Ears for music vs sound true?

[DallPikachu]

Something interesting I found out is that in the past Kent my boyfriend kept saying he has ears for music so I thought it means he has ears for sound also since to hear music well you need good speakers but seems like having ears for sound and music are slightly different. Kent can feel and hear the music coming from a cheap tablet and hear every part of music and for me it would drive me crazy listening to music coming from it. He did say if he has a mediocre speakers like his dads old speakers then he is fine. He can really hear and feel the music without having nice speakers which amazes me still. He said that you which is me have good ears for sound that's why you can hear the difference between two speakers and how they perform and hear if one pair of speakers plays too much highs or mids, etc. He also said he can tell if an instrument is playing wrong notes like G sharp instead of G for example even in cheap speakers as long as they aren't like junk speakers though like alarm clock radio.


Very interesting but is this possible what he is saying it true? Or he doesn't know what his saying?

 

[DallPikachu]

I forgot to say this but I asked him can you hear the lows on a tablet also when you listen to music and he said yes. In my head I think his crazy since there is no way that a cheap tablet can play even 100hz or lower.

 

[DallPikachu]

While back I did have a similar topic I made but since I really got details about how Kent thinks I thought I should ask if Kent is correct or does he really not know what his talking about. Thank you

 

[faber12]

I think that he must not understand how low bass can go. A tablet/cell phone speaker is not capable of those sounds. My phone speaker is not capable of much until as high as 200hz or so.

There is no wrong way to listen to music. If he is happy with mediocre sound, then you will just have to leave him to it.

 

[sqlsavior]

I think I know what he means. By the time Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony, he was deaf. Yet he could hear it in his head [we assume]. I once used a miniature amp with a 2" speaker made for guitar practice on my bass guitar. You could easily tell the differences in notes right down to the open E string, which is about 40 Hz, iirc. Of course it was effectively a fuzz box, exaggerating the overtones, but they are there to hear even without the exaggeration.

There are many music lovers with no interest in hi-fi. Have you ever heard a snippet of a familiar song playing in a loud, crowded restaurant, and been able to follow it despite the competing noise? It's a connection on a different level than sonic evaluation, and worth cultivating, imho, as it lets one enjoy good performances right through poor recordings.

 

[sreten]

Hi,

FWIW the absolutely worst system I have ever heard belonged to a gifted musician.
Amstrad rack system with the worst turntable dynamic wow I have ever heard.
(Not a little, I'm talking really serious pitch dropping for any loud sections.*
The rest of the system was also basically very budget cheap and nasty.)

To me utterly, gruesomely, unlistenable, but apparently he could join the pitch
and rhythm dots I simply couldn't and didn't seem to mind how awful it was.

I'm still bemused / befuddled 30 or so years later, I wonder what he would
have made of the many more than decent hifi's I've put together since.

rgds, sreten.

* Way worse than the infamous Strathearn STM4, which was really bad.

 

[sreten]

There are many music lovers with no interest in hi-fi. Have you ever heard a snippet of a familiar song playing in a loud, crowded restaurant, and been able to follow it despite the competing noise? It's a connection on a different level than sonic evaluation, and worth cultivating, imho, as it lets one enjoy good performances right through poor recordings.

Hi,

I'm obviously interested in hifi, but also used to play bass much more than I do now.
Learning the bass changes your ears capabilities. I recall one evening in a pub with
a broken jukebox that was just putting out low frequencies and nothing much else.
To my friends amazement, I identified most of the songs, and they could recognise
them after I identified them, but they generally had no real idea beforehand.

rgds, sreten.

 

[DallPikachu]

So there is nothing strange that he can't tell difference in the sound from two speakers even he loves music? I love music too but I can hear the difference in two speakers. Also would he ever enjoy listening to his music from nice speakers? Kent did say I would probably be good at like doing recording in a studio since I have good ears for sound and if he were to learn to play instrument he would be good at that. Kind of strange I feel but I guess music lovers doesn't equal want best sound for there music. I always thought music and sound is connected.

 

[JoeESP9]

I always thought music and sound is connected.

For some it is. For others it isn't. That's just the way things are.

 

[twiiii]

I have known many musicians that can discern all there is bout a performance that is presented in a compromised way. It doesn't matter if its the recording itself or the compromised space the performance took place in. I can be that way too when I tell myself I have to be. But mostly I don't worry about the nuts and bolts of a performance. I want to get lost in the total sum of the performance and the quality of the acoustics of the space in which the recording was made. It took me a very intense 15 years of listening to loudspeakers and even more before I got the electronics right. But once you do everything falls into place. You can train yourself to be an informed descerning listener but its much easier if you are a trained musician or learning to be. In addition to mastering your instrument, you need to train yourself to listen to others so you can all play as a group of one. This training will teach you to listen to a recorded performance no matter the quality as well.

 

[the skipper]

Many people can listen through the equipment to the music itself. I prefer my home stereo, which doesn't suck, but when traveling I use either a small Sony pocket radio or, if I'll be there for a few days, a Tivoli Isongbook. Neither can produce the range and dynamics of my home stereo but I can still enjoy the music for what it is.

Along those lines, I'm into roots rock, jump blues and old time country swing. A lot of this was recorded between the thirties and early 60's when recording tech was, well, let's just say not up to modern standards. No matter how good the equipment you play it back on, it still won't sound as good as more modern recordings. I can still enjoy the music and it makes my feet want to move.

IOW, some people listen to he equipment and some listen to the music. I'm glad I can do both.

 

[HTWillie]

For people who know music, they often just require a few minimal suggestions and cues that lo-fi provides and their brain literally fills in the missing pieces, for they already know how it's "supposed" to sound. It often comes with drawbacks, I've heard. Experienced musicians and conductors and such who know a piece so well will hear things like the second oboe being a little flat, distracting them a bit from their otherwise full enjoyment.

People familiar with sound on the other hand, notice the "quality of conveyance" for lack of a better term, and sometimes wish for a better/different quality. Speakers and amps don't go out of tune or fall out of rhythm like instruments or performers can, but there's countless technical or gear related things that play a part in how the sound, uh, sounds. And their distraction might range from a mild "it could sound a little better" to "it doesn't have to sound this bad."

My latest peeve: after 35-plus years of being annoyed by televised football, I finally figured out what I hate so much about it - the sound is terrible. Some person is at a mixing board dialing in the crowd noise, and the talkers are high-pass filtered at 300Hz or so to make their voices sound like AM radio. It doesn't have to sound this bad.

 

[sqlsavior]

My latest peeve: after 35-plus years of being annoyed by televised football, I finally figured out what I hate so much about it - the sound is terrible. Some person is at a mixing board dialing in the crowd noise, and the talkers are high-pass filtered at 300Hz or so to make their voices sound like AM radio. It doesn't have to sound this bad.

My wife has been a Seahawks fan since the team formed. For a couple of years we watched via satellite on a home theatre setup I'd done in the family room. Someone at Fox must have realized that deep in our lizard brains lies the embedded realization that Loud + Low = BIG. The morphologically ridiculous shadow-boxing robots, combined with the fanfare and LFE blasts, are calculated to inject just enough cortisone and adrenalin into our systems to raise the hair on our backs (if any ). Having a home theatre for TV sound is a very mixed blessing, imo.

 

[twiiii]

For many years NFL broad cast people used parabolic reflectors using cheap Sony condenser mics as the pickup element. The Sony mic was all right at $99.00, but to make the pickup intelligible they did roll off the bass. They also make other compromises in the sound pick-up. When watching games I just use the Pioneer display speakers. The sound quality is so bad I don't bother firing up the sound system. I have yet to here sound from any network worthy of my HT system. I watch movies on HBO, AMC, Turner, etc and compared to original Laser discs and DVDs the sound is always compromised. I doesn't matter whether I use cable TV over the air or satellite. The networks just can't get it right.

 

[orsen]

to me ears for music and ears for sound are different
i love my various sound systems and my recorded music.
but i hear music in many things the rhythm of a train, the sound of traffic with a loud car stereo beside you
the sounds of the machines around you ... it all has a beat

a person working in a very loud environment can hear a machine failing in 120db room cause he can hear the rhythm of the room

 

[kirk57]

Unless the OPs boyfriend is psychic, there is simply no way he can discern everything going on in a piece of music played back on truly terrible gear. There are simply too many details hidden in the mix that would get lost. For example, some recordings contain subsonic info that I didn't even know existed until getting good subwoofers.

That said, these details are not usually essential to the musical message, and it's quite possible to get most of that message while listening to a boom box, or worse.

 

[darkblue94]

a person working in a very loud environment can hear a machine failing in 120db room cause he can hear the rhythm of the room

Prolonged presence in a room like that and it wont take very long at all before he/she will have a hard time with being able to hear much of anything at all.

 

[DallPikachu]

No Kent is not psychic but I know he has talent in the music field knowing how instruments suppose to sound. His always loved music his whole life he said and even for example when he was little his grandma teach him how to play the piano and he picked up quickly on how to play a simple kid song meaning most take longer time to get that good while the time he practiced. But he ended up not playing that for a long time and now he says he learned something that he never knew that Violin could be used to play pop music and other kinds not just classical. Before he thought it can only be played on Classical music. He said he would want to learn how to play the Violin on the side while he works at a normal job and his sister is very similar personality so they could play together a song that he likes or she likes in the future. He said I would be good at listening sounds when he plays and seeing if it sounds good or even do some recording in the studio using the mixer and studio monitors. But all in all I don't know what will happen in the future all I know is he loves music so that's why I thought he loved sound too since it's important to have nice speakers to play your music on but I guess I was wrong.


What made him really excited about Violin is songs like Rather Be from DSharp he was soo shocked that Violin can be played on pop songs or any other kinds and he really loves it. There are others from DSharp he really likes he said. He was just blown away basically.


As you know he is only 22 almost 23 plus he has strong ADHD so I know those people are like 3-4 years younger acting than other people his age so I don't know what will happen in the future if he will really become a Violinist or not. My therapist said the part that ADHD people act younger than there age. I known my therapist for 12 years so I trust her she is really a great therapist. I' am 31 almost 32 so I kind of feel that he is still learning and at times immature on somethings but he is a great loyal guy that I can totally trust on so what's why I hope we will get married in the future.