 The HB project and the HB channel are supported by Hi-Fi Club'n. That sound kills good music. Judging audio equipment requires experience and you can acquire experience better under optimal conditions as I have described in part one of this video. Now it's time to listen and learn. Listening is a cognitive process. In plain English your brain does the important work. The brain is an impressive piece of work that can easily recognize a peach from an apple and a violin from a ukulele. But it can only recognize things it has learned to recognize. A confront someone with an instrument he doesn't know, say the Arab oud, and he will mention instruments that look and sound more or less alike, like the lute, but he will not know it is an oud until it is told to him. By the way, the word lute has its origin in the Arab oud, so the answer lute was not so far off. The problem with the brain is that it doesn't like loose ends. If no sensible information is available, the brain will make up sensible information itself. It is also very good in coming up with favorable solutions. I'll give you an example from the past. In the 80s there was a brand that had issued one very good CD player after another, ranging from very affordable to truly high end. One day they introduced a model just below their top model that sounded far from good given its price, and my colleague and I were confused. We immediately started to look for what we did wrong as where it was the player that offered poor quality. After some time we heard that an English colleague had the same player on the review so we phoned him. He had equal experiences and only then we would accept this time the brand has screwed up. Since this was unusual, our brains refused to accept the obvious. The player was a lemon. This learns us not only that doubting yourself and finding a valid second opinion are good practices, but also that the brains of the humanoid are less reliable than that of a Vulcan. Therefore you have to train your brain to question every conclusion it makes. Even more important is to suppress all kinds of social behaviour. If your friend has bought a new amp, after saving it for it for three years, your brain will likely steer you to liking the amp, since not liking it leads to a social conflict. In my profession, judging the products to be poor did lead to cancelling of ad contracts, not inviting me to press introductions and not lending me review samples. The reason I survive is because in my brain the conflict with the advertiser is always less of a problem than a conflict with my conscience. So now we know that our brain is constantly trying to play tricks on us and how we should fight that. The next job is to identify fingerprints of shortcomings in your reference set. If you can't find any, you are either not a gifted listener or an extremely brilliant set builder. I have never heard a stereo set without shortcomings and I would be highly surprised if such a thing would exist. Most likely you have to try again until you come up with one or more shortcomings, things that are not supposed to be there. The difficulty here is that your brain knows it's listening to a stereo and stereos sound like stereos and not like real sound according to your brain. Let's take one of the most difficult things to get right in a stereo, siblings. Many audiophiles take for granted that siblings is not on par with the real world. Even seasoned listeners tell me that it's in the recording when I know it isn't. That's okay for it's rather difficult and often very expensive to get right. So you better learn to live with it. But for the argument's sake let's say that you want to improve siblings controlling your set. Then it would be nice to find out what causes it. The only way to find out is to replace individual components piece by piece and including cables in the music files or discs. It is therefore handy to have audiophile friends to exchange equipment and cables with. Friends can also point you to properties of the sound, both positive and negative, that are remarkable. That way you teach each other to listen and yes initially you will misinterpret some properties as will your friends. That will bring us back to the beginning of this video. Make sure that no egos get in the way for that will absolutely lead to errors. As an exercise connect your smartphone as a source and listen to the changes that causes. Or the old CD player you gave to your son and that he no longer uses since it needs those funny, shiny silver disc key things. As with all knowledge, when are used it will become harder to access. So if you went through all the trouble I have described before you want to keep proficient and a good way to do that is to become a member of a stereo club or whatever name is used in your country. In my country they meet every month with the exception of the holiday and summer vacation periods. Often equipment is evaluated, keynotes and presentations are given and it is also a good way to find friends of equal interest. Of course you can also learn from my work and that of my colleagues on the web and in magazines. Keep your eyes open for paid content, advertorials and so on for they are a sign of the time and don't necessarily tell an honest story. I keep doing my work as I believe is right. So if you want to stay informed, follow my Facebook or Google Plus page or my Twitter account. You can also post questions there but please don't ask me for personal buying advice. See my questions video to find out why the link is in the top right corner. You'll find more information below this video on YouTube. If you like this video please give it a thumbs up and tell your friends on the web about it. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.