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Sound Experiences
Ears Right?
Dave Foister challenges some common assumptions about how we ‘hear’ our music,
and asks why our experiences of sound can be so very different.
A
few years ago, a reputable mastering
engineer went on record in a magazine
article stating that he usually found it
diffi cult to tell the difference between mono
and stereo just by listening. Admittedly,
his business apparently suffered after this
startling revelation, but that doesn’t alter the
fact that he’d been doing a perfectly good job
for several years. He had worked on a project
of mine, and I’d happily have used him again.
But what it did highlight is how widely our
perceptions of what we’re hearing can vary,
and how wrong our assumptions about what
matters can be.
Of course there’s nothing new in the idea
that appreciation of recorded sound and
audio equipment is very much a subjective
thing. You can measure all you like, but
informed, experienced grown-ups will still
come to blows over which technology,
which technique,
which piece of kit is
‘better’.
As much as
anything else,
this is true of
loudspeakers.
In 1996 the AES
published a paper,
AES20, drawing
up a standard for
listening tests on
loudspeakers. In
its acknowledgment of all the pitfalls of
assessing equipment just by listening to it,
and in its attempt to eliminate the variables
and establish a framework for consistent
and fair tests, it is a brave document.
Most of us will never have the time or
resources to carry out its recommendations
to the letter, but it’s hard to deny the force of
its arguments and premises. But revisiting it
ADAM S3X-H
the other day, I was struck by some of
the things it regarded as problems, and
some of the assumptions contained in it,
and I was reminded of the aforementioned
hapless mastering engineer’s innocent
but damning admission.
Balanced Opinion
I have a problem with some of the
assumptions that generally seem to be
made about how we hear loudspeakers.
I don’t claim to have Golden Ears by
any means, but some of the aspects of
loudspeaker listening that are supposed to
be problematic don’t seem to bother me,
and I’d like to know if others feel the same.
I don’t get it when people sit in the sweet
spot and can’t localise instruments in the
stereo image, even on rubbish loudspeakers.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s multimiked
or purist,
unless something’s
hard left or right
they just can’t place
it. I don’t get it
when people can’t
hear the stereo
image at all if they
move off-centre; it
sometimes seems
as though only a
foot off to the left,
they stop hearing
anything coming out of the right-hand box.
It doesn’t seem hard to me to compensate
for where I am and hear everything where
it should be, even if I’m right off to one side
– not with as much precision perhaps, but
it’s all still there. With all due respect to
our mastering engineer, I don’t get it when
people can’t tell the difference between
stereo and mono; to me, mono is like
8 EARS RIGHT?
listening through a crack in the door, and
stereo is what you get when you fl ing the
doors wide open and march into the room.
Un-Phased
But most of all, I really, REALLY don’t get
it when people can stand in front of (or in
fact anywhere near) a pair of out-of-phase
speakers and not be aware there’s anything
wrong. It’s bad enough in a friend’s living
room, where perhaps a pair of untrained
ears can be forgiven for not noticing that
there’s no bass, not even a vague idea of
where anything’s supposed to be, and above
all an agonising feeling that your eardrums
are being sucked out of the sides of your
head, there’s a paint-stirrer in your brain,
and last night’s dodgy curry is about to
wreak its havoc.
It’s also possible to recognise that the
shelf-stackers in a record store are immune
to similar feelings as they wander around
the aisles of CDs between speakers that
were apparently installed by a colour-blind
orang-utan. The fact that some of us can’t
stand to spend more than a few seconds
in those particularly sour spots would be a
complete mystery to them; the fact that it
loses them sales, as potential customers
run gagging from the shop, should bother
them, but clearly doesn’t. Likewise the
home electronics stores, but I suppose
that shouldn’t be a surprise; if they can
cheerfully display a whole wall of TVs where
no two pictures are even slightly similar,
then the proudly-displayed stereo with its
speakers wired in opposite polarity isn’t
going to phase them at all.
But when people who consider
themselves to be audio people don’t notice,
I have to wonder what exactly we’re all
experiencing as those little variations in air