"Or can’t hear" sounds pretty accurate as a summation.
Shunyata has a division which designs cables for hospitals, which need exceedingly low noise to hear what is going on with the heart. I assume people won’t think Shunyata paid a hospital to make a false comment, but some people have an answer for anything they don’t believe in, so I guess they won’t believe.
Nonetheless, read for yourself:
One thing that I find comforting is that Keith Jarrett - an audiophile - stated that, when he came into High End equipment, he "didn’t know HOW to listen or what to listen for". That’s from his Jazz Stereo Times interview. So, if a world-famous pianist didn’t know how to listen correctly when he came into his High End system, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the average listener ALSO doesn’ t know how to "hear" what’s happening.
I was watching Gigi last night, because my husband had never seen it. The sound seemed "hollow" to my ears, but I wasn’t sure he recognized it. To be honest, it was hard for me to tell, too, but it sounded "funny" to my ears.
I got up and moved an ASC Sound Plank on the wall behind one speaker about two inches, and sat back down and hit "play". The whole lower midrange filled in (if your sound is "hollow-sounding," if is likely to be a problem in the lower midrange/upper bass). I asked him today if he had heard any difference and he replied that yes, it didn’t sound as hollow. I did not prompt him at all.
Besides that, the "ssssss" sounds in the dialogue became noticeably clearer, which means the upper midrange/lower treble range was being more correctly rendered (although the violins in the music then sounded pretty bad. Hey it was recorded in 1958, and now it's being transmitted thru the speakers via an LG LCD screen. I'm sure the electronics in it are not very good, so...).
I had lowered the volume after moving the tube trap, but I didn’t say anything to my husband about it. It sounded clearer to me, and that was enough. What I didn't expect was that moving the tube trap (just one!) also made the volume louder, which is why I turned the sound down.
It reminded me that room acoustics are a sine qua non for any average room, and, without it, there is so much music we don't even realize is missing. Annoying, but that’s the reality of sound reproduction. Even curtains on the side wall, or a ficus plant beside a speaker on the side wall at the first reflection point will break up sound waves really well. People really need to treat room acoustics as a critical part of getting good sound, and it needn’t be like I did it: Tube Traps everywhere, although I first bought them in 1988, so I’ve been fortunate. (Dave Wilson expressed dismay that my dealer had sold me 10k worth of Tube Traps, but then, he hadn’t heard them. They were very new at that point. J. Gordon Holt did the first review of Tube Traps in Stereophile in the spring of 1988, and I bought them a few months later). I imagine that same batch now would cost upwards of $30,000. Thank God I was younger and less skeptical.