Ear Training for Sound Engineers

What is it?

TrainYourEars EQ Edition is an ear training software for Mac and PC designed to help you understand equalisers and frequencies like never before.

How does it work?

It speeds up your learning process exposing you to hundreds of random equalizations you have to guess. If you are wrong, it will let you know “how wrong”, and it will let you hear both your guess and the correct answer.

In no time you will develop a frequency memory which will allow you to connect the sound you imagine in your head with the parameters you need to dial, quickly and easily than ever.

What is new in TrainYourEars 2.0?

It has a brand new training method. Instead of guessing, you have to make corrections while you hear the result.

The person who suggested this method to us in the first place was Bob Katz, a renowned mastering guru. We tested it, we loved it, so here it is for all you to enjoy!

Besides it has a new, modern and clean interface, a new assisted training screen, a new exercise designer, it supports other languages, and many other features.

I like the idea but… why should I train?

The ability to connect what is in your mind with the appropriate parameters you have to dial to get that sound is not an easy task. The steps involved should be:

Sometimes people get lost in the translation step and start turning knobs without confidence. The more you work, the better you understand what those knobs really do, but it is a slow process.

People excel in this matter after many years, because they have learned experimenting with lots of different processes applied to lots of different sources. The purpose of this training is to open your ears to what each frequency sounds like and reduce the amount of time needed to acquire this knowledge.

In 15 minutes you can guess or correct 100 random equalisations, so training every day for a few weeks is equivalent to accumulating the experience of many years.

Interesting… and how does it work?

First, you load the music you want to train with:

Then, you choose an exercise or design a new one

And finally, train your ears with one of these two methods!

Guess Method-Listen to the original and equalized signals, and guess which parameters were changed

Correct Method-Use the EQ to correct the equalized signal and make it sound like the original again

Where does this training method come from? Did you make it up?

No, we didn’t! The Guess Method has been used for over 40 years. There were exercises on cassettes, CD’s or it was done manually by teachers. We know it works and it has proven its efficiency over the years with thousands of successful engineers.

The new Correct Method comes from a suggestion Bob Katz (the mastering guru) made to us:

I suggest presenting a piece of recorded music which needs "help" in some frequency range and see if the student can not only identify the problem, but also correct for it in a musically satisfying way.

So that is what we did: correct instead of guess. We tested it and we loved it. It turned out to be both funny and instructive. Both methods complement each other really well.

Besides, we have designed the software to turn these methods into a limitless tool, way better than any cassette or CD, because you can feed it with any music or sound and configure the exercises to a level of diversity and detail which wasn’t imaginable before.

We can’t place more emphasis on this way of training the ear: IT WORKS!

What if I am already a good engineer?

There is always room for improvement! We have designed the software so you can adjust your exercises to something that challenges you. Once you start getting good at it you can introduce changes to make it harder, train a different parameter or train a new combination of parameters. The possibilities are so limitless that it is useful from beginners to professionals! (or even golden ears)

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