It’s said that critical listening is nothing more than critical thinking applied to what you hear, it’s a sadly underappreciated aspect of Home Theater.  When building a Home Theater system most people report that music is liable to represent up to 40% of the system’s playback.  Knowing how to listen is instrumental in getting the most from your investment.

Pop in your favorite musical DVD or CD and relax for some therapeutic critical listening.  It’s important to close your eyes when really delving into the details of sound.  By shutting your eyes you make more of a conscious effort to “see” through your sense of hearing.  Listen at moderate volumes, never more than 85db to protect your hearing.  A good measure of loudness is if it’s too loud to hear someone next to you speaking in a normal voice, it’s too loud and can damage your hearing.  Now that you’re comfortable, relaxed and eyes are closed and critical listening skills wide open, it’s time to “hear” what you might have been missing in your system.

Listen for subtleties, the harmonic qualities of the recording you’re hearing.  Can you tell if the music sounds like it’s recorded in a hall or in a tiny studio?  Listen for individual instruments, and then try to place them.  Can you imagine an instrument being played from a specific location in the room?  The ability to place what you’re hearing is called soundstage and it’s an important part of a 5.1 system.  Listen for ways the sounds of instruments make a single but different sound, sometimes this is called a harmony.  Do the highs overemphasize the S sounds?  This is called sibilance and it’s a common problem with recorded sounds.  Listen for the very low frequencies from the subwoofer?  Can you identify the source of each low pitch you hear?  Often when bass is overemphasized it sounds “boomy” and the attribute of boominess is experienced anytime you can’t place a low pitch or the lows make a sort of general rumble that isn’t really coming from any apparent source or instrument in the music.  Another attribute of speakers is often described as “speed”, that is if the soundtrack makes a variety of different sounds in rapid succession; does each change in the music’s timbre sound natural?

Read more about critical listening as it pertains to picking out good gear.  The thing I’d like to caution newcomers to the world of hi-fi is that a little much attention is given to “how” a component “sounds” when it comes to selecting good audio gear.  In your 5.1 kit, what you’re listening to are speakers, everything else is just support for your speakers and don’t have a “sound” (except maybe your audio source’s Digital Analogue Converters).  Critical listening is a great way to help determine if a piece of equipment is right for you, but don’t drive yourself nuts trying to “hear” the difference between sets of speaker wire.