear the reflection anymore. Move the horn to see if movement brings it back or something, turn your head, experiment away. Now you start to get some understanding what you perceive, get exposed to small changes in sound and how you might be able to kind of test if it's there or not.
You can do this night time so the family / neighbours don't think you went crazy
Well, what can you do with this? Try shoot your walls with sound with it, and listen if you hear the reflection. Heard it? Try rotate your head 90 deg so only one ear points towards the reflection, hear it better? What about if you point the sound toward the floor? What about ceiling? hear any difference? Why is that?
You can test how your sofa reflects, or your acoustic panels... takes about two minutes to make lots of observations.
Another one, go close to a wall and point the sound toward it to hear the reflection clearly, then start backing out further from the wall, listen when you can't hear the reflection anymore. Move the horn to see if movement brings it back or something, turn your head, experiment away. Now you start to get some understanding what you perceive, get exposed to small changes in sound and how you might be able to kind of test if it's there or not.
You can do this night time so the family / neighbours don't think you went crazy
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In general, power in this kind of fooling around is that you can make a change in sound at will, which exposes you to changing sounds and gives some hints to how you can kind of test if you heard sound change or not. Idea being you can test if you hear something, if you can device a way to turn assumed phenomenon on and off, and then listen if you hear a change.
Those who have done mixing, or fiddling around with DSP, know that it is possible to tweak wrong knob that has no effect on sound and still hear a difference. And this is another point of fooling around, the more you do the more you are likely to get into a situation that really doesn't do nothing and make you aware that sound might change just by expectation, bias. Moving your head truly changes sound, so it's not like turning a knob that is not attached to anything, a lesson in itself. If you bought new cable, go to your listening position and lean forward to get good accurate listen to it, yeah, the sound is very good! But, perhaps not because of the cable, but because you are closer to speakers than usual. Just something to be aware of.
Those who have done mixing, or fiddling around with DSP, know that it is possible to tweak wrong knob that has no effect on sound and still hear a difference. And this is another point of fooling around, the more you do the more you are likely to get into a situation that really doesn't do nothing and make you aware that sound might change just by expectation, bias. Moving your head truly changes sound, so it's not like turning a knob that is not attached to anything, a lesson in itself. If you bought new cable, go to your listening position and lean forward to get good accurate listen to it, yeah, the sound is very good! But, perhaps not because of the cable, but because you are closer to speakers than usual. Just something to be aware of.
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There is million tests one can do to expose to various things. As you are listening your stereo, doing tests in your room, you are essentially involving a lot of variables, the room, the speaker, positioning, and yourself and what you hear is any combination of the four. Try to device tests that you can isolate some of the aspects. Purpose of the mobile phone test is to easily isolate your speakers, and your room to some extent, out from equation and play with your hearing system. You could play with the phone in various rooms. You could use your speaker instead of the mobile, and so on. Use different directivity horns, and so on.
Go standing behind your speaker, assuming its bigger than 20cm so it has some directivity on high frequencies, put on some high passed noise and play with toe in, listening the room from behind your speaker. What happens? What if you use different bandwidth bandpassed noise for example? 4kHz and up, or 2kHz and down, anything.
In general, this kind of test allow to set some kind of state for "room sound", not by written concepts of what early reflections should be, or what you've seen in photos how a stereo should be setup, but by listening the room behind your speaker with your own ears in your own context! Now your perception is rooted to your context, and you don't even have to know anything as long as you can hear a change and be able to position the system into various states. Now you could go into the room and listen how it sounds like with the noise, or with music, with anything, and be able to have perhaps two three states of the system which you can now setup at will and listen long term, if you learn to like some over the other.
For example, still having high passed noise playing in mono with one speaker, try and point the speaker so that you hear clear reflection from a boundary, for example back wall. Can you still hear the reflection if you go in front of your speaker? what about if you move closer to the boundary you might have heard a reflection from listening behind the speaker? what about if you rotate your head, instead of looking at the reflection rotate 90deg? what happens to tonality of direct sound, what happens to overall SPL when you move between your speaker and the "reflection"? How far away there is a change if there is one? Can you make the reflection disappear from your perception, how and why?
What if you took a pillow and muted either of your ear, listening to magnitude of reflection from various boundaries with the toe-in you have? This stuff gives some hint of magnitude of early reflections. Now that you've just recognized how a reflection might sound like, and if you can hear it and how, what if you just put the speaker like it was in it's position and toe-in you've used to have it, still in mono playing the high passed noise, then go to your main listening position, can you now hear a distinct reflection from somewhere, or is it just your speaker that seems to emit all the sound? What if you move around, back and forth, side to side?
Alright, another boat load of stuff. Happy experimenting everyone!
Go standing behind your speaker, assuming its bigger than 20cm so it has some directivity on high frequencies, put on some high passed noise and play with toe in, listening the room from behind your speaker. What happens? What if you use different bandwidth bandpassed noise for example? 4kHz and up, or 2kHz and down, anything.
In general, this kind of test allow to set some kind of state for "room sound", not by written concepts of what early reflections should be, or what you've seen in photos how a stereo should be setup, but by listening the room behind your speaker with your own ears in your own context! Now your perception is rooted to your context, and you don't even have to know anything as long as you can hear a change and be able to position the system into various states. Now you could go into the room and listen how it sounds like with the noise, or with music, with anything, and be able to have perhaps two three states of the system which you can now setup at will and listen long term, if you learn to like some over the other.
For example, still having high passed noise playing in mono with one speaker, try and point the speaker so that you hear clear reflection from a boundary, for example back wall. Can you still hear the reflection if you go in front of your speaker? what about if you move closer to the boundary you might have heard a reflection from listening behind the speaker? what about if you rotate your head, instead of looking at the reflection rotate 90deg? what happens to tonality of direct sound, what happens to overall SPL when you move between your speaker and the "reflection"? How far away there is a change if there is one? Can you make the reflection disappear from your perception, how and why?
What if you took a pillow and muted either of your ear, listening to magnitude of reflection from various boundaries with the toe-in you have? This stuff gives some hint of magnitude of early reflections. Now that you've just recognized how a reflection might sound like, and if you can hear it and how, what if you just put the speaker like it was in it's position and toe-in you've used to have it, still in mono playing the high passed noise, then go to your main listening position, can you now hear a distinct reflection from somewhere, or is it just your speaker that seems to emit all the sound? What if you move around, back and forth, side to side?
Alright, another boat load of stuff. Happy experimenting everyone!
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As disclaimer, I'm a hobbyist wondering about the stuff, trying to make sense about state of my auditory system and what kind of a speaker setup would serve nicely in my living room for my purposes.
I'm no professional on this, and it's basically just fooling around what I feel is relevant and as such very serious to me in a sense that it's been keeping progress up to give confidence on what I hear, and being able to understand about written concepts bit better and what I think helping to improve my stereo system as well. I'm sharing all this to get discussion going which could further help me to reason about the stuff, as I already have my perception on the things. I hope this all would be useful for all of you interested on this as well, giving you some similar perceptions and hopefully we can help each other by exchanging thoughts on it.
I did not give too much on what I hear with the tests above as the tests might not be that important in the end, just a step forward if you are interested in developing listening skills, a starting point if you are in hobbyist category like me Your context, speakers, room and perhaps hearing is different than mine, so make your own conclusions and takeaways that feel relevant to you. We all have quite similar mobile phones and arm length, ancestors, so hopefully there is some nice listening tests we could all relate with.
I hope there is some discussion at some point about all this. I'll post more at some point, this is already too much time spent for one day.
I'm no professional on this, and it's basically just fooling around what I feel is relevant and as such very serious to me in a sense that it's been keeping progress up to give confidence on what I hear, and being able to understand about written concepts bit better and what I think helping to improve my stereo system as well. I'm sharing all this to get discussion going which could further help me to reason about the stuff, as I already have my perception on the things. I hope this all would be useful for all of you interested on this as well, giving you some similar perceptions and hopefully we can help each other by exchanging thoughts on it.
I did not give too much on what I hear with the tests above as the tests might not be that important in the end, just a step forward if you are interested in developing listening skills, a starting point if you are in hobbyist category like me
Your context, speakers, room and perhaps hearing is different than mine, so make your own conclusions and takeaways that feel relevant to you. We all have quite similar mobile phones and arm length, ancestors, so hopefully there is some nice listening tests we could all relate with.I hope there is some discussion at some point about all this. I'll post more at some point, this is already too much time spent for one day.
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I think Erin @bikinpunk , from Erin's Audio Corner, has one of the healthiest way of connecting listening and data I have seen in a while.
An ever better approach, would to do this blind, but it's often not very practical.
Don't only see this as a way to just only judge speakers, but also pay mostly attention WHY you like certain aspect of a speaker more.
A very good example of this, is directivity.
Directivity will always be a trade-off by definition.
Speaking about, trade-offs, there are many many trade-offs in a design.
Focus on things that are important to you.
I personally think Erin summarized a few things very well in his latest video;
In particular in the end, he's saying that in his ideal world, you would just have different rooms/loudspeakers and gear for just different purposes.
I am very much the same on this.
Sometimes it's great to go for perfect sound reproduction, but sometimes it's also great just to aim for fun!
My personal added note to this, is that fun is often the part I am missing in A LOT of discussions and conversations.
Maybe it's ironic for some that I say this, but I find that some people are far to serious about certain things.
With that I don't mean on a technical/scientific level, but more just the attitude towards it all.
Although his point of view is much more related to reviewing loudspeakers, similar concepts can be used for designing loudspeakers.
The goal is slightly different, but the thoughts and ideas behind it are extremely similar.
As for more practical skills, what really helps is just to expose yourself to a lot of things.
Just gain a lot of practical experience when it comes down to listening.
In the end it's one of those things that can't be taught from books and reading/posting on forums, but only by a lot of experience.
Deliberately design/build/make a bad speaker and again, going back to the list, take notes beforehand, measure and compare after.
Bad design could be; deliberate mismatch in directivity, resonances, poor crossover design, no bafflestep correction, poor damping material etc.
For music itself, I personally found fiddling around with just a headphone and changing a graphical EQ extremely valuable.
This can even be done with distortion as well.
Something important that people also don't realize that much is that you have to keep yourself updated with these things.
We get older, our bodies and moods change, our environment changes etc.
Like any of our other senses and body parts, you need to keep training yourself to stay "fit".
It all depends how "fit" you want to stay, some people sit in the gym 4-5 times a week.
Other people just like to stay healthy.
Although I think it's something like biking or soldering, it's also something that once you get the hang on it, it always will be there.
And to talk about the elephant in the room, some people just have a more natural talent, while others can train themselves forever and will never get it.
That's just reality of life, important is just to embrace with what you have and enjoy it!
In the end some people pretend that we are just perfect objective listeners.
The truth is, that we are simply not.
We all have our taste, often connected to deeper feelings and emotions, like nostalgia to give one example.
(also one that is extremely hard to ignore btw! )
Although eventually you can (start to) recognize the difference between a difference in flavor or just bad design.
Or just do NONE of this all, and just be happy and play around!
Which is obviously also great!
- Try to go into a listening session as open minded as possible, ideally don't even focus on the price
- Take notes while listening
- Measure all aspects of a loudspeaker (no we don't need Klippel, there are other ways)
- Compare measurements with earlier notes.
An ever better approach, would to do this blind, but it's often not very practical.
Don't only see this as a way to just only judge speakers, but also pay mostly attention WHY you like certain aspect of a speaker more.
A very good example of this, is directivity.
Directivity will always be a trade-off by definition.
Speaking about, trade-offs, there are many many trade-offs in a design.
Focus on things that are important to you.
I personally think Erin summarized a few things very well in his latest video;
In particular in the end, he's saying that in his ideal world, you would just have different rooms/loudspeakers and gear for just different purposes.
I am very much the same on this.
Sometimes it's great to go for perfect sound reproduction, but sometimes it's also great just to aim for fun!
My personal added note to this, is that fun is often the part I am missing in A LOT of discussions and conversations.
Maybe it's ironic for some that I say this, but I find that some people are far to serious about certain things.
With that I don't mean on a technical/scientific level, but more just the attitude towards it all.
Although his point of view is much more related to reviewing loudspeakers, similar concepts can be used for designing loudspeakers.
The goal is slightly different, but the thoughts and ideas behind it are extremely similar.
As for more practical skills, what really helps is just to expose yourself to a lot of things.
Just gain a lot of practical experience when it comes down to listening.
In the end it's one of those things that can't be taught from books and reading/posting on forums, but only by a lot of experience.
Deliberately design/build/make a bad speaker and again, going back to the list, take notes beforehand, measure and compare after.
Bad design could be; deliberate mismatch in directivity, resonances, poor crossover design, no bafflestep correction, poor damping material etc.
For music itself, I personally found fiddling around with just a headphone and changing a graphical EQ extremely valuable.
This can even be done with distortion as well.
Something important that people also don't realize that much is that you have to keep yourself updated with these things.
We get older, our bodies and moods change, our environment changes etc.
Like any of our other senses and body parts, you need to keep training yourself to stay "fit".
It all depends how "fit" you want to stay, some people sit in the gym 4-5 times a week.
Other people just like to stay healthy.
Although I think it's something like biking or soldering, it's also something that once you get the hang on it, it always will be there.
And to talk about the elephant in the room, some people just have a more natural talent, while others can train themselves forever and will never get it.
That's just reality of life, important is just to embrace with what you have and enjoy it!
In the end some people pretend that we are just perfect objective listeners.
The truth is, that we are simply not.
We all have our taste, often connected to deeper feelings and emotions, like nostalgia to give one example.
(also one that is extremely hard to ignore btw! )
Although eventually you can (start to) recognize the difference between a difference in flavor or just bad design.
Or just do NONE of this all, and just be happy and play around!
Which is obviously also great!
Yeah for sure We all have shorter or longer track record on listening, perhaps there is also talent for some, but like many with many profession it's mostly just experience. If someone doesn't care too much, obviously has less experience, and if someone finds it fun they might have a lot. And fun is the main point for the hobby anyway, I'm very glad you also think so! It would be miserable to spend spare time on something that doesn't feel nice, after all we only have so much time to spend, so let's keep on reminding that when ever we see misery, shall we?
What you say about Erin, he likely has a point as he has been exposed to lots of various speakers, rooms and data. There likely is some "truths" that make kind of universally good speakers, a feature that is benefitical in most situations. As the format is somewhat standard (stereo) and our hearing systems are relatively similar, and if speakers approach similar interfacing to room (fine enough directivity), then the only big variable would be room and positioning, which are important but also tuneable to some extent by changing the positioning. And this makes the listening skill important, even if you got "best speaker in world" that works in any room, but fail to be able to leverage positioning to your advantage, you ain't got best sound in the world, just best sound you were able to recognize, or just random sound if there was no actual attempt to listen how the positioning works out.
Fine enough directivity is very logical subject to being a "truth" for a good speaker, logic being: if directivity is simplified as interface of speaker to room, then the more flexible it is, the more likely the speakers can be interfaced with the room for good sound. Practically speaking, fine directivity allows to freely position (toe-in) speakers never sacrificing direct sound. Then there is these bigger concepts like monopole vs. some gradient pattern, which could suit better or worse due to some practical reasons.
If one does not stress about how a system sounds, one could use any speakers, buy them with status motive like golden rims and diamond lettering. If sound is important, then one benefits greatly from listening skills, which helps gravitate towards a system that suits the room and practical issues and so on.
We all have shorter or longer track record on listening, perhaps there is also talent for some, but like many with many profession it's mostly just experience. If someone doesn't care too much, obviously has less experience, and if someone finds it fun they might have a lot. And fun is the main point for the hobby anyway, I'm very glad you also think so! It would be miserable to spend spare time on something that doesn't feel nice, after all we only have so much time to spend, so let's keep on reminding that when ever we see misery, shall we? What you say about Erin, he likely has a point as he has been exposed to lots of various speakers, rooms and data. There likely is some "truths" that make kind of universally good speakers, a feature that is benefitical in most situations. As the format is somewhat standard (stereo) and our hearing systems are relatively similar, and if speakers approach similar interfacing to room (fine enough directivity), then the only big variable would be room and positioning, which are important but also tuneable to some extent by changing the positioning. And this makes the listening skill important, even if you got "best speaker in world" that works in any room, but fail to be able to leverage positioning to your advantage, you ain't got best sound in the world, just best sound you were able to recognize, or just random sound if there was no actual attempt to listen how the positioning works out.
Fine enough directivity is very logical subject to being a "truth" for a good speaker, logic being: if directivity is simplified as interface of speaker to room, then the more flexible it is, the more likely the speakers can be interfaced with the room for good sound. Practically speaking, fine directivity allows to freely position (toe-in) speakers never sacrificing direct sound. Then there is these bigger concepts like monopole vs. some gradient pattern, which could suit better or worse due to some practical reasons.
If one does not stress about how a system sounds, one could use any speakers, buy them with status motive like golden rims and diamond lettering. If sound is important, then one benefits greatly from listening skills, which helps gravitate towards a system that suits the room and practical issues and so on.
Dont know how much help this would be in this context, but sharing in case it helps us all..
https://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/2011/01/welcome-to-how-to-listen.html
https://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/2011/01/welcome-to-how-to-listen.html
Yes, that's basically the same thing as what I was talking about before.Dont know how much help this would be in this context, but sharing in case it helps us all..
https://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/2011/01/welcome-to-how-to-listen.html
Here is link to the assosiated blog post about the Harman listening training software vineethkumar01 linked to:
https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-listen-course-on-how-to.html
It says that they use (in studies) trained listeners to get good data with small group of people.
Any idea how far they'd make people practice with that Harman listening software vineethkumar01 posted, before considering her a trained listener? Having some hint would be nice, to get some insight what the current listening level is in relation to "trained listener".
https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-listen-course-on-how-to.html
It says that they use (in studies) trained listeners to get good data with small group of people.
Any idea how far they'd make people practice with that Harman listening software vineethkumar01 posted, before considering her a trained listener? Having some hint would be nice, to get some insight what the current listening level is in relation to "trained listener".
Thanks! On the video the person says its likely level 8 for all the tests, although he didn't get confirmation.
Found comment from Sean that:
Harman listeners must achieve a minimum skill level of 8 to be considered trained. I've gotten as high as level 15 on Band ID Peaks.
Cheers
Sean
So, assuming level 8 for all. Using headphones EQ peaks seem easy compared to EQ dips, also reverb seems really tough to get correct order for some reason. Noise test is also tough, the hard rock track with loud hats and guitars, not very easy Nice one this, gives some kind of hint of relative listening skill on the terms in the test software.
Found comment from Sean that:
Harman listeners must achieve a minimum skill level of 8 to be considered trained. I've gotten as high as level 15 on Band ID Peaks.
Cheers
Sean
So, assuming level 8 for all. Using headphones EQ peaks seem easy compared to EQ dips, also reverb seems really tough to get correct order for some reason. Noise test is also tough, the hard rock track with loud hats and guitars, not very easy
Nice one this, gives some kind of hint of relative listening skill on the terms in the test software.
My two cents for training your ears
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/rogers-ls3-5a.394939/post-7545121
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/rogers-ls3-5a.394939/post-7545121