Acoustical Voodoo

[Antoine]

I think it's the amazing human brain constantly adjusting, filtering/compensating and translating/interpreting what we hear. It's adjusting to new input which'll become the new standard at one point. You'd have to "re-learn" te appreciate your "old sound" again, especially if it has flaws that are now no longer there.

That's an interesting thought, but why then do most of us see change as positive when our brain was quite "comfortable" with the old setup. I rarely hear someone comment that a new piece of equipment, cable, upgrade, etc., sounded worse than what they had before ...

I read about those experiences fairly often (especially with cables and other accessoiries) but I guess many people will not share their results/experiences until something positive happened in a 'mission accomplished' way. Many people also try out the more expensive equipment before buying as to prevent buying something 'worse'.

I'm quite convinced the brain 'fixes' a lot of what it hears, so that over a period of time you stop hearing a bit of boom, a lift / lower in the treble etc, as what you are mainly doing is comparing recording to recording, not each recording to some perfect ideal, until something jars us to re-hear the imperfections. Unless the problem is annoying you, then it's all you can hear.
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