Gender in listening - do guys/gals hear music differently?

[Emma]

Seriously, moving on beyond the corny domestic deafness stuff... Do males and females listen to music differently?
The more I'm learning about this audio stuff, the more I'm double-thinking myself, but I've realised that I tend to listen to the upper frequencies in a mix first, and then start to dive down the layers to the bass and drums whereas I'm wondering whether blokes process the other way round???
Has anyone read any 'serious' research on this???

[acidfrost]

I heard somewhere awhile ago, not sure if it's true, that women tend to listen more to lyrics and men more to the music.

[m24p]

I heard somewhere awhile ago, not sure if it's true, that women tend to listen more to lyrics and men more to the music.

Who knows about averages, but I know a woman who doesn't really hear the lyrics at all the first several times she listens to a song. She prefers instrumentals.

[Stan_Halen]

Pardon if this sounds a bit sexist, but perhaps biological and anthropological ... maybe the way we're wired, men listen for "war drums" and women listen for "crying babies". If that aint it I got no clue.

[Bigduggieface]

I think that there is a spectrum of differences to consider. Surely gender is one of them. Also age, ethnicity, and genetics play roles. All of our heads are shaped differently as are our ears and ear canals.

It is not surprising that children and women can hear frequencies higher than an older man (with a larger head and probable hearing degeneration).

These differences could contribute to hearing frequencies differently, hearing dynamics (loud vs soft) differently, perhaps even left/right perception differently. It seems relatively easy to test for these criteria. Whether or not guys/gals hear the MUSIC differently is a much less measurable and subjective question.

I would be very interested to learn if any cognitive studies have been conducted regarding men vs women's musical comprehension. If they have, I'd bet lots of money that they have been found to be inconclusive.

[Emma]

I would be very interested to learn if any cognitive studies have been conducted regarding men vs women's musical comprehension. If they have, I'd bet lots of money that they have been found to be inconclusive.

Mmm, this is the sort of thing I was wondering about.. particularly in the light of how male-dominated the mixing/production field is..
I had a quick search around online but it was all very lightweight stuff and I just wondered if there was any 'proper' (?) research that delved into the issue.
I do like your evolutionary thoughts Stan - mental images of cavemen chest pounding versus wailing baby sounds.. But there is very likely a truth to that maternal listening for certain pitches versus a competitive male listening bias....

[rook2c4]

I don't have research data on this, but I would logically assume mid-range frequencies are what we - both female and male listeners - notice first in music, as that is where the human voice is most dominant. Specifically, the frequency range that determines our ability for word recognition. The fundamental frequencies of the melodic instruments within music often lie within this range, and for good reason I believe. If there is in fact a male/female difference on how a person perceives this mid-range within the frequency range, I think it wouldn't be all that big at all.

[garww]

I don't think gender has anything to do with it - other than how one is indoctrinated into some role or mindset.

[Bigduggieface]

If there is in fact a male/female difference on how a person perceives this mid-range within the frequency range, I think it wouldn't be all that big at all.

I agree with rook and garww here. Remember that ALL sensory perception needs to be filtered through and interpreted by our brains. Here is a close analogy.

When we say that we SEE the colors green or red, what we mean is that our brains INTERPRET the wavelengths of the incoming light photons as being of higher or lower frequencies. This sensory data from our optical nerve reaches our brains which process the data into what we LEARN to call green vs red.

We are conditioned from infancy to call these interpretations of photon wavelengths as 'colors'. Red is distinguished from green just as low audio frequencies are distinguished from high audio frequencies. Regardless of the gender of our eyes.

In the same way, all of us could listen to the same bit of audio and we would all hear it differently from one another. We may all agree on what 3KHz sounds like-- but we may not HEAR 3KHz the same way. We agree on the conventional PERCEPTION of what our minds perceive as 3K just as most of us can agree what 'red' looks like.

Do each of us see red differently? Probably. But at the end of the day, we still call it red.

[Jeronimo Mora]

I'm going to say no. I don't see a reason why we would hear anything differently. I'm fairly certain that if you hear a car horn honking, we'll both hear the same thing. What's a bigger factor in how we hear things is age, and how we treat our ears. An old man may even hear better than a teen who does nothing but BLAST and I mean BLAST music all day. A young man will hear more than an old woman (same thing with genders reversed) if both take care of their ears. Over time, our ears develop a low pass filter and by the time we die (assuming old age), has the potential to block out all frequencies above 10 khz (sometimes even lower).

What may make a difference is the way we go about processing. I had read some journal that had an entry on decision making and second guessing. Guys were "supposed" to go with their gut because of impulsiveness and women were "supposed" to go with their second instinct. I thought it was asinine bullshit and didn't seem to have much to back it up. Idk. Look up on that if you want an answer. That's all I can think of. Other than that, I see no reason as to why we would hear 7 khz any differently.

[Emma]

Mmm, I was thinking more about how we approach the mixing process... what we listen for and whether gender played any part in the 'soup'.

I've been having a bit of a fossick around... This article was kinda interesting... An Investigation Of The Influence Of Gender On The Hedonic Responses Created By Listening To Music, Kathleen T. Lacher

Results show that gender does influence the strength of the different responses. Males tended to have a stronger analytical response and females a stronger sensorial response.

In conclusion, evidence from this study suggests that music's ability to create hedonic responses in individuals is influenced by the gender of the listener. These results are in line with other studies that tested gender differences (e.g., Holbrook 1986; Kellaris and Rice 1993). Given the present findings, future research should include different music genres, broader listener base and characteristics, the elements of music that produce the hedonic responses, and biological and social- psychological variables.

[shackman]

Jesus wept!!!

[Emma]

te he he...
that sounds like an emotional response

[PunkGuy]

I think men and women focus on different things in songs, perhaps even subliminally, which perhaps could be interpreted as listening to music differently. In my experience most_women listen to music to experience or connect with emotion whereas most_men listen to music for the "energy" or "intensity." Of course I'm stereotyping and taking your average male and female, but I suppose this even carries over into the classical and jazz worlds in some fashion. Why else would so many women listen to country and pop music and men listen to aggressive rock music? I don't think many men listen to Slayer to connect emotionally and I don't think many women listen to country to feel the energy or aggression. Just my two cents; I could be way out there.

[123weasleface]

I've heard women's hearing is better than male.

[garww]

I've heard women's hearing is better than male.

That may be more of a "who is willing to listen" thing. But, in surviving against beasts of prey and hunting, I can't imagine one gender as being more in tune.

[Emma]

Te he... I've been reading a wee bit more (it's a worry!!)... It almost feels back to the old nature/nurture debate which is too circular to keep my interest...
I was more just idly wondering about the idea of 'different' listening styles, especially in the light of how male dominant the industry is. I was interested to read that the left brain right brain theories of music have essentially been debunked as they realise that music can cause a response in both sides of the brain. Perhaps 'gender' is similarly irrelevant when it comes to listening.. we just listen in different ways, and so it is...

oh no... I feel another 'think' coming...

[garww]

I try to avoid Carol King and The Barbara, but I can listen to Laura Nyro and The Bangles. People that think the snare sound is important weren't born that way, they had to study far Eastern Teachings of a popular GURU to see the light.

[garageband]

I'm going to say no.

You clearly have never been married. Not even joking. If you spend years and years with one woman, you'll get a good sense of how she hears compared to male musicians and non-musicians, esp. if you are even just a little curious and persistent. Oddly enough, it's the things she finds distasteful that are the most telling points and frequently go outside where you'd expect to find them on a comparable male bell curve. I've always assumed a quicker divergence in viewpoint on sonic matters (as well as musical ones) with female colleagues than male ones. It's worked pretty well so far.

[bozmillar]

I'm not sure women hear different than men, but it seems obvious that different people have different emotional responses to different sounds.

A lot of work has gone into psycho acoustics, and as far as I know, the same techniques used to mask sounds for bitrate reduction work just as well in women as they do in men, at least I have never seen anything that says otherwise. I think if you wanted to see if people heard things differently, that would be the only real way to find out. I mean, everyone hears psycho acoustic stuff differently, but I don't know if there is any correlation to gender and how effective different techniques are.

[shackman]

'Scuse me: thought I heard some folks talking round here. Wasn't sure I heard right! Must just be that "old" "male" thing goin' on again!

[brandondrury]

First off, I'm positive the wife doesn't hear a damn word I say. I snapped at her the other day because she asked me 3 questions in a row. All of them I had told her an hour before. She had no idea. Maybe that beachball under her shirt has something to do with it.

particularly in the light of how male-dominated the mixing/production field is..

It's not just audio and I think this may be a clue. I got into recording because I had a bad band breakup, I'M A TECHNICAL GUY, and I wanted to stick with noise making in some capacity. I'd imagine there is a link between power tool owners and audio interface owners. Maybe not.

When I was in college, women made the majority of all my classes BUT electronics. My first year of electronics we had two girls. The second year: zero.

While there are certainly highly notable exceptions, in macro terms chicks seems less interested in video cards, RAM, and horsepower. I think it's this effect which we need to pay attention to in assessing women in audio production. I guess my point is how I listen didn't have that much to do with me jumping into this gig other than the fact that music did something to me that I can't seem to get away from. I'd imagine just as many women feel just as strongly about the music they love.

---
I've been HIGHLY intrigued by the ways in which laymen listen vs musicians and engineers. THAT is a major clue in my opinion. The things that generally excite the generally populous are usually very very different from what most of us listened to yesterday unless we intentionally set out on an anthropology experiment or were drinking heavily. (A major reason for my pop music experiment of 2010.)

Brandon

[Emma]

Chuckle, within the gender debate, I think you'll find that pregnant women have a new category of their own...

[bozmillar]

Chuckle, within the gender debate, I think you'll find that pregnant women have a new category of their own...

My wife can smell the refrigerator from upstairs the second I open it when she's prego. It's like magic.

[Stan_Halen]

I'd imagine there is a link between power tool owners and audio interface owners.

Ha. They need to make a Binford SuperDAW!