GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: My today’s views on LP culture and my audio habits.

Post Subject: Renewal of interest (habituation)Posted by steverino on: 6/13/2009

Romy said: Actually, playing the records for the last week I kind of turned to like it… again. The renaissance of record playing habits? That is interesting….

There is a psychophysiological process called habituation (and its reverse called dishabituation). When something becomes repetitive the brain starts to tune it out or become less excited by it. However a change in the stimulus can produce dishabituation which removes the habituation. Then the habituation process starts up again unless there is another change. This is why audiophiles start playing their music in excitement whenever they change their system for the better. Everything seems new - at least for a moment. Interestingly people usually have a small subset of things they like that never seems to habituate or doesn't stay habituated for long. For example we all get tired of eating the same thing at every meal but we have certain foods that we could eat far more often than others - for me its peanut butter rice and apple pie. I can eat these even if I'm not in the mood to eat. The same thing applies to music for music lovers - there is a subset of music pieces which never really becomes tiresome (habituated) to a given person. That was the point of my previous post concerning reducing an lp collection to those recordings that do not become boring even after great familiarity.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site