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Learning to Listen: Neurological Evidence

Neurological evidence indicates we not only learn to listen, but actually tune our inner ear response based on neural feedback from the brain. We literally are able to actively tune our own hearing.  

When we listen for a flute for example, this is more than a conscious decision to focus on the flute. This creates neural impulses that actively tune ear cells to better hear the flute.  

This whole video is fascinating, but I want to get you hooked right away so check this out:  
https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1340

“Selectively changing what we’re listening to in response to the content. Literally reaching out to listen for things.”


Here’s another good one. Everyone can hear subtle details about five times as good as predicted by modeling. Some of us however can hear 50 times as good. The difference? Years spent learning to listen closely! https://youtu.be/SuSGN8yVrcU?t=1956

Learning to play music really does help improve your listening.  

This video is chock full of neurphysiological evidence that by studying, learning and practice you can develop the listening skills to hear things you literally could not hear before. Our hearing evolved millennia before we invented music. We are only just now beginning to scratch at the potential evolution has bestowed on us.


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Showing 2 responses by asctim

asctim
429 posts
 
It was listening to the XLO Test CD track Poor Boy that triggered my awareness, of what I was hearing from some of the better CD players and amps. They were less etched and grainy than mine, but it took playing this all analog recording to make the connection.
This is all good, but I’m not certain what "etched and grainy" means to you in terms of sound. Since I don’t know for sure what it is in acoustical terms that you were perceiving I have no way of knowing if I could detect it. If I could detect it, I assume I would get a similar perception of it as you do. But without knowing what it is there’s no way to be sure. I can tell you what comes to mind for me when I think of those words in terms of sound - static and interference tones, with a few harsh peaks here and there. That would be the grainy part in my mind. Etched, well that’s harder to imagine but I would assume the starts and stops of tones would be louder than the middle and maybe start and stop with clicks, like a CB radio effect.

Are there any overtly etched and grainy sounding recordings that you can refer me to as a reference?

I found this video where a guy etched grooves in a tortilla with a laser and played it on a record player. Sounds grainy and etched in a corny way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzCv_9eaoM
asctim
429 posts
 
MC,

Jennifer Warnes 'Famous Blue Raincoat" and "The Well" both sounds lucious and liquid on my rig. Know this cuzz I have both serial numbered box sets.

Maybe your system???
I hear the difference on my speakers. Harder to notice it on my headphones which is interesting because they do reveal some things better than the speakers. I think the headphones sound brighter, which masks the difference for me. Both recordings sound great and highly enjoyable on both the speakers and the headphones, so I'd say this level of refinement is beyond my typical threshold of concern. But it is interesting and a good example for comparison. I read Robert Harley's section on audio terms and learned that grain refers to sound in the treble and the midrange, which together runs from about 800 to 10,000 Hz. Robert suggests that room effects often contribute to a grainy impression. Still, he doesn't specify exactly what it is about the sound that creates the graininess, or the excessive lack of texture which would be syrupy. It seems to me that it's primarily a frequency response issue, and perhaps sometimes a distortion issue. That should be very easy to measure if it's coming from the output of a DAC. Maybe not so easy to measure and interpret at the listening position with all the room reflections confusing things. 
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