Next time you’re listening to music, whether through your stereo, your ipod, or at a concert; take time to notice that there is a sweet spot. Sweet Spot: that “perfect” place to listen to the music where you hear everything just right. It’s a collision point of the artist and science behind the gear carrying the music to you and your biological, emotional, spiritual self. Test me – go ahead, right now. Put on some tunes and play with the volume and your distance from the speakers and you will find that there is a real sweet spot where you say – that’s as good as this gets. Here’s the tricky part- it changes. It changes depending on the music, the weather, your sinuses, your relationships – many variables. In fact it can change from moment to moment depending on what you’re listening for.
Life contains Sweet Spots.
We all need to listen.
What am I listening for? – What do I think I need to hear? Is that really what I need to hear? What am I missing?
Sometimes, I think I’ve found the Sweet Spot and I am enjoying myself just fine and then something changes and I realize that there was something I wasn’t hearing before and I try to find the new sweet spot that clarifies the new element.
What is it that I’m not hearing that if I were to move a few steps closer or I turn the volume up I will hear it – what new thing will I hear if I turn the volume down?
Something else to consider – comb filtering. Picture a boy and a girl standing facing eachother about 20 feet apart, each holding the end of rope. If the girl flicks her wrist it sends a “wave” from her end of the rope down towards the boy. If she has flicked her wrist strong enough the wave travels the full length of the rope and reaches the boy. Likewise if the boy does the same action he gets the same result. What happens if they flick at the same time? That depends. If they flick at the same time and with the same strength they send two equal waves that meet in the middle where their strength combines and the rope lunges upward in a “splash”. Now imagine the boy and girl again flick with equal strength and at the same exact moment but the girl flicks upward and the boy flicks downward – the result is that where the two equal strength but opposite waves meet the rope fall dead: 1 plus -1 = 0. This is the same with sound – if you point your speakers in such a way that their sound will cross, the point at which they cross you will see specific sounds cancelling out as their respective opposite sound from the other speaker crosses its path out of sync.
Am I listening to more than one source? Do I think I am hearing clearly but in actuality there is comb filtering canceling out significant portions of what I’m supposed to hear? How can I even know?
The artist who makes the music knows. So if I don’t know the artist I can’t know everything there is to listen for.
In order to keep me from hearing something – you don’t need to send a whole new piece of music through a more powerful sound system – you just need to duplicate what I’m trying to listen to and deliver it to me out of sync . . . and I am left with silence or at least a muddied mess.
What are we listening to – is it clear? What are we missing?
Am I in the sweet spot?
