Hi-fi enthusiasts judge sound quality more reliably than untrained musicians do

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Hi-fi enthusiasts, not musicians, are the most reliable listeners — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 280; Musicians who are not audio enthusiasts judge loudspeakers on different rationales

Related

• Hi-fi enthusiasts, not musicians, are the most reliable listeners (similarity 0.98)
• Musicians who are not audio enthusiasts judge loudspeakers on different rationales (similarity 0.91)
• Musicians judge loudspeakers on different rationales and can be inconsistent raters. (similarity 0.87)
• Hi-fi enthusiasm predicts listening reliability better than musical training does (similarity 0.87)
• Musicians make poor or unreliable subjective loudspeaker evaluators (similarity 0.86)
• Listeners judge loudspeakers equally well on studio-produced popular music (similarity 0.86)
• Trained and untrained listeners mostly rank loudspeakers the same way (similarity 0.84)
• Roughly 75 percent of people have sufficiently normal hearing to make reliable loudspeaker judgments (similarity 0.83)
• Listeners largely agree on preference, and preferred speakers measure smoothest (similarity 0.83)
• Musicians do not reliably align with ordinary listeners in judgments (similarity 0.83)
• Hearing-normal listeners give far more consistent loudspeaker quality ratings. (similarity 0.82)
• Listeners judge reproduced sound against accumulated experience of live sound (similarity 0.82)
• Highly trained listeners can repeat subjective judgments with remarkable consistency (similarity 0.82)
• Reviewers with trustworthy anechoic data produce far more reliable opinions (similarity 0.82)
• Human sound-quality judgments are skewed by expectation biases, not just the sound itself. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Hi-fi enthusiasts, not musicians, are the most reliable listeners #corroborates (1.00) — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 280
• Musicians who are not audio enthusiasts judge loudspeakers on different rationales #expands (0.80)