Comparison by Contrast Listening

This is the type of listening session that gets into one of the types of listening I do as part of my audio reviewing, and for voicing my audio and A-V systems. It’s evaluative, analytical, and illuminating. It can be tedious or fun depending on your disposition. 

I credit this idea to Peter Qvortrup. When Peter and his team of audio engineers are voicing equipment they pick out a long series of albums to listen to, any albums, of any fidelity, of any genre, of any recording era. 

Peter's home listening room.

How well does the component or audio system bring to the forefront the musical message for any random album I play? Are some albums unpleasant because they are harsh? What needs to change to improve playability across a broad spectrum of albums, while still providing maximum fidelity, and maximum engagement with the music?

The goal is to develop a component or system voicing that provides broad spectrum playability of albums, delivering the maximum fidelity any given album is capable of, while emphasizing the nature of the musical performances the artists intended you to experience. 

Listening For Audio Spectrum Traits

This is another type of listening session I do when reviewing, or when voicing one of my audio or A-V systems. Again, it’s evaluative, analytical, and illuminating in nature. It can be tedious or fun depending on your disposition. 

The idea is to listen to what is going on in the music in the seven frequency bands of the audio spectrum: the sub-bass (20 to 60 Hz), bass (60 to 250 Hz), low midrange (250 to 500 Hz), midrange (500 Hz to 2 kHz), upper midrange (2 to 4 kHz), presence region (4 kHz to 6 kHz), and the brilliance region (6 kHz to 20 kHz). 

There are certain signature traits in those regions that tell you about what is going on in any given album, audio system, with a component, or an audio accessory. 

The Teach Me Audio website has a very useful primer on this topic. Remember when you are looking at their examples, that they are talking about mastering an album, but those same examples will tell you a lot about what your audio system is doing as well. Sometimes what you hear in a given regions will tell you about the influence of your room on your audio system, or your cables, or your components, etc., and sometimes it just boils down to your preferences.

For example: Does the bass region sound natural or boomy? Does the low midrange have natural sounding clarity, or does it sound muffled? Does the midrange sound natural or fatiguing? Does the timbre of instruments sound correct in the upper midrange or not? Does the presence region sound natural, or irritating or harsh? Does the brilliance region have natural sparkle and air, or does it sound “hi-fi” and fatiguing?

Each one of those traits can tell you something about your audio system’s performance, but one thing you’ll want to keep in mind is that albums vary all over the place in their mastering and recording quality. So when you hear what is preferred or unpreferred in a given frequency band, it may not be something going on with your audio system, or a component, or an accessory. It might be the album. 

That’s why you’ll want to listen to a lot of different albums of varying fidelity and mastering quality with the ‘comparison by contrast’ method, then note where the strengths and weaknesses are showing up. 

If an unpreferred sonic trait in a frequency band shows up in every album you play, it’s probably something that needs adjusting in your audio system. If a frequency band trait varies from album to album, then it’s likely an anomaly in the recording or mastering of the album you are hearing, and not your audio system. 

Sometimes it’s in the album, and sometimes it's in the equipment, and you’ll need to sort out which it is to arrive at the overall system voicing you desire.

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