Training to pick up subtle music details

[red_ryder 0]

Ever since I came to this board, I've been exposed to a lot of audiophile jargon like brightness, soundstage, airiness, detail, bass attack, etc. Even with a glossary, it's hard to imagine what these terms mean without actually listening to an example.

 

For me, the only term that I feel comfortable with is detail and clarity. To me, these two terms are like the opposite of sounding "muffled". For a newbie like myself, that's easy to detect. I can also detect grainy/raw sounding music vs smooth sounding music. Harsh treble hurts my ears, and I dislike overly strong bass. But the others like height and depth of soundstage, attack, forward sounding, laid-back sounding , etc are way over my head.

 

Recently I've also auditioned various players, interconnects and amps and headphones. e.g. dvdp vs cdp, optical vs analog out, DT931 vs Senn HD25-sp. Difference btw 931 and the senns was like night and day, but the difference between sources, interconnects and amps was very very subtle. I could only tell if I did an A/B comparison immediately. If you ask me which one I liked better I also wouldn't know. If I listened blind I don't think I could tell you whether I was using optical or analog, or dvdp or cdp.

 

For the experienced guys, how did you pick up these listening skills? Was it self-taught? Is it an in-born talent?

[Mackie 0]

For me, it's purely experience as I dwell on each and every trait of sound. In the earlier days when I stumbled upon a certain sound characteristic, I know not how to term it until someone with more experience or magazines tip me off. It's all a learning curve for me.

[cmk 0]

It comes with experience and lots of listening to different types of music.

 

More important is whether the equipment is able to convey the emotion in the recording.

[Sipher 0]

for me, sometimes i had to stick with either equipment for some time in order to tell subtle differences between 2 equipments, ie, 2 interconnects or 2 similar sounding cans.

 

i think u can learn how to tell differences by listening to more kinds of music and equipments

 

it took me quite some time to learn what some of the terms meant and there's still some terms which i cant understand.

[Absolute0 0]

Great to know I am not alone! Learning to hear subtle differences between different gear and identify various sound characteristics is a significant part of Head-fi enjoyment, imho.

[Ticky 0]

Yeah... and I was bitten by the audio bug some 10 years ago. To date I still have plenty of difficulties trying to figure out what reviewers or other audiophiles mean when they use certain adjectives to describe sound.

 

Part of the problem is that my experience with equipments are limited. Hardly anyone around me is an audiophile. And when I have the rare opportunity to audition gears, its always with different components.

Not to mention that the terms "bright," "dark," "laid back," etc, probably has a slightly different meaning for everyone.

 

But, as they say, variety is the spice of life.