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Your search for musical accuracy

I started my audio in 1975. I did not know anything and was guided by a sales person in an Audio store near my university. I started with a Kenwood 25-watt receiver, Sansui direct drive turntable, and Small Advent speakers.

by Rome

The musical chair

I started my audio in 1975. I did not know anything and was guided by a sales person in an Audio store near my university. I started with a Kenwood 25-watt receiver, Sansui direct drive turntable, and Small Advent speakers. Within a few weeks, I swapped the Kenwood to a 35-watt Sansui receiver and speakers to the large Advents. In my salad days in audio, I had swapped numerous audio equipment in my search for musical accuracy. I would read reviews, both past and present, from audiophile magazines. My special favorite was The Absolute Sound, when it was headed by founder (RIP), Harry Pearson. HP at his best had a way of conveying what he was hearing in his writing which made you feel like you were in the room with the gear and vicariously experiencing what it sounded like. Harry I think almost single-handedly defined high-end audio writing (well, along with J. Gordon Holt of Stereophile) and as others have noted gave us much of the terminology we still use (and sometimes abuse and misuse) today, and especially, defined many of the concepts of high-end audio writing. Not that great audio writing hadn’t been done before, but Harry made high-end audio writing a reality. The point of this digression is that reading and imagining strengthens the passion for music listening, and thus feeds the musical chair of equipment upgrades.

Habituation, and its role in music listening

After many years of personal expense buying and replacing audio equipment while chasing the elusive sound of live music I chanced upon the psychological theory of habituation. Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations. It is a process of becoming less responsive to a stimulus after repeated exposure to it. Habituation can occur to stimuli detected by any of your senses.

Based on my experience, in audio, after adding a new equipment, we are stimulated by the new better sound. After a period of time, our enthusiasm for the glorious sound wanders and diminishes as we get used to it. As this is happening, we read in the audio press about the new amazing audio equipment discovered by a reviewer that offers this uplifting glorious sound. This then leads to your thinking that maybe the sound you have isn’t yet good enough so dissatisfaction sets in and the purchase cycle continues.

Habituation within habituation

In my instance, this continued for many years, decades even. I don’t even want to know the time and money spent because the journey was educational, depressing, and exhilarating. Until one discovers the truth – trusting that what you have offers satisfaction, and equally important that replacing your equipment will offer new sound but not necessarily better sound. It is habituation within habituation. It is learning that you’ve been here before and the same thing happens. Having gone through this cycle numerously, you get tired of the cycle itself. Also, it occurs by my learning the sound of music. By knowing this, when you hear your audio system, you know that it sounds like music amplified by your system and that changing it is just a waste of time, effort, and money better allocated elsewhere in your life.

When you discover the effect of habituation, you realize that your search is not about absolute truth, but relative truth – that is why it is forever changing. You begin to doubt reviewers and their rave reviews – their reviews are just a result of the human condition of habituation.

My theory is that before you buy a new equipment, listen to live music. Live music is the only real music experience you can count on to evaluate music reproduction. Digital or artificial music is not. Why, because it has been manipulated digitally. It is post the original event. Go listen to symphonies, concerts, operas, in large and small venues. That’s how you learn to listen and appreciate real live music. Then go back and listen to your audio system and ask yourself: Is my audio able to give me the satisfaction of listening to music? If it does, then keep it as is. You may also ask is it my audio equipment or myself – that I am bored with the sound that my system offers and just need new stimulus. If it’s the the latter, then don’t buy the new stuff. It’s a rabbit hole you wish to avoid.

All facets of life

Habituation affects all facets of your life. You get bored with relationships, friends, vacations, travel, cars, nature, food, art, and more. Use what you’ve learned in your audio journey to reverse the effects of habituation. You create a new experience with work, friends, cars (rent a new car to experience it and research how much it will cost to own and maintain, etc.) Don’t rent a new girlfriend experience - that route means there’s something deeper that needs to be resolved. The new stimulus will keep you grounded with gratitude and help you realize that what you have is not worth replacing (the law of diminishing return) and that you should be thankful, and happy.

That’s really what audio is about – it’ about our life - our journey and search to be happy.

I am still in the journey. This time I help many others in their search to be happy with their music.

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