 The HB project and the HB channel are supported by Hi-Fi Club'n. That sound kills good music. After the video, my first listening experiences with MQA, I got a request to explain more about learning to analyse the sound of equipment. Well, that's easy. Explaining that is. Before I go into the subject, let me state clearly that there is no need to learn to judge equipment if you just want to enjoy music. Or try to explain this using food. When my wife and I go out dining, chances are she will start analysing what's in the food. Especially when it tastes very good or very bad. She starts saying things like sesame, turmeric, kumail, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme and apart from the Simon and Garfunkel title, these are names that mean nothing to me. Despite that, I am quite able to judge the tastiness of the food and, even more important, enjoy it to the full. As you can see, my wife has a cooking as a hobby. She trained herself by experimenting with recipes and ingredients. Given time, she automatically learned to analyse food. My palate has improved too, but in a more holistic way. Even with a holistic approach, you can remember the level of excitement a dish brought you. Like the exquisished dish at Margaux in Berlin a few years ago and even the Waigu beef from Kobe I ate at a restaurant in Tokyo way back in the 80s. With sound, it's my wife that has the holistic approach. She enjoys the music, if it's enjoyable of course but couldn't care less about the audiophile judgements. Talking about air and she thinks of Bach but she enjoys music to the full, luckily. She has a passion for cooking as I have a passion for working with audio equipment. And just like she developed her palate by cooking a lot I have developed my auditory system by judging audio equipment for over 40 years. In the first place, your ears have to work properly. Spending a lot of time visiting very loud concerts doesn't help. Sound pressure levels at concerts were up to or even over 110 dBs at the mixing desk. Luckily that has been reduced with around 10 dBs. But in many developed countries, 80 dB is a legal level at working place above which protection has to be worn or other measures must be taken by the employer. The medical world currently thinks that 75 dB would be better for most people under working conditions, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. So visiting loud venues like these but also motorbike riding, parachute jumping and so on can cause deafness centered around 4 kHz. See my video on hearing damage, the link is in the top right corner. In the meantime, make sure you wear hearing protection when in noisy surroundings. All perception by your senses are based on noticing changes. None of your senses are able to directly feed us with absolute values. But to a certain extent our brain is able to learn to quantify sensory stimuli by the effect they produce. To give you a very simple example, when the metal panel in the convector heater in the old house starts shaking, you know that's 87 dBs SPL since you have measured that once. But after some training you'll learn to judge levels on clues you might not even be aware of. Ever since I have learned that our hearing is most linear around 80 dB SPLA weighted I have judged equipment at that level. In the beginning I needed an SPL meter to set the level after years of training I can easily set the playback level at around 80 dBs. But only in my listening studio set 2 and set 3 and living room set 1 since these situations are known to me. So from now on differentiate between learning and enjoying and when learning always set the playback level at around 80 dB SPLA weighted. Any app that's available for smartphones will do for a slight deviation from the real 80 dB SPL weighted is of no importance here. Whatever you do, define the equipment you intend to use including cables, placing and so on as your reference. Always start with that reference and only replace one factor at a time when possible. The factor can be a set of loudspeakers or the amplifier or if you want to compare music files, the music files. If you are not comparing the music files, always use the same music files. If you have a nice recording at 44.1 kHz and you buy the 96 kHz version, first compare these two and if you like the 96 kHz version better listen to it many times before you use it for judging other equipment. Sometimes there is no other way than to vary two factors. For instance if you want to judge a new MQA DAC you do need to hook up the new DAC in the set but you also need to use MQA files to judge how the DAC performs on their MQA. And you can't play the MQA quality file without the MQA DAC. We are at the end of part 1. Part 2 is already in the making so subscribe to this channel, follow my Facebook or Google Plus page or my Twitter account. You can also post questions but please view my questions video first. See the link in the top right corner. You will find more information in the show notes below this video in 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.