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The evaluation process must provide the foundation for the communication of precise information on the content and quality of sound between these two or more people of widely divergent backgrounds. In order for a concept to be communicated accurately, the concept must be described using common information. The only information common between humans will be the physical states of the sounds themselves, and our knowledge of how our perception distorts the sound.
The evaluation process must use the physical states and activities of sounds as the only universal, reliable information available to be used to describe and define sound. The evaluation process will describe the activities and states of the physical dimensions of sound, and will define the sound characteristics objectively—using subjective human impressions of interpretation and perception only when appropriate to contexts of meaning.
People have been talking about sound for centuries, without a vocabulary. Audio professionals have a sophisticated understanding, and clearly defined and complex ways of utilizing sound, without a way to communicate their ideas about sound. This evaluation process provides a means through which meaningful information about sound can be communicated, and a point of departure for the development of a suitable vocabulary for sound.
Personal Development and the Sound Evaluation Process
The skills and thought processes required for the evaluation of sound must be learned. The development of listening skills and the evaluation thought processes require regular, focused, and attentive practice. Patience is required to work through the many repetitions that will be needed to master all of the skills necessary to accurately evaluate sound. Each individual will develop at a separate pace, as with any other learning.
The process has much in common with traditional forms of music-related ear training. Many of the skills learned by musicians will transfer to the sound evaluation process; an ability to take traditional music dictation will be of assistance to learning the process of evaluating sound, but is not required. The traditional skills emphasize pitch relationships in musical contexts; this comprises a very small part of the sound of audio. The skills of making time judgments, and an awareness of activities in pitch, dynamics, and timbre will need to be developed much further than traditional approaches allow.
The process of evaluating sound will be performed more quickly and accurately with the development of the listener's auditory memory and ability to recognize patterns in the various aspects of sound. The individual must be conscious of the memory of the sound event; must seek to develop the auditory memory to sustain an impression of the sound long enough to describe or notate certain characteristics about the sound event.
Auditory memory can be developed. As one learns what to listen for, and as one understands more about sound and how it is used, the listener's ability to remember material increases proportionally. This is similar to the process of learning to perform pieces of music through listening to recordings of performances, and mimicking the performances; with repetition, this seemingly impossible task becomes a skill that is much easier to perform. Listeners often remember more than their confidence allows them to recognize; the listener must learn to trust their memory, and immediately check their evaluations to confirm the information.
The human mind seeks to organize objects into patterns; sound events have states or levels of activity of their component parts that will often tend to fall into an organized pattern. The listener must be sensitive to the possibility of patterns forming in all aspects of the sound event, to allow greater ease in the process of evaluating sound.
The individual will continue to become more accurate and consistent in the evaluation of sound, the more they practice the skills, and follow the processes utilized herein. The development of these skills must be viewed as a long-term undertaking. Some of the skills might seem difficult, or impossible, during the first attempts. The reader must remember their previous experiences might not have prepared them for certain tasks. The skills are obtainable, and are desirable. The individual will function at a much higher level of proficiency in the audio industry after they have obtained these critical and evaluative listening skills.
The skills will be most readily acquired in the order presented in this book. The reader should return to previously "learned" skills often, to rethink and rework the materials to improve their performance. The reader would do well to commit themselves to the idea that the mastery of the skills of sound evaluation is a lifelong process; one that should be consistently practiced and itself evaluated. New controls of sound are continually being developed by the audio industry; these new controls create new challenges on the listening abilities of those in the audio industry.
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