What do I listen for when I listen to music? Well, first I must admit a certain tension between listening as an acoustician and listening as a lover of music (especially when the acoustics are less than ideal). When listening as a lover of music, I listen for the story being told by the performer in that incredibly precise emotional language of music. I want to follow that story in every detail, as closely as I can. I don’t want to miss a note, a nuance, a moment of silence. Acoustics can allow and support this, or it can interfere.  

silence
I listen for the soft sounds. I love to hear very quiet passages in chamber music, or the sound of a single piano note as it fades into nothing, or the reverberant afterglow when the players pause. This is why I hate when people applaud immediately after the final chord of a piece. I want to hear it die into silence.  I find that listening to the quietest sounds puts my mind into a centered place that allows me to focus in and adhere to the musical story. This is why I consider the absence of background noise to be so fundamentally important in listening spaces.

envelopment
In full passages, I love to be wrapped up in the music. I remember listening to a concert with organ and orchestra in the Dallas Symphony Hall and being completely surrounded in every direction---up, down, front, and back---by music. The geometry of the hall is what allows this envelopment to happen; merely loud doesn’t do it.

warmth and quality of tone
Some halls really support a performer’s tone. I remember hearing a small chamber ensemble in the Troy Savings Bank Hall. This ensemble had a single ‘cello and one bass. Though small, they filled the hall with warm bass sound like chocolate. )This quality can be heard on the CD The English Lute Song (DOR-90109), recorded in the Troy Savings Bank Hall.)

One indication of a hall’s quality is the sound of the audience murmuring before the concert. In Carnegie Hall in New York, this sounds like a light rain in a dry forest---wonderful.

reverberance and clarity
The one aspect of acoustics that many people are aware of is reverberation. As a general rule, I like reverberation, as long as it compliments what I am hearing, rather than covering it up. There is no direct correlation between the amount of reverberation and acoustical quality; certain types of music are happier in reverberant acoustics than others. A choir in cathedral reverberance can be ravishing; an orchestracan be overwhelmed in mud.

For a reverberant space to have any hope of clarity, however, background noise must be absent, and the geometry must be correct.

listening
In most spaces, the acoustics are (to be charitable) mediocre. In such situations, I try to focus on the music, and avoid being distracted by the poor acoustics. When the acoustics are great and the music is great, I find myself magnetically attracted into the compelling story of the music. The more I listen, the better it gets. 

The opportunity for this experience is rare; I would like it to be more common. That is what I do: advocate acoustical excellence for listening.