bill@uunet.UU.NET (Bill Vermillion) (09/20/90)
In article <6425@uwm.edu> korenek@ficc.ferranti.com (gary korenek) writes: >bilver!bill@uunet.UU.NET (Bill Vermillion) writes: >> The general consensus among those in the business is not >> how good your hearing is, but how well you listen, or learned >> to listen. > >'Learning to listen' is why people trade up to high-end audio >gear. Over time, the old Decca mono record player just doesn't >sound that great anymore. > >Many years ago when I was a high-end audio salesperson, we had >a name for people that made claims to superior trained listening >abilities - ''Golden Ears''. > >I believe myself to be a Golden Ears of a sort. When listening >to music, I listen for various things at different times. .... Learning to listen is really a lot of training, but it still doesn't make for "Golden Ears". I had been called that at times, but don't believe. Our other studio engineer was "golden eared" in my opinion, but then you meet someone who hears things that you don't and you are quickly humbled. This instance happened in '81 or '82 about a year or so before I got out of the business. Andy and I had lived in that control room for 5 or 6 years and though we knew it pretty well. Gene Eichelberger (one of the legendary Nashville engineers [his truck did the audio for the film Nashville] ) was engineering a session with Turley Richards. Turley had gone totally blind shortly after his Warner Bros album (with his 4 1/2 octave vocal range) had been released. When listening to playbacks Turley insisted that the image was shifting. None of us heard it, but he insisted. We got out the equipment and measured a 1/2 db mis-track on the monitor level control. Turley had heard the image shift - we had never noticed it. We then marked the exact point of balance on that control and then adjusted the levels during mixdown using the VCA's only. Many times I have heard things that clients didn't, and conversely there were times when clients heard things I didn't. Thankfully the latter occurances were far outweighed by the former. Meeting someone who is truly "Golden Eared" is quite an experience. -- Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill : bill@bilver.UUCP
nhess@us.oracle.com (Nate Hess) (09/25/90)
In article <6449@uwm.edu>, bilver!bill@uunet (Bill Vermillion) writes: >We got out the equipment and measured a 1/2 db mis-track on the monitor >level control. Turley had heard the image shift - we had never noticed it. This is rather interesting, considering that I've heard, both here and in other forums, that humans cannot distinguish by naked ear alone any difference in sound that is less than 1 db. [I was under the impression that this was "on average". -tjk] --woodstock -- "What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking and thinking...and suddenly you wake up." - Hobbes nhess@us.oracle.com or ...!uunet!oracle!nhess or (415) 506-2650