Hi-fi enthusiasts, not musicians, are the most reliable listeners

Evidence

Not all of us are good listeners, just as not all of us can dance or sing well. If one is establishing a population of listeners from which to draw over the long term, it will be necessary to monitor their decisions, looking for those who (a) exhibit small variations in repeated judgments and (b) differentiate their opinions of products by using a large numerical range of ratings (Toole, 1985; Olive, 2001, 2003). An interesting side note to this is that the interests, experience and, indeed, occupations of listeners are factors. Musicians have long been assumed to have superior abilities to judge sound quality. Certainly, they know music, and they tend to be able to articulate opinions about sound. But, what about the opinions themselves? Does living “in the band” develop an ability to judge sound from the audience’s perspective? Does understanding the structure of music and how it should be played enable a superior analysis of sound quality? When put to the test, Gabrielsson and Sjögren (1979) found that the listeners who were the most reliable and also the most observant of differences between test sounds were persons he identified as hi-fi enthusiasts, a population that also included some musicians. The worst were those who had no hi-fi interests. In the middle were musicians who were not hi-fi-oriented. This corresponds with the author’s own observations over many years. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 280

Categorization

• CANDY: A fun, counterintuitive fact: musicians are mediocre as critical listeners; obsessives with hi-fi interest beat them.
• XREF: connects to: Hi-fi enthusiasts judge sound quality more reliably than untrained musicians do; Musicians who are not audio enthusiasts judge loudspeakers on different rationales; Musicians do not reliably align with ordinary listeners in judgments

Related

• Hi-fi enthusiasts judge sound quality more reliably than untrained musicians do (similarity 0.98)
• Hi-fi enthusiasm predicts listening reliability better than musical training does (similarity 0.89)
• Musicians who are not audio enthusiasts judge loudspeakers on different rationales (similarity 0.86)
• Musicians make poor or unreliable subjective loudspeaker evaluators (similarity 0.85)
• Musicians judge loudspeakers on different rationales and can be inconsistent raters. (similarity 0.85)
• Listeners judge loudspeakers equally well on studio-produced popular music (similarity 0.84)
• Roughly 75 percent of people have sufficiently normal hearing to make reliable loudspeaker judgments (similarity 0.83)
• Trained and untrained listeners mostly rank loudspeakers the same way (similarity 0.83)
• Listeners largely agree on preference, and preferred speakers measure smoothest (similarity 0.83)
• Highly trained listeners can repeat subjective judgments with remarkable consistency (similarity 0.83)
• Musicians do not reliably align with ordinary listeners in judgments (similarity 0.82)
• Hearing-normal listeners give far more consistent loudspeaker quality ratings. (similarity 0.82)
• Reviewers with trustworthy anechoic data produce far more reliable opinions (similarity 0.82)
• Trained listeners improve test sensitivity but misrepresent general audience opinion (similarity 0.81)
• Mild hearing loss makes trained listeners give inconsistent sound quality judgments (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Musicians do not reliably align with ordinary listeners in judgments #corroborates (0.82)
• Musicians who are not audio enthusiasts judge loudspeakers on different rationales #expands (0.78)