They All Sound the Same, It's About Workflow

dpeterson said:
Not even sure why people assume everyone has the same hearing and or $20,000 monitors to listen on. I bet most of us, our hearing is wrecked from years of gigging. But snarkily say “I can’t hear it so it must be bs”. It really is down to splitting hairs given the fact that most people don’t have golden ears.
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One man's splitting hairs is another man's splitting femurs.
 
marsonic said:
I'm honestly not completely sure what this says for testing, but....people do get "used to" sounds pretty quickly.

Listening straight through, I thought they were pretty similar. Skipping through them, they were more different.
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Yes, because of this psychoacoustic phenomena, in a scientific listening test the clips would be much shorter, if the goal was not to specifically test the participants' auditory short term memory.
marsonic said:
But, yeah....I skipped dinner with a couple friends last night entirely because of the restaurant they decided to go to. This one place drives me freaking crazy....it's all hard surfaces and mostly right angles and I absolutely cannot stand the sound of that room. It's strangely popular, and I just plain don't understand it. It seems like even the people walking around don't absorb anything, and the whole room just rings.

Strangely enough, earplugs help most places that happens. That one....I'm pretty sure I could be wearing plugs and a helmet and it would still bother me.
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I do the same in those poorly dampened restaurants. Either I don't go there at all, or I wear earplugs to better focus my listening on the spoken word - and to be less blasted in my thalamus. Those restaurants are like that big noisy ventilator over your stove. You don't mind too much, when you turn it on, but when you turn it off, your shoulders sink, because your thalamus has been exhausted from filtering our unwanted noise. That is at least a condensed way to frame it.
 
Michael R said:
After first listen I thought #2 & 3 had this weird fake bottom end, more noticeable at the end of the riff. #4 was not as noticeable. After Cliff said there was a difference between one and two then I knew that #1 had to be the real amp. I thought #4 was somewhere in between #1 and the rest. These tests are hard because I am not playing the riff.
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I am one of the tin ears! #3 and #4 sounded very close to me. #1, the real amp, sounded more present and was my favorite and #2 I did not like. @Mutha Goose makes a great point about player v listener perspective.
 
Whistler said:
I think a lot of people are missing the point of this whole thread.
The only reason why Cliff started it in the first place is to find forum members who have super sensitive hearing like his.
5 lucky members will be sent a golden ticket each inviting them to a factory tour, whereby, one by one, they will fall by the wayside on hearing tests.
Leaving the last person standing to inherit the Fractal business, as Cliff enjoys retirement on his island.
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Heck I’d do it just for a ride in his flying elevator.
 
Immanuel said:
I do the same in those poorly dampened restaurants. Either I don't go there at all, or I wear earplugs to better focus my listening on the spoken word - and to be less blasted in my thalamus. Those restaurants are like that big noisy ventilator over your stove. You don't mind too much, when you turn it on, but when you turn it off, your shoulders sink, because your thalamus has been exhausted from filtering our unwanted noise. That is at least a condensed way to frame it.
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Earplugs are my normal solution. That particular restaurant isn't better even with 33dB foam plugs. I just flat out don't go there anymore.
 
Well, I feel better about my old, Mike-the-drummer blasted ears and my choice of modelers now, having liked best the real amp and the only good modeler, and having not cared for the two inferior competing products....
 
marsonic said:
Earplugs are my normal solution. That particular restaurant isn't better even with 33dB foam plugs. I just flat out don't go there anymore.
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I had that experience with the office at the last job, so I started telecommuting.

I was seated across from a very nice lady who, sadly, lacked fundamental understanding of how the telephone she talked on ALL DAY LONG works, in that there is a small microphone in the mouthpiece that converts the voice to an electrical signal that is transmitted to the listener's ear, so she didn'need to talk loud enough for the person in India to hear her voice acoustically.

I was wearing 33dB over-the-ear construction site ear protection and still couldn't hear myself think....
 
ben ifin said:
Harking back to my 3rd Year Uni "Statistical Interpretation Unit" .... if roughly half-could hear differences but could not reliably pick which is which -and- the other half couldn't hear any major differences and also could not reliably pick which is which ..... then by statistical definition its a total "wash" or what we officially termed as a "complete mutual cancellation" ....
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The one issue is lack of control over the listening environment and equipment. If that was properly accounted for, then yes. If people listening on their phones or cheap equipment were disproportionately the ones who couldn’t tell, then you have to control for that variable.

Personally, I first listened with my iPhone at a modest volume and couldn’t hear much difference. #2 actually sounded a little better, probably because it had less lows that my phone couldn’t handle. Once I got some good headphones on, I saw a completely different picture and correctly ID’d the real amp and the Fractal.
 
I will also say that hearing is not just your physiological ability, but it is also a learned/developed skill in your brain. Sound and recording people understand there is a difference between a “trained” and “untrained” ear, not just “good hearing” vs “bad hearing.”
 
Late to the game, but I would have guessed #3 to be Brand N.
I have a Branch N in front of me, and I can tell you that when I feed a tube amp into the Fractal LB-2 to do both a Tone Match in my Axe and a Capture on Brand N.....the end result is that Brand N (when capturing) adds a lot of additional low end.
I'm assuming it's their 'guess' on Speaker Impedance Curve.
 
BBN said:
Late to the game, but I would have guessed #3 to be Brand N.
I have a Branch N in front of me, and I can tell you that when I feed a tube amp into the Fractal LB-2 to do both a Tone Match in my Axe and a Capture on Brand N.....the end result is that Brand N (when capturing) adds a lot of additional low end.
I'm assuming it's their 'guess' on Speaker Impedance Curve.
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Don’t hesitate to share your results if you can
 
Immanuel said:
Yeah, imagine having to work at such a place to keep food on your own table :-/
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Yeah, I can't imagine that.

Also because there are ~10 other restaurants and bars, most with help wanted signs, within walking distance of it. That being said, most of my friends can't hear it. I assume that their employees can't hear it either.
giantslayer said:
The one issue is lack of control over the listening environment and equipment. If that was properly accounted for, then yes. If people listening on their phones or cheap equipment were disproportionately the ones who couldn’t tell, then you have to control for that variable.

Personally, I first listened with my iPhone at a modest volume and couldn’t hear much difference. #2 actually sounded a little better, probably because it had less lows that my phone couldn’t handle. Once I got some good headphones on, I saw a completely different picture and correctly ID’d the real amp and the Fractal.
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I always kind of wonder about that when people post comments on these things. I also wonder why people bother with mp3s, so....there's that.
 
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