[Things your Mom warned you about] How to listen and judge a component or HiFi system avoiding brain and ears lies

In the two previous episodes of this saga we addressed the topic of how to listen and make judgments on a HiFi component and how to judge a HiFi component outdoors. We complete the series of advice with five other key points to protect ourselves from errors of evaluation due to the context, our expectations and various internal and external psychological conditioning.

Tip #1: whatever context you find yourself in, ask to be able to listen in a seated position, positioned centrally with respect to the speakers. Listening while standing is the worst thing you can do (high frequencies are extremely directional) and listening off-centre is equally risky, at the very least you will lose a good portion of the 3D stereo image. Whenever possible, ask to be able to listen to only one pair of speakers at a time, carefully avoiding walls of speakers to be hysterically selected via a switch: rest assured that your ear will be more easily fooled by the louder sounding speaker or by the one with a boost in the high frequency range. Once purchased and brought home you will find that speaker intolerable in the long run.

Tip #2: the ear is a complex organ, and even more so is the way it interacts with our brain. It takes time for it to understand and recognize a certain type of sound, therefore the rapid A-B changes that double-blind test soldiers love so much are extremely misleading. Take at least a minute per track, then move on to the other component to compare. That minute must be significant, that is, contain some known and easily identifiable audio information. Should it need more time, then take more time. On the other hand, be careful not to overdo it: longer listening times are dangerous as well, especially for inexperienced listeners: the brain is cruel, it equalizes and realigns all the missing frequencies after a while,. Try listening to mini-speakers for an entire afternoon, at the end of the evening you will feel like that the bass, so slender and light as it seemed at the beginning, will appear deep and powerful. And no, it won't be an effect of the infamous breaking-in of the speaker, but it is your brain that has boosted the bass to compensate. A quick comparison with a good floor-standing speaker will make you detect all the bass you were unconsciously missing.

Tip #3: using poorly recorded tracks to judge a HiFi component is, unfortunately, a very widespread malpractice. The excuse is that, in the end, “that's the music I listen to most often.” A poorly recorded disc will not be able to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a component or HiFi system. For this reason you need recordings that contain an extended frequency response, both in the bass and in the highs, excellent dynamics and, possibly, a stereophonic image that can be defined as such. A system or component selected in this way will make even poorly recorded tracks play better, because it will extract more musical information from the media.

Tip #4: resist the temptation to judge a HiFi component or system with only those typical HiFi exhibition test discs, that contain a solo instrument and a voice, 99% of the time a female one. With recordings like this all systems sound reasonably good. What is needed, instead, is something that puts a HiFi component or an entire system on the ropes, therefore you need complex musical textures, with very evident dynamic leaps. If something has to go wrong, it will, but only under these conditions. There is no need to play symphonic music, which is often very badly recorded; try a large jazz line-up or even something electronic, provided it is complex and highly dynamic. To evaluate bass extension, certain synthetic notes are torture tests for woofers and amplifiers, but even a large pipe organ is capable of making a system grasping for breath. I've heard poor quality DACs distort wildly on the highest notes of a soprano. Obviously, the listening level also plays a key role: everything sounds good at a low listening level, it's when the going gets rough that virtues (or faults) of a component or system come to light.

Tip #5: when you feel you have purchased a component that is an “upgrade”, take some time to think twice. The brain is very easily fooled by expectations, prejudices and the charm of the new “toy”. If you have the chance, after a week or two, reconnect the old component and evaluate whether it really produces a step backwards. You will be surprised to discover that what seemed like a decisive step forward is actually a small or negligible one. If you don't have this time margin to go back to the previous configuration, take at least a few hours to let things settle in. Unplug everything, take a break and go back to the initial setup. Repeat this back and forth a few times, always with the same tracks. Eventually, you will be fairly certain that you have identified the entity of the supposed improvement. If you could get someone to replace the component for you blindly, even better. Listen and judge only one component at a time, in the exact same conditions.

Conclusions

These other five easy rules should be useful to begin to overcome the deceptions of our brains and our ears. On the same topic, don't miss Mark Wheeler's article on “Confirmation and Expectation Bias”, also here on TNT-Audio. In the next episode, you'll get some further and free advice for understanding the - sometime weird - language commonly used in reviews.

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Things your Mom warned you about: how to avoid the lies of your ears and brain

Simple rules to avoid making mistakes...

Foreword

Conclusions