Left Brain Vs Right Brain Listeners

[jkeny]

I was talking to Fran about this recently & as this forum is a flame wars free zone I thought it might be safe to start this thread without the usual contentiousness that often results.

I don't imagine this thread will reach final conclusions either but would like it to be considered research in how people honestly listen. We could all learn something about our hobby if we are honest, I hope?

With that said, I have come to a tentative conclusion that I'd like to investigate. The conclusion being that we are divided into two groups in our listening methods. The right brain Vs left brain is NOT to be taken literally as I believe it is more complex than this but is an indication of what I mean.

In our normal day to day life we listen casually, often filling in the gaps we miss or completing the pattern of what we hear. It's an evolutionary thing, we can deal with the audible part of the world with half-attention & only when we hear something unnatural or out of the ordinary does our hearing attention snap into focus & we begin working out the details of what we are hearing - is it threat or not? Is it the movement of something we are hunting, etc. This is one way of listening & I reckon some people always listen to their music replay systems in this way - hearing the tune, filling in their expectations, rather than hearing the actual performance of the piece, the subtle nuances that need attention & focus to be sensed.

I have an inkling that some have developed a way of turning on this focussed mode of listening & can listen to the same song on the same CD/LP/whatever that they have heard 100 times before & still listen to it's performance even though they know the performance intimately. I don't want to get too esoteric about this but I believe it is something akin to mindfulness in Buddhism or as Einstein is quoted as saying "?

It was brought to my attention that what I'm describing is also "seen" in how we see. When learning to draw, it's important to decompose what you are seeing & draw the lines at the angles that the eye sees, the light & dark, etc. In other words to be able to de-construct the scene that you are looking at. Some people never learn this way of seeing as it's not our normal way & so some never become people that can draw with any facility. They draw what they "think" they see rather than what they "actually" see.

I'm interested in how this might explain the differences between the divide I often see in audio - the groups that hear differences between DACs/amplifiers/etc & those that don't hear these differences. Might this difference be explained by the difference in listening methods? Might this be at the root of this difference?

So anyone got any experience of this to relate?

[mick]

Hi John,
A very interesting idea. It would seem that there would have to be some differences in the way people listen to music. I believe that both sides in the cable debate genuinely believe what they hear. I can hear differences between cables. What I hear is not a placebo effect. I am not trying to convince myself of the merit of a particular cable. It is not about price.
Myself and Patrick (on the forum) compared Nordost Quattro Fil and Nordost SPM. The Quattro Fil was more detailed and more spacious than the SPM but the bass was almost absent from the music in my system. I got the SPM which was cheaper. I had the price of the Quattro Fil so money was not an issue. The sound quality was the only concern, so there was no bias involved and I had no preconceived idea as to which I wanted. To myself and Patrick the differences were very obvious. It was a very easy decision which to buy. We had another friend at the listening session ( not that interested in music ) and he could not hear any difference between either of the Nordost cables and the existing cable at the time, a Transparent Audio musicwave plus. We tried to explain to him what we were hearing but it made no difference he still thought there was no difference. All three of us were listening to the system and two of us heard obvious differences and one heard no difference. Could this also have an influence on why some people really like music and others like Jedward.

[jkeny]

On another forum a member posted 3 audio files & suggested that people listen to them with all equaliser sliders reduced to minimum except 1KHz left at normal & report what they heard. There were only 3 of us that did the test but the interesting thing to me was that one member reported how much of the musical information was still intact. Now he was an admitted "all adequately designed X sound the same" type. SO I found his description interesting as I found that the sound was like hearing it from a tunnel. I wondered then if we both heard the same thing but had different ways/emphasis for describing it - he describing what remained in the soundfield & I describing what was missing in the soundfield - you know audiophiles are often accused of hyperbole :) OR whether we heard two different things - he filled in a lot what missing from the soundfield & I didn't?

This was not something that could be denied was different between the full bandwidth audio & 1KHz freq band signal so it was beyond question that the sound was different unike a lot of these situations where it is usually argued that "a blind test will prove that there is no difference"

[Diapason]

I've been mulling over this ('twas a long mull!) and I definitely think there are left brain and right brain listeners. In fact, I think it cuts to the core of a lot of stuff I read online about music and hifi that I don't understand. I'm not sure that it's the answer to the perennial cable question, but it certainly throws up some interesting ideas.

I'll nail my colours to the mast straight away: I am, for the most part, a left-brained listener. Now, that's not to say I don't have emotional responses to music: of course I do, otherwise what would be the point? However, my expectation/imagination doesn't do a great job of filling in for perceived deficiencies. In fact, it does the opposite, highlighting deficiencies and annoyances and giving them more consideration than they deserve.

Ultimately, this means:
- I can pretty much NEVER enjoy recordings with "historical" sound.
- Comments like "I like a bit of surface noise" make no sense to me whatsoever.
- I can't cope with, for example, out-of-tune singing. I don't care how much raw emotion is on display, if you're out-of-tune, you're out!
- I'm the guy who asks you to please put your ticking watch in your pocket at a Tallis Scholars concert. (Yes, I did this. Yes, the gentlemen in question was incredibly nice about it. No, he never even realised his watch made an audible ticking sound at all.)

There are plenty more examples that I can't think of at the moment, but that pop up when I'm reading people's thoughts on recordings. These are people I trust, people whose experience I respect, so I really believe it's a difference in the whole thought process. They're just approaching things from a different angle.

The thing is, familiarity can work through this and I can come out the other side under certain conditions, despite the large initial barrier. As a consequence, I often find it hard to judge sonics based on recordings I know for a VERY long time, because in those circumstances my ability to be objective is severely compromised. Albums that transport me back to that summer evening when I was 15 are not good choices for me to demo equipment. There are some albums that would sound good to me no matter how I heard them. The emotional response has nothing to do with the quality of playback and everything to do with transportation to a previous era. That's a different thing, though. It's not really the music, it's the memories.

Does this mean I can hear stuff that other people can't? Honestly, I'm not sure. Maybe sometimes I can, but if the group demos I've sat through are anything to go by, I'm more likely to be the guy thinking "I don't hear a difference" while everyone else is smiling and nodding. (I have my doubts about the efficacy of those demos anyway.) For me to be truly objective requires far more than a quick A-B on an unfamiliar system, and in those circumstances I actually think I miss all but sledgehammer-esque differences. However, I think if anything it lends credence to the idea that "some have developed a way of turning on this focussed mode of listening". I think this is true, and I think it generally requires enough knowledge to know where to focus. By that I mean that subtle differences can only be discerned if you know where to look for them, and the aural equivalent of a single glance probably won't be enough.

We all trust our eyes reasonably well, but a "spot-the-difference" competition can still take you a few minutes, and even then you can only spot differences by ignoring the picture and breaking things down into abstract component parts. Some people find this easy, some people find it incredibly hard. I think that if you're marvelling at the beauty of the picture, you haven't a hope of finding the differences, and for me it's the same with sonics.

[jkeny]

Cool post - loved the bit about the ticking watch - made me laugh :)

I know the thread topic seems obvious & common sense & maybe not worth posting about i.e that there are some people who have trained themselves to listen more acutely than the ordinary listener. But it occurred to me that within this hobby there is often a lot of disagreement (some of it heated) over what we hear/can hear. There tends to be a polarisation of these viewpoints & categorising of people into objectivists/subjectivists. Personally, I feel there is no such polarity as we are all a mixture of these polar opposites, & we vary where we are on this spectrum depending on what we are judging - front-ends, amplifiers, cables, speakers, etc. And yes, I'm not denying the greatly overused phrase of "expectation bias" & how this can sway what we hear. I also say "what we hear" rather than "what we think we hear" because all our senses operate by compositing a number of different aspects of our perception. In other words our ears do not operate like microphones on the side of our heads feeding signals to our brain. They are active devices that have feedback control & active filtering which is then used by a very powerful processing engine to composite a real-time sound scape from these signals.

BTW, I don't literally mean Right Vs Left brain as this simplified view of brain function has been demoted over the years (or as they say in coding, deprecated). It's just a shorthand way of stating the analytical Vs emotional listening.

[Diapason]

I know the thread topic seems obvious & common sense & maybe not worth posting about i.e that there are some people who have trained themselves to listen more acutely than the ordinary listener.

I'm not sure that it's obvious or common sense, John. I mean, you get the occasional deluded person thinking they're golden-eared, but I'm on record as saying that it takes no special skill to appreciate the finer points of a good hifi system. Of course that's a bit of an over-simplification, but I also find it very instructive to get the opinions of non-audiophiles (most notably my good lady) when I'm trying to compare stuff. Without the baggage and the bias, she has an uncanny knack of cutting through the crap and coming up with some pretty insightful opinions. However, I still completely agree with the basic premise that people listen in different ways.

But it occurred to me that within this hobby there is often a lot of disagreement (some of it heated) over what we hear/can hear. There tends to be a polarisation of these viewpoints & categorising of people into objectivists/subjectivists. Personally, I feel there is no such polarity as we are all a mixture of these polar opposites, & we vary where we are on this spectrum depending on what we are judging - front-ends, amplifiers, cables, speakers, etc.

Yeah, and the internet only polarises this even further because the most extreme of the lunatics are the loudest of all.

BTW, I don't literally mean Right Vs Left brain as this simplified view of brain function has been demoted over the years (or as they say in coding, deprecated). It's just a shorthand way of stating the analytical Vs emotional listening.

Yep, I know exactly what you mean, and I like the old shorthand myself, even if I can never remember which is which (I had to check before I wrote my earlier post!)

[jaybee]

could it be related to how often a person is willing to buy new equipment..???

I find I listen analytically when pressed to, once I have a setup I'm happy with balance wise I revert to hearing music as opposed to listening to hifi...

I get the impression that a lot of online flamers are in a constant state of flux... needing to be told what the "best" component in their current price range is, investing hugely ( emotionally and financially) in it, then belittling all who would question their current stance... until the next available upgrade comes along and all of a sudden what they own is seriously flawed...

[Sloop John B]

All valid points, particularly the way the Missus can cut through the crap to the essence.

Another aspect though is the physical/ medical quality of one's hearing. It's not different to eyesight, there is a broad spectrum of hearing abilities. In the same way as a short-sighted person without glasses may not notice the finer points of a painting hanging in a gallery the are plenty amongst us whose hearing is not 20/20 to use the eyesight saying. I have mild high frequency hearing loss so you may listen to my Naim set up and say gosh that's a bit rough where to me it's anything but.......


I think this is another factor in the whole equation, i wouldn't have heard that watch and it's not because I'm used to it.

SJB

[jkeny]

All valid points, particularly the way the Missus can cut through the crap to the essence.

Another aspect though is the physical/ medical quality of one's hearing. It's not different to eyesight, there is a broad spectrum of hearing abilities. In the same way as a short-sighted person without glasses may not notice the finer points of a painting hanging in a gallery the are plenty amongst us whose hearing is not 20/20 to use the eyesight saying. I have mild high frequency hearing loss so you may listen to my Naim set up and say gosh that's a bit rough where to me it's anything but.......


I think this is another factor in the whole equation, i wouldn't have heard that watch and it's not because I'm used to it.

SJB

I agree but also bear in mind that frequency is just one of the elements involved & perhaps not the most important. I believe that the ear has far more acuity in the time domain than in the frequency domain. Loss in high frequency hearing from age, etc. is often quoted & used as a red herring in this hobby. I believe we don't suffer as much deterioration in this timing aspect of our hearing as we age. I don't know of any studies have been done on age-related loss in time domain aspect of our hearing but then I haven't searched for this - just haven't come across it in my research. This aspect in audio is the greatly underestimated element in audio tests & measurements. When you think about it from an evolutionary viewpoint, our ability to sense the direction & distance of a sound (through phase relationships) is the most crucial hearing requirement for survival - why wouldn't it be very acute?

[tony]

could it be related to how often a person is willing to buy new equipment..???

I find I listen analytically when pressed to, once I have a setup I'm happy with balance wise I revert to hearing music as opposed to listening to hifi...

I get the impression that a lot of online flamers are in a constant state of flux... needing to be told what the "best" component in their current price range is, investing hugely ( emotionally and financially) in it, then belittling all who would question their current stance... until the next available upgrade comes along and all of a sudden what they own is seriously flawed...

I would concur with all of the above. Once one is happy you just play the music and are not too worried about whether it is too bright dull detailed etc. When the doubts creep in it all falls apart.

One post mentioned filling in bits on tracks that you like and I definitely fit that category. Some of my favourite stuff is poorly recorded bootlegs and I will strain to hear the guitar riffs, backing singing, nice bass line whatever. Any time I tried playing this for anybody else I just get confused looks.

I am not too sure on using test tracks to test the sonic range or quality of a system. I think it is best to use what you like even if it is sonically not up to the test job.