 Our auditory system, our hearing, was supplied to us at BERT as many digital products are delivered today, limited, waiting for the firmware update. And after the first update, often many will follow over time. The difference is that our auditory system updates itself. It's a process known as learning. Let me start by saying that this video is an answer to questions about how to listen. If you just want to enjoy the music and have a dealer that offers you a setup that does just that, you don't need to watch this video. But you're welcome to, of course. As with all our senses, at BERT our hearing has basic skills. The sounds that are new to a newborn and their meaning or consequences have to be learned. Already prenatal, the child learns the sound of his or her mother and there are those that say even music frequently played during pregnancy will be remembered. After BERT there are simple reflexes as getting scared from a very loud sound. But for the rest a child learns the cause and effect of all kinds of sounds. The sound of a ghetto blaster making music is learned and if the family is into serious stereo, the sound of a good stereo playing music. Putting it in a more negative way, the child is preconditioned to either music coming from a ghetto blaster or coming from a decent stereo. Every new sound it hears will be compared to earlier experiences. So someone that has never experienced acoustic live music will reference a stereo against the music production at home. Someone that has experienced live rock music might use the concert sound system as a reference. This can lead to a situation I once encountered on an acoustical live concert at a high-fine show where someone made the remark that he could hear the different instruments far bitter on his stereo. I've been fascinated by sound for as long as I remember. I recall my uncle Leo visiting bringing with him his new tape recorder. It must have been around 1960 so I was around 6 years old. I had never seen such a thing. It could reproduce the sound of grandma while two wheels spun around each at a different rotation speed. Another mystery. And when I asked uncle Leo if he could play grandpas for us, he couldn't. Although that was a disappointment, I found the machine fascinating. I now realize that my uncle carried the heavy machine from his house to the train and from the train to my parents' house. Don't forget vacuum tubes and thus heavy transformers were needed. He must have been extremely proud of it. At the age of 13 I owned my own tape recorder and only half a year later I built my first woofer. An old speaker from a TV set mounted in the lid of a carton barrel shaped soap box that was half a meter tall and had a diameter of a quarter meter. It improved the sound a lot, I found. The plastic housing of my Phillips solid tape recorder made the sound thin and sharp. The heavily resonating sound box sounded a lot warmer and by plugging in the soap box speaker half way both the speaker in the tape recorder and the one in the soap box played. Stereo. At least that's what I thought. At the age of 17 I started a student job in a brown and white goods shop. With the money I made I bought a set of Phillips 22RH 421 loudspeakers, a second hand LENCO B53 turntable with brunette cartridge and a second hand Kleinenhummel tailerwatt tube amp. A year later I bought a Reevox A77 and Sennheiser 421 microphone. I still had no clue how a decent stereo should sound. A stereo sounded like a stereo and live music sounds like live music. I studied classical guitar at singing lessons and was active in the joint concerts of the music school. High school was not made for me and the stress this gave made an end to my school career. I started working full time at a high end audio shop where I specialized in recording techniques. I was asked by the leading Dutch Hi-Fi magazine to write a piece on noise reduction and after that I did a series on stereo microphone techniques. I took part in a small studio trying to keep a one inch Ampex MM1000 A-track alive. Begin 80s I started the job in Amsterdam selling recording equipment. Then the underground Hi-Fi magazine Audio & Techniques scouted me and that is where I was introduced to the high end philosophy as advocated by brands like Mark Levison, Audio Research and later on Lin. It was a revelation that when you choose the right equipment and place it properly, the soundstage became audible. I had read bloom lines papers on stereo microphone techniques, had experimented with ORTF and the Jacqueline disc microphone placements and the Decker 3 and so on. But I had never properly heard the result. At least not to the degree that was possible. Until I got in contact with the editor of the Dutch magazine Audio & Technique. It was set up by the legendary Alphan Terieble of the Dutch Audio Press, the late John van der Schluis. He was very talented in being rude to manufacturers and distributors. But he was also extremely talented in promoting the Hi-Fi hobby and together with Peter van Willenswijk designed many good sounding affordable DIY projects. Beta would later work for my publishing company and was one of the founders of GreenMorningham. One of the DIY products was a loudspeaker based on a PVC pipe. It generated a rather good spatial image but my primary interest was transient behavior and phase relations. For that is what you listened for when recording acoustical music. The pipe loudspeakers were mainly great in reproducing the stereo image. Over time I started to appreciate what a good stereo image does for music reproduction. Even today I don't yet know if what I heard until now is about as good as it gets. Just watch my reviews of DACs over the last year. Every time I reviewed a more expensive DAC, resolution, spatial imaging and placement of the instruments were better. Next to the other properties of course. Learning to judge audio equipment basically is training your auditory system, aka your ears and part of the brain that does the interpretation. Although some talent might come in handy too, as does good equipment. The Dutch singer Hupe van der Lubbe once said talent is with 10% skills and 90% perseverance. He can't be more than a few percent. Moving back to the subject at hand. Spatial imaging is just one of the parameters that make up a quality sound reproduction. The question was how to learn to listen and judge equipment. If you want to learn to evaluate sound equipment, the most important factor is start with being comfortable with your stereo. Just make many hours listening to a variety of music you like. Don't use a limited number of records because they sound so good. Let's ear candy, used in every Hi-Fi demo room all over the world. Simple jazz combos making impressive music will be impressive on a broad variety of equipment. That's why on Hi-Fi shows you hear them in every room. Pop and rock know their ear candy as well. Diastowage, Cary Bramnes, Diana Crawl and so on. Nothing wrong with the music by the way, but it's not too difficult to reproduce. There's no need to play classical music if you don't enjoy it, but playing acoustically recorded performances might be a good idea. Think of folk music, fado, flamengo and so on. Again, very in-genre, for each genre will use its own difficult instruments. Visiting shows and listening to all kinds of setups at that show can be very instructive if you are allowed to listen to music of your choice and thus not to ear candy. The sound quality on shows isn't really as good as it can be, therefore it's a good way to learn about artifacts and shortcomings of equipment. You don't even have to know why these can be heard. You are training the brain to recognize artifacts. When comparing equipment, vary only one component at a time, that way it's easier to come to conclusions. There are exceptions though, if you want to compare loudspeakers your amplifier must be up to the task of driving both sets of loudspeakers equally. If you consider to buy new loudspeakers and for now keep the amp, those new speakers might sound worse. Try to organize a more suited amp and compare the potentially new and old speakers with that amp. You then have the info you want and can decide what to do. The same goes for phono cartridges. The compliance of the cancer liver has to be compatible with the mass of the tone arm. In fact all equipment has to be a good match of course. A 10k DAC will be a poor match for a 500 euro amp, but that's easy to understand. Controlling your mindset is the most difficult part of comparing equipment. If you have informed yourself using magazines, websites, YouTube and or dealers and I'm almost sure that one device is the right choice, you're most likely going to like that very piece of equipment. You will like those things that device does well and downplay or ignore the things it doesn't do so well. That's called cognitive dissonance reduction. Listening is a cognitive process. In plain English your brain does the important work. It's 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. Confront someone with an instrument he doesn't know, say a dulcimer, and he will have to learn this name, sound, way of playing and the music genre it uses. 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 by itself. It 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 falcon. Therefore you have to train your brain to question every conclusion it makes. One more important is to suppress all kinds of social behavior. If your friend has bought a new amp after saving for it for three years, your brain will likely steer you to liking that amp since not liking it leads to social conflict. In my profession judging a product to be inferior will often disturb a relation, leading to not being invited to press introductions and not lending me a review sound. The reason that I survive is because in my brain the conflict with the manufacturer is always less of a problem than a conflict with my conscience and with my viewers. YouTube takes care of advertising money and I'm lucky to have quite a number of viewers supporting me directly via Patreon or Paypal. You can support my channel too if you don't already. Consider granting me for instance one euro or dollar a month using the Patreon services. This brings us to the end of part one of this video. Part two will be online next Friday, same channel, same time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up, or link to this video on the social media. It's much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. Does that make you feel like supporting my work too? The links are in the comments below this video in YouTube. I'm Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.