Listening with the heart

We hear not just what is there, but what we have been programmed to hear

By John Groom

July 2004

Psychobabble is a column to explore the twilight zone of hi-fi. That strange place where the improbable meets the impossible, the fussy meets the obsessional, and the physical meets the psychological.

A newborn child can smell sounds, see tastes, hear touch and feel pictures. Our initial impression of the world is of an overlapping smorgasbord of sensations. With maturity we separate the senses and learn how to ‘see’ the world. This is not a passive mechanism like a camera, but an active, learnt and very selective process.

Don’t step on the snake

The world is too big and busy a place for us to be able to attend to everything at once. If we tried, we would at best be confused and at worst go a little crazy. It has been suggested that our very survival depended, for example, on a highly refined and selective auditory ability, which was developed for hunting and to avoid being hunted! We need to separate the world into a foreground and a background - this bit is the tiger and that bit is the bush. We need to form complete pictures from inadequate information. That blur of green is a toad and not a snake.

I’m not just deaf

You may be wondering by now what this has to do with hi-fi. A few weeks ago I reviewed the very competent 5i Naim system. All the usual PRAT features were there but I didn’t rush off to buy it. Naim has not changed, but as a former Naim owner I am simply attending to different aspects of the music.

My modest system has been tuned to emphasise the emotional aspect of the music. I listen for sweetness, the tonal balance and whether the music moves me or leaves me fatigued. I am listening with my heart rather than with my mind. This is not a matter of right or wrongs just a matter of difference.

Did the earth move?

My friend Paul – a recovering Naimaholic - came around, and he didn’t like the sound of my system. With the help of a few slate tiles and some sorbothane rubbers, we tuned up the equipment stand. Within a couple of hours we had leading edge to the sound, it was clean, and had plenty of bounce.

Juliet had been away for a few days and when she came home she found the sound to be too hard, lacking ‘air’ and expressiveness. Last night I took the slates and rubbers back out, did a small modification to the power supply and ‘wow’ I had the old sweetness back again.

Stepping into the past

It may be relevant to note that Juliet is a musician, and plays the concertina. When I dabbled as a musician, I played the clarinet and latter the cello. Paul, I suspect, is a frustrated drummer. I think we all bring our previous listening experiences to the present, in a way that often unconsciously shapes our listening preferences. I wonder sometimes if I am still trying to recapture my childhood joy, of listening to music on a valve radio with all of its dulcet tones!

Seeing what we can name

Recently I was approached by a couple of young musicians who have developed an innovative speaker design. As the conversation progressed I realized that much of the language of hi-fi that we have developed they were unaware of, and hence were limited in their ability to describe what they had achieved. It was useful to help them to name processes.

This is not purely a neutral however. Naming is a powerful process. The Eskimos are said to have 17 words for different types of snow. It is not just that I don’t know the 17 words, someone would need to show me the different categories, and I am sure that I would never see snow the same way again. I have had the same kind of experience in hi-fi.

Back to the beginning

I still remember 20 years ago, with the assistance of members of the Wellington Audio Club, learning the language of hi-fi. I am grateful, but so much of it is cognitive. Ultimately music is about evoking a feeling. I wonder what our hi-fi reviews would read like if we described the taste, feel, sight and smell of music?

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John Groom is a psychologist working in private practice on Auckland's North Shore. John has over three decades experience in both hi-fi and psychology.

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