The Golden Ear Myth Exposed – The Golden Lobes
There is a bit of a thing in certain more cynical circles of audiophiles, where it is assumed that all of us reviewer types are wandering about, thinking we have been gifted some superhuman hearing. You get the idea: the chosen few, the blessed, the ones with ears so finely tuned and accurate they can hear a funky mosquito’s tweeter in the next county.
The infamous Golden Ear wonderkinds.
It is often thrown about by folk as a bit of a put-down, isn’t it? A dismissive way of saying, “Oh here we go, another bloke who thinks he has magical ears.”
And I get it. I really do. The idea that there are people out there with some God-given auditory superpower that allows them to access hidden layers of sound the rest of humanity simply cannot perceive is a bit of an odd one. I am pretty sure I have decent enough hearing. I can follow a conversation in a noisy pub, I can hear when something is off in a system (especially our reference system), and I can still enjoy music without feeling like I am missing any of it. I can also tell by the distant sound of a distorted kick drum that there was an illegal rave going off a few miles away last night and into this morning. This last part bothers me. Not because it kept me awake (it didn’t), but rather I’m too far out of the loop to be in the know that the parties are going off. I digress!
Back on topic…
But do I think I have some kind of wonderkind-level hearing? Not at all. In fact, I would go as far as to say I doubt there are many reviewers out there arrogant enough to claim that. I mean, what are we comparing ourselves to here? Because if we are going down that road, we are up against some serious competition.
Take the greater wax moth, for example. Go on, look it up. Apparently, it has one of the most sensitive hearing ranges in the animal kingdom. Proper extreme stuff. Way beyond anything we are capable of. Which does make me wonder, how the chuff do you test the hearing of a moth in the first place? There must be someone somewhere with a tiny set of headphones, a clipboard, and a lab coat.
“Can you hear this, Mr Moth? I said, CAN YOU HEAR THIS, Mr MOTH?”
Anyway, the point is, if we are talking about ultimate hearing ability, I think it’s pretty safe to say none of us is getting anywhere near that particular Lepidopteral crown.
And yet the golden ears thing persists.
I think, more than anything, it is just an easy label to whack on to folk. A way of dismissing what someone is saying without really engaging with it. If a reviewer describes a difference between two bits of kit, or talks about subtle changes in presentation, it is quite easy to roll your eyes and say, “Oh, aye, old golden ears is off again,” and move on. But the reality, at least from where I am sitting, is far less glamorous than having some minor superpower.
My only real advantage, if you can even call it that, is that I have been doing this sort of thing for a very long time. I have been involved in music in one way or another for decades and decades. Playing it, listening to it, obsessing over it, and yes, reviewing it. I think it’s pretty fair to say that music has been all-consuming for much of my life – I’ve written about this before. And over that time, I have heard a ridiculous number of systems. Different rooms, different setups, different bits of kit all interacting in ways that are sometimes wonderful and sometimes… less so.
And that repetition builds something. Not super hearing. Not a superpower. Just experience. And I think that’s the thing!
You start to build up a kind of internal reference without really clicking that you are doing so. You hear how certain recordings behave on different systems. You notice patterns. You begin to recognise when something is a bit off, or when something is doing something interesting. It is not magical, it’s just repetition. It’s a bit like anything, really. If you spend years tasting wine, you get better at picking out flavour profiles and varietals. If you spend years cooking, you get better at knowing what something needs with regard to seasoning. If you spend years listening to HiFi, you get better at… well, listening.
And even that sounds a bit grander than it actually is. Because at the end of the day, all a reviewer is really doing is offering an opinion. That is it. An opinion based on their own experience, in their own room, with their own reference kit. And that reference bit is important. I have a system here that I know very well. I know how certain tracks sound through it. I know what happens when I change a cable, or swap a component, or move a speaker slightly. I know this through listening and familiarity, so when something new comes in, I’m not listening in a vacuum; I am comparing stuff to the reference…constantly.
That is the job…or that’s how I see it, anyway. It’s not about declaring absolute truths or uncovering hidden sonic dimensions that only the enlightened can access. It is about context. And there is also, I think, a bit of learned behaviour involved. You have to learn how to listen in a certain way. Not all the time, because that would be exhausting and you’d end up hating music, but when you are trying to evaluate something. You focus on different aspects. Timing, space, texture, placement. You listen to how things fit together. You go back and listen again – I go back and listen to parts of tunes a lot, and it’s part of why I now use streaming a lot in reviews. You question yourself: Did I really hear that, or am I imagining it? And that last bit happens a lot more than you might think. There is a lot of second-guessing involved in reviewing. A lot of going back over the same piece of music and thinking, “Hang on, was that actually there, or have I just convinced myself it was?” Not exactly the behaviour of someone brimming with absolute confidence in their superhuman abilities. If anything, it is the opposite! The review process is exhausting with all the going back and forth with tunes being listened to over and over again; the same test tracks you know so well…and then that rewind and listen again. Unplugging the new to compare to the reference, and back again…over and over.
And then there is the matter of trying to put all of this into words, which is a whole other challenge entirely. You end up using terms that can sound a bit odd if you are not used to them. Words like open, tight, forward, fast, and relaxed. You reach for comparisons, metaphors, anything that might help get the point across. The metaphors one is used a lot to try and give readers a bit of a reference point they can latch on to and pull real meaning from.
From the outside, I can see how that might look like a right load of old bollocks. Or worse, like someone disappearing up their own backside. Which, again, feeds into the golden ears idea of superiority. But most of the time, it is just someone trying to describe something that is actually quite difficult to describe. And doing their best with it.
I think the other thing that gets lost in all this is that HiFi is deeply personal. What I like might not be what you like. What I hear as detailed, you might hear as bright. What I hear as warm, you might hear as a bit muddy. There is no single right answer. Which makes the idea of golden ears even more questionable, really. Because if there was such a thing, surely we would all agree on what sounds best. And we very clearly do not.
So where does that leave us?
Well, probably somewhere a bit less exciting than the myth would have you believe. No superheroes. No secret club of hyper-hearing individuals. Just people who have spent a long time listening to music on a lot of different systems and have got reasonably good at noticing differences and expressing those differences in the written word.
That is about it.
And maybe that is the important bit. Because it means this is not some exclusive thing. You do not need golden ears to enjoy HiFi, or to hear differences, or to form an opinion. You just need time, a bit of curiosity, and a willingness to pay attention. Really pay attention!
I might be wrong, of course. There might be someone out there with genuinely superhuman hearing, sitting quietly in a room, waiting to reveal themselves. Waiting to be put in a lab and prodded and poked by the blokes in white coats who’ve just been prodding and probing various flying creatures.
Stu Smoth
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