Musicians & Audio Engineers alike have one very important tool - their ears. Listening is a skill, and can be honed through practice. This is a list of free resources I've found to help you train your ears to hear more than they could before.
I've always believed that ear training consists of simply learning to name the things that you're hearing. We all hear the same things, but we don't all know how to recognize what we're hearing.
The same way, as a child your parents pointed at things and named them until you could name them back, Ear Training consists of hearing things and having them named until you can name them back.
Musicians
Ear Training for Musicians consists mostly of listening to intervals and naming them. "That's a major 3rd, that's a perfect 5th, etc."
Audio Engineers
Ear Training for Audio Engineers consists of listening to various acoustic, psychoacoustic, and electronically induced sounds and naming them.
PC ABX Software
The purpose of ABX software is to allow you to listen to 2 or more sounds without knowing which is which and comparing them. For example, can you tell which is the MP3 and which is the original CD quality sample? Can you really tell one microphone from another?
- PC ABX
Load two sound samples. It will let you play A, B and X. Can you tell if sound file X is really A or B?
- ABC / Hidden Reference Audio Comparison Tool
Load up a sound file & up to 8 files to compare it with. Then make blind comparisons with the original. Which do you think sounds better and why?
See the Shootouts forum on ProSoundReview.com for more comparisons of different mic's, mic pre's, etc.
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