Toronto – With a title as audacious as “How To Listen To Music”, you’d think that this article would offer up some deep insights into music appreciation. Perhaps there would be a profound revelation about how you can better form a connection with your music in this fast-paced world? Of course, if you thought that, you’d be dead wrong. I’m going to set the bar much lower here, friends.
One of the main reasons why the “Art of Sound” series was created was to delve beyond pure music reviews and ask the how’s and the why’s of music. It could also offer up some tips in navigating this new music world where anything you want to listen to is quite literally at your fingertips. We’ve talked about the neuroscience of music, as well as how the medium affects the message. Now I’d like to move in a more practical direction and discuss how one can go about improving their listening experience.
It’s hard to believe that just ten years ago, the ipod was a big slab of white plastic. It had precious few gigs of memory stored on a hard drive with moving parts, and was easily prone to damage if dropped too many times. Today we can store many times that amount of music on tiny resilient flash drives. The ubiquity of the ipod is quickly being replaced by the ubiquity of the smart phone, as our method of communication and our main source of music converge.
Regardless of whether you own an ipod, a smart phone, or both, what is the one thing you can do to improve the quality of the music you listen to? That answer is simple: buy another set of earbuds. Sure, those white Apple earbuds look stylish, and they successfully convey to the world that you can afford an ipod. However, everyone now owns an ipod, and those earbuds sound horribly tinny and may even literally shock you. Spending even $20-40 on brand-name earbuds will make a noticeable difference.
All you have to do is the old “A/B comparison”. Short of a blind listening test, it’s the best way to choose stereo equipment. Just load up your iphone with music you are most familiar with; stuff you’ve heard millions of times on all sorts of different setups. Then listen to those songs on different earbuds. Choose the one that sounds the best to you.
Now, enjoy your music! If you’re willing to spend a little more money, companies like Denon, Shure, Sennheiser, and Grado all make fantastic headphones and earbuds that won’t break the bank.
