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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