Listener fatigue: what does it really mean?


Okay, so I used to think that listener fatigue meant that your ears just kind of got tired from listening to speakers that were overly bright. I don't have a good understanding of the make up of an ear, but I believe there are muscles in an ear that, I guess, expand and contract while we listen to music and I figured that's what it meant to have listener fatigue. Now, I'm thinking that listener fatigue is maybe more than your ears just getting tired but actually, your whole body getting tired and feeling drained. I experienced this time and time again listening to my paradigm studio's. They are somewhat bright and provide quite a bit of detail in my oppinion, so I'm wondering if, since there was such a great amount of detail coming through, that it was physically draining because I'm sitting there analyzing everything that's coming through the speakers. I would wake up and first thing in the morning, grab a cup of coffee and start listening to music (my daily routine) and 20-30 minutes later start nodding off and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I've been sitting here this morning listening to my new vandersteen's for two hours and can't get enough. I feel like I could listen all day and that I'm almost energized from listening vs. drained.

Soooo, what are your oppinions about what listener fatigue is and why it's caused?
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Showing 3 responses by jmcgrogan2

Soooo, what are your oppinions about what listener fatigue is and why it's caused?

I feel listening fatigue is a mental and/or emotional sense of being, not so much a physical issue with the ears. I find it most commonly occurs with me when my system has taken a turn towards a more resolving, clinical, analytical type of sound. Detail, detail everywhere, mental stimulation overload leads me towards shorter and shorter listening sessions. Sometimes leading me to not firing up the rig at all. The mind is burning up trying to take in all of this information and detail.

The cure is to remove the gear, cables, etc. that led to this hyper-detail sound in the first place and replace them with more musical pieces.
So this leads me to another question: can you have all the "juicy" detail, and yet have a warm sound too?

Yes, if you have two systems.

Just as your analogy with vehicles, they are designed for a certain perfomance. There are pick-up trucks and sports cars, there are detailed systems and there are musical systems. They cannot be one in the same.
03-26-13: Mapman
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