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Reviewer: Mark Wheeler - TNT UK
Published: October, 2024

One of the great existential questions is whether we all see and hear the things the same way.

We don't even see things and hear things and feel things the same way at different times throughout our lives. As we get older our hearing deteriorates particularly at high frequencies. This is more so in men than in women. As we get older our capacity to change focus with our eyes also decreases. Thus we see and hear less of the information available around us in our visual and auditory fields.

Because we begin to see and hear less of the information available in the panorama and auditory field around us, we begin to fill in the missing gaps based on our previous experiences. Part of our genetic survival mechanism has developed to ensure that lack of data does not necessarily mean early death.

We also begin to apparently seeing here things that are not there. Even relatively healthy eyes develop increasing numbers of floaters that we just can't flush away. We might also have some degree of auditory tinnitus. These are just our aging circuits generating more noise. As our senses produce fewer accurate signals, our interpolation systems try to fill the gaps. An extreme example is that of Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Charles Bonnet Syndrome involves the development of sometimes dramatic visual hallucinations. These are not mental health related symptoms. These are not delusional. These are often very vivid creations by our brains trying to make sense of partial data and can range from patterns, shapes, lines to fully formed brightly coloured moving images of animals and people.

There is far less research on auditory hallucinations associated with hearing loss. One recent study (Linszen et al, 2019) found that 16.2% of those (n=829) with hearing loss experienced auditory hallucinations compared with 5.8% experiencing auditory hallucinations among those without any hearing impairment. How do you know the reviewer, or commentator on social media, is not developing these interpolation habits?

Our capacity to interpolate (make a reasonable guess based on our usual experience), when there is a lack of sensory data, varies from person to person. However this capacity is usually very well developed in the human brain. This is probably an evolutionary survival adaptation embedded by epigenetics. A much smaller sample of adults over 65 (a significant proportion of audiophiles, if show attendance is any indicator) found that 32.8% experienced auditory hallucinations, from a sample population of 125 men and women who had been referred for possible hearing deterioration (Cole et al, 2002). The phenomenology of these hallucinations included humming or buzzing 35.9%, multiple noises 12.9%, voices 2.5%, music 2.5% and other sounds from 7.7% to 12.8%. Hence multiple listeners are useful (but not listening panels which always suffer from groupthink unless special precautions are undertaken) to ensure that what you hear has a statistically higher likelihood of being similar to some of the experiences you read.

tpry systemcreasing noise in our sensory systems (ear-brain in this instance), as in any system, reduces our capacity to discriminate between different signals. Sound, sight and touch are merely detectors of change in the Neurotypical population. It is thus easier to notice the difference between two shades of blue than to have absolute discrimination of blue (blue is the example here because many people have difficulties of discrimination with red and greens). It is more difficult to look at a particular shade of blue and say exactly what it is, for example in terms of a Pantone code or html code. Similarly, some of us can clearly judge relative musical pitch while having little capacity to judge absolute pitch. Hence we notice differences more explicitly when, equipment is demonstrated in an a comparison.

Having demonstrated that our visual and auditory fields change over every individual's lifetime, it is hardly surprising that different humans will have different perception from each other. At any given time there will be substantial differences in the nature of perception between individual humans. Enjoyment of domestic audio systems is not an objective parameter. It is hardly surprising that in the world of Audio opinions about what works best, opinions differ from individual to individual. Accuracy in whatever parameter is not the issue in a hobby. Railway modelers might obsess about prototype accuracy, but it really does not matter as much as the joy they get from building and operating their layouts. As much as this joy brought by our hobbies is the way it provides an alternative (sensory and intellectual) experience to that of everyday life.

If our perception changes at different life stages, we might also come to a different opinion about Audio equipment at different life stages. The enveloping pleasure of a zero feedback all valve horn system might be the most satisfying experience at one life stage, while a high headroom wide bandwidth active system be what we crave at a different age. Thus we should treat subjective reviews with critical analysis. Did the magazine run adverts for the product? Did the reviewer get a free hotel weekend at the product launch? Did a well known expert reviewer assemble a less experienced listening panel who will be swayed by their opinion.

Subjective data should really be culled from numerous semi-structured interviews with a selection of individual listeners, using a method like Thematic Analysis, Grounded Theory or Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to have any real credibility. Obviously this is not economically feasible. Learning how to read reviews critically (Long, 2001; Tod et al, 2021) is an essential prerequisite to audiophilia for all those who do not live in a city big enough to sustain a few hi-fi shops with demonstration rooms.

The Psychology of Audio Perception

Your Old Scribe, having undertaken research into the psychological aesthetics of images, notes that the direct psychological and physical processes of visual perception involved substantially different from individual to individual. What we do with that data is even more significant in constructing our individual subjective experience. A further layer is added by any individual's life history (including their history of audio equipment) as it is as another component in the phenomenology of their encounter with all audio equipment experiences. This is a whole set of extra contextual layers added to basic psychoacoustics.

Similar complexities to the psychological aesthetics of visual art apply even more so to the mind brain ear auditory processing mechanism. 40 years ago a literature review (Cope, 1979) asked whether musical hallucinations could be an otological phenomenon. Otological phenomena are the manifestations of the human sound processing system, i.e. psychoacoustics. Problems of the otological system include musical hallucinations accordingn to Cope. Cope's review did support that the "Otological system plays a role in the pathogenesis of musical hallucination. Hearing impairment may be an initiating factor, and the primary dysfunction is overactivity of auditory association cortex". Thus, without any underlying psychopathology, what we hear can be as much a function of our own ear-brain system as the actual compressions and rarefactions of the air reaching our eardrums.

Audiophile Neuroscience

What we now know about our brains has substantially changed over the last few years. Once we thought we had the most brain cells at birth and it was downhill all the way from then on. We are now aware of neurogenesis, which means we create thousands of new brain cells every time we do at least 20 minutes of heart rate raising exercise, throughout our lives. Any of these brain cells can be incorporated into neural networks by novel experience and activity. However, like most unused things they will just wither away if this does not happen. Hence having more novel audio experiences engenders more neural networks to process these experiences. Repeated similar experiences thicken existing neural networks associated with that activity. Thus if we learn to play a new tune on a musical instrument, we kindle new neural pathways and if we keep practicing that tune we thicken that neural pathway. If we never play that tune again, some of those neurons will be incorporated into new neural networks until our memory of that tune fades.

Experienced audiophiles tend to be very practiced at hearing those aspects of performance that were the ones we learned to identify early on in our audio career. If we spend less time listening to our own audio systems, those audiophile neural pathways will decline, regardless of any age related physical hearing deterioration. Your Old Scribe developed his early hi-fi systems buying up equipment advertised in the back of magazines by older audiophiles who were downsizing and/or losing interest in the hobby (including a selection of Quad 22/II configured to monoblock driven active systems) just as often as buying from those “upgrading” to the latest version of a magazine favourite.

Active listening is key to maintaining the full pleasure possible from our expensive systems. Your Old Scribe dislikes the audio reviewer term 'Critical Listening', e.g. "The loudspeaker grilles can be easily removed for critical listening". Unless one is a critic, no listening need be critical. Active Listening is the ideal term. Its use is borrowed from the worlds of medicine, sociological research, psychotherapy and counselling and refers to the capacity of concentration on what the speaker is saying. Similar concentration on what the loudspeaker is reproducing will have a similar effect on our neural pathways, increasing our pleasure and exercising our listening muscles.

Conclusion

Use it or lose it.

Play your system every day.

Buy new music and listen carefully.

Practice active listening.

Go to live gigs at different sized venues and listen carefully.

Listen to unamplified live instruments, perhaps in music shops.

When the fun stops, stop buying new equipment and go to a gig immediately.

In Part 2 we will think about the importance of having an audio philosophy if we are not to waste fortunes chasing audio Will-o’-the-wisps.

References

Cole MG, Dowson L, Dendukuri N & Belzile E. (2002) The prevalence and phenomenology of auditory hallucinations among elderly subjects attending an audiology clinic. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2002 May;17(5):444-52. doi: 10.1002/gps.618. PMID: 11994933

Cope TE & Baguley DM. (2009) Is musical hallucination an otological phenomenon? a review of the literature. Clin Otolaryngol. 2009 Oct;34(5):423-30. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-4486.2009.02013.x. PMID: 19793274

Linszen MMJ, van Zanten GA, Teunisse RJ, Brouwer RM, Scheltens P & Sommer IE. (2019) Auditory hallucinations in adults with hearing impairment: a large prevalence study. Psychol Med. 2019 Jan; 49(1):132-139. doi: 10.1017/S0033291718000594. Epub 2018 Mar 20. PMID: 29554989

Long, A. (2001) Critically Appraising Research Studies, in Abbott, McSherry and Simmons, Evidence Informed Nursing, Routledge

Tod D, Booth A & Smith B. (2021) Critical appraisal. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 15(1), 52-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2021.1952471

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Copyright © 2024 Mark Wheeler - mark@tnt-audio.com- www.tnt-audio.com