Dirk Veulemans - Composer
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1/2  Old loudspeaker
 

2/2  Bat ears
 

Sensitive ears

Here you enter the territory of sensitive ears and of sensitive souls. I hope that you, dear visitor, in exchange for the free listening of the music on this site, will make the effort to listen to the music through a decent medium.

Our Adaptive Fantastic Brain

With electronic music the listener often cannot count on recognition of sounds. When you listen to piano music, your brain immediately recognises the piano sounds because you have heard them so often before. You just know it's a piano. If you listen to piano music in poor conditions, such as in a driving car, your entire auditory brain starts to think away the disturbing sounds and fill in the blurred sound elements. Our brains are very good at this, assuming that they have familiarised themselves with the piano beforehand. It is now easy to understand that listening to electroacoustic music under poor conditions is a problem, because the composer often makes a special effort to develop and use completely new sounds. And of course your brain fails you when there are disturbances that make listening difficult.

How to listen to electroacoustic music

This is why I always recommend to wait with listening to this music until it is quiet and can be played on a qualitatively acceptable music system (for instance not through the speakers in your laptop). You'd rather listen to this music like you read a book or watch a film: you need to make some comfort time for it.

Dynamics

It should also be noted that much pop music on CD and certainly on radio these days is specially processed by a compression algorithm so that the quiet sound elements sound louder. This makes the CD sound louder overall and it can be used then as background music or in a car. For the hard of hearing among us this is a blessing, but the gourmets will miss the full dynamics that are diminished or, in some extreme cases, even disappear altogether. No compression here, the sound at concerts and on this site has retained its full dynamics.

A piece of advice

GOOD: listen through decent stereo speakers at a clear volume or through decent headphones.

DON'T: listen through laptop speakers, while driving in the car, as background, through cheap PC speakers.

(DV - 2010)

laatste update: 2021.07.28


Related pages
  Concertopstelling
  Elektroakoestische muziek
  Surround en spatialiseren

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