hello.


this is probably philosophical question as you can't measure it and from science when you move for the bit the whole perceiving of the sound change.

i got thru lot of literature that is avaliable regarding to music field. trying to keep myself in shape with reading new edition of magazines every month, watching videos... and i have somehow professional (it doesn't pay my bills) relathionship with music for more than ten years.

what i'm mising is answer when you train your ears for long time if you're perceiving of sound radically change. i'm not sure as every day every minute you hear different sound. but i think i hear really different now than before. i was thinking of some comparision that everyone can imagine and that is like when you hear voice behind the wall form some distance (lets say 5 meters or 25 feets )now when i can concentrate/focus it is like the wall is gone and distance is gone.

Can some one point me somewhere or say something usefull to this topic?
Suez..
Last edited by suez on Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:55 am; edited 2 times in total

Your ears aren't hearing more of what's there; your mind is getting better at processing the data, making finer distinctions, becoming more objective, and so forth. Look up perception on Google or Wikipedia or any psychology textbook.

It's the exact same process as going from seeing squiggles on a piece of paper to reading, or going from tasting something sweet to distinguishing sugar from saccharine. Your senses do not physically improve with age -- if anything, they decline (talk to any old sound guy). You just get better at noticing what you, err, notice.

What he said. It's training and experience.

I remember how it was impossible for me to copy melodies by ear from other songs, but after some training it just becomes easier and easier (tho I have absolutely no absolute pitch sense, so I'm usually playing in wrong scale).

Also funny thing how The way you think affects the way you listen. As a very visual person I often "see" the sound. Either possible physical source, or a scene where it could fit or if I decide not to think such things and just listen I can't turn the visual thinking off and Imagine a waceform of the sound Kind of helpful thing when doing sound design.

I remember when I was a kid and I could have SWORN the 8-bit sample inside my Amiga was almost indistinguishable from the original material, EVEN AFTER I'd "octaved it up" to save memory

Are you saying they weren't?!

Yes, totally offtopic, but it's insane how crappy 4-8khz 8-bit samples sounded just fine

Same thing during Edison's tone tests.

This process is known as Learning.

so like. travel for clarity, learn how to listen to things in box, that your ears get bigger, lovering of the ears etc is basicly bullsht. i hear all this things from people that are rated top in their field of music industry.

maybe it's only learning but i think anyway that is some big change on the way. as with learning to walk you don't know that you capable of it but when you learn only serious psychical or physical damage make you lost this ability and you only sharpen it not completly invent it again like in the beginning.

i think I know that i learned to recognize for lot of times that my brain is completly changing meaning of sound on the way from source to brain. but that can be only learning curve and i for sure know that if i don't start to train listening i maybe never find that lot of space in my head is made from bullsht. i think it's lot of simmilar to other sense and that is covered by eyes.

Well I'm a little late to this but I just wanted to mention that the Amiga often sounded as good as it did because it really wasn't a sampler. It was closer to a wavetable synth (with many people effectively filling wavetables with samples). The Amiga hardware takes whatever values you have in your buffer (sample or synthetic waveform) and outputs them at a programmable rate and programmable volume. And if the low-pass filter is turned off, frequencies that you might expect to be lost when creating a wavetable from a sample in some cases will still be there during playback.

Suppose, for example, you sample a 100 HZ square wave at 2KHz and store the sample for playback. It might be claimed by some that the highest frequency present in the output is limited by the sample rate and so must be less than 1 KHz, but this is not so.

Instead the Amiga will output the sample as a square wave with higher order harmonics well above 1 KHz present(I think the upper limit is near 56KHz). Some frequencies assumed to be lost during sampling are recreated. This doesn't happen with every sample, just those that contain sounds that have many odd harmonics of the fundamental.

This is also why recreating a true Amiga like sound on PC hardware can be difficult. On basic PC hardware, playback is limited to a few fixed frequencies with filters preventing the appearance of harmonics. This is usually seen as desirable because it's assumed that users simply want an accurate playback of a sample, not the synth of new frequencies.

Beyond the idea of simple ear training, for music producers, it's important to understand the Fletcher-Munson curve effect, the Haas effect, etc.

We naturally do not preceive all frequencies in the audio spectrum best at the same volume level. Turn the volume down and the low end becomes weaker to our perception. Turn it up too loud and our ears start to compress the high end. A volume loud enough that you can still hold a conversation over without yelling is the best listening balance/level, per the Fletcher-Munson curve that reveals all this on a graph-curve (around 85dB). That range will allow you listen longer without it causing fatigue. Anything over 90dB for long periods can actually cause permanent damage to your ears.

This is why when spending long hours listening on one day, and then checking what you mixed the next day when you've rested and your ears are fresh, can sound messed up. A way to help counter this during mixing is to keep the volume as low as you can to hear with, while doing short test bursts when judging an effect you're applying. Level match your track volume after applying the effect (whatever level the track was prior to applying the effect, reduce the effect's volume to match that original volume level. This will keep your static mix you do at the beginning of a mix session you should do prior to putting on any effects).

Protect your ears, permanent damage can't be reversed.

in my case, having a label for things makes me more aware of their existence (i think that applies in any form of learning, not just music).

i would say that about a decade (or so) ago, the orchestra to me is entirely made of violins. thanks to the accessibility of digital orchestration, I eventually got motivated to read orchestration texts, watch videos of orchestras (they're not as accessible a decade ago!), play with samples... now i can tell just by listening if an instrument is strings, woodwinds or brass. and i'm optimistic it would just get better with experience.

Analytical listening is something that you learn through experience. As a producer you have to learn to focus on different parts of a mix at different times, but also listen to the entire mix. It's like any other focus of concentration.

To be able to listen analytically you need to understand how sound is processed in the mix as well -- the effects of compression, the effects of EQ -- not in a coarse way, but in the subtle important ways. If you don't have a good understanding of dynamics and tonal color you cannot listen effectively. Our challenge is to integrate the technical and the creative. You have to trust your ears, but the meters are also really important.

Ear fatigue is real and will definitely affect how you perceive a mix from one day to the next. Fresh ears are always better for final decision making.

I agree about monitoring at a comfortable level -- you can't blast all the time and should check your mixes at different levels and in mono. You also have to learn your monitors -- every monitor speaker is different and it's always good to have more than one set to check your mixes.

Last but not least - your mood and emotional state can make a difference in the creative choices you make from one day to the next. That's just a wildcard -- at the end of the day, the more experience you have the more likely it is that you'll listen in such a way to make the right choices. You should learn from every song you produce.