Identifying that the tone of a sound is unnatural is only half of the battle. The hard part is figuring out how to make it sound better. That requires understanding of the basics of how sound reproduction works. Personally, I'd much rather listen to music than work on improving sound quality, but if you can address all the technical problems, then you don't need to worry about them any more. That means you can spend all your time listening to natural sounding music.

bigshot said:

Identifying that the tone of a sound is unnatural is only half of the battle. The hard part is figuring out how to make it sound better. That requires understanding of the basics of how sound reproduction works. Personally, I'd much rather listen to music than work on improving sound quality, but if you can address all the technical problems, then you don't need to worry about them any more. That means you can spend all your time listening to natural sounding music.

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I can get that sentiment! I avoid the technical stuff mostly because I know I would obsess over it and there are not enough hours in the day. That is why I like the simplicity of DAP-cable-IEMs and nothing more. I am very afraid of speakers.

I've known a lot of professional musicians. Very few are also into good audio, much less being audiophiles or engineers. The two disciplines don't seem to interweave as much as you'd think.

Musicians usually have a better ear for mixing balances than engineers though. It helps to have a musician and an engineer that can work together well.

bigshot said:

Musicians usually have a better ear for mixing balances than engineers though. It helps to have a musician and an engineer that can work together well.

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This is what I meant and nothing more. It is not about being a musician as such, but about the fact that musicians usually have a better ear. Why? Because they surround themselves with music all the time and that trains the brain. Again, the question was whether or not critical listening is a skill that can be trained. The answer is: Yes it is. I merely used the example of learning to play the violin as an example of how you can train/develop a better ear, but I could have used dozens of other examples, such as listening to a large selection of different IEMs and headphones. What it is about is gaining experience and the more attentively you listen to music, the more brain cells will become involved in the process of listening to music and thus improving one's critical listening skills. It is not about the specific examples, it is about the ability to train a skill in a way no different from training for running.

Yeah. They're best at musical issues. I think though that original poster was talking about training ears to be better at spotting subtle technical details. I don't think musicians really have much interest in that.

I remember as a youngman speaking with a jazz player at the Peachtree Hotel in Atlanta... he asked me what I thought of his set. I replied that I liked it but being a kid not accustomed to adults asking such a question so I in return asked him why and if he thought that he had played badly or something. I have never forgotten his baffling reply at the time: "I know I play good kid, just making sure I sounded good"

He's sampling for subjective reactions. Anyone who performs in front of an audience needs to do that. (Except perhaps for Yoko Ono.)

John2e said:

Can critical listening be taught and refined ? Opinions

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Do you believe you can learn a foreign language, and be able to understand what you hear?

What on earth do you mean by "critical", "taught", and "refined"? If this is meant as a philosophical question, it does not follow philosophical traditions. Even in strict positivist terms, the use of "listening" makes no sense.

frodeni said:

Do you believe you can learn a foreign language, and be able to understand what you hear?

What on earth do you mean by "critical", "taught", and "refined"? If this is meant as a philosophical question, it does not follow philosophical traditions. Even in strict positivist terms, the use of "listening" makes no sense.

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What makes you think it was ever intended as a philosophical question?

Why bring positivism into it?

I see critical listening as in critical thinking. listening as opposed to measuring. and taught as opposed to experienced (invisible edit is invisible) things we discover on our own or innate.

who said I was biased by objectivsm? ^_^

Wyville said:

What makes you think it was ever intended as a philosophical question? Why bring positivism into it?

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Because it is. Discussing what can be learned, what is known, and how knowledge is generated, is sort of core philosophical questions.

castleofargh said:

I see critical listening as in critical thinking. listening as opposed to measuring. and taught as opposed to experienced or innate. who said I was biased by objectivsm? ^_^

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You seem to claim that experience and learning is in opposition? I lost you completely on this.

Do you mean "instead". Instrumental measuring in the natural sciences is usually done without human inference, while any meaningful listening is full of interpretation. Are you claiming that "listening" is raw data? Humans also need language to express themselves, which by definition is highly intersubjective.

As for "critical" it still is a term used all over the place. In this forum, positivistic thinking is the only form of critical thinking, at least that was pushed insanely hard by many for a long time. The irony in that, is that such a claim is insanely uncritical. The rainbows got colors, it's not only black.

John2e said:

When listening to "Angie" by the Rolling Stones with a few friends many years ago, I noticed the track of Mick whispering the lyrics through most of the song. You can hear him distinctly whisper Angie at a certain point in the song but he also does it in the back ground very softly through out most of the song (it is barely audible ). When I pointed this out to my buddies, some where able to isolate the track and follow it while others though us crazy. All of us were around the same age and nobody has had any issues with hearing. What is also weird is there are times when I am unable to isolate it (always on the same equipment)

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Some speculate this to be a scratch recording, a ghost recording, or a lead recording that was played for the rest of the band. Nobody seems to know anything. There seems to be some singing in the left channel from time to time, and there also is some piano sounds that appear odd.

If what you all heard was him "whispering the lyrics through most of the song", that appears awfully far off. Have you ever heard anyone whispering in a tone resembling that? Really? All of you? Sure you are not mixing up muted audio for whispering?

frodeni said:

Because it is. Discussing what can be learned, what is known, and how knowledge is generated, is sort of core philosophical questions.

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Was it intended to be by the person who posted the question?

Perhaps (as I am beginning to suspect) this part of the head-fi forums is a bit of a world on its own, attracting mainly the philosophically inclined, but in my experience few people ask such questions in the same way a philosopher would (few people understand philosophy well enough).

frodeni said:

....You seem to claim that experience and learning is in opposition? I lost you completely on this.

Do you mean "instead". Instrumental measuring in the natural sciences is usually done without human inference, while any meaningful listening is full of interpretation. Are you claiming that "listening" is raw data? Humans also need language to express themselves, which by definition is highly intersubjective.

As for "critical" it still is a term used all over the place. In this forum, positivistic thinking is the only form of critical thinking, at least that was pushed insanely hard by many for a long time. The irony in that, is that such a claim is insanely uncritical. The rainbows got colors, it's not only black.

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I'm not claiming anything, just saying how I read the sentence.
I made a mistake by writing "experience" as everything is somehow experience for us. for that I failed hard^_^. in my mind I meant things we discover on our own vs things we are told about, and methods to discover them. so I get the confusion, I have confused myself.

You can learn things if you listen. It's a skill if not a virtue