Enhance the senses – says Paul McGowan

Everything we appreciate about a high-end system is, of course, a sensory perception: mostly hearing but certainly feeling the sound as its vibrations move you as well.

We spend a lot of time enhancing the sonic performance aspects of our systems with hardware tweaks, but if we also recognize there are benefits to enhancing our personal sensory acuity as well, then the total high-end experience is heightened.

One easy way to enhance sensory perceptions is to turn the lights off or down low.  This is something most every Audiophile is familiar with, but for those just entering into the fun, I thought it valuable enough to repeat.

Turning the lights down low when listening to your system enhances the experience because it allows more processing power to be allocated to our hearing center.

The brain is an amazing parallel processor – but it is limited – and it takes an extraordinary amount of processing resources to convert what our ears pickup into what we think of as sound.  By turning off one of our 5 senses (visual) we get to apply all our resources to the other 4.  This can lead to extraordinary audio sensations in the right environment.

External enhancements are available as well, like adding a subwoofer.  The increased visceral impact of a good sub rattling your pant leg is a sensory enhancement all unto itself.

When you’re sitting down to enjoy your system, remember there are personal tweaks you can make that give a lot of enhanced performance to the music.  Enjoy.

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