Where does fatique come from?

"Where does fatique come from?" - she sounds Turkish to me! :)

fatigue, in the neurological sense occurs after one reaches the adaptation level--sorry, you may need to go to the psychology books.

essentially, the rate of firing of neurons decreases to the extent that one's ability to differentiate is severely undermined.

using theaforementioned concept, a consistent and significant sonic signature of any nature, can induce "fatigue", after a period of time, which is listener dependent.

fatigue can occur, as has been suggested when one attempts to focus, i.e., listen critically and analyze, for some period of time.

could the word "fatigue", in the context of this thread, connote displeasure with the sound of a stereo system, rather than enervation ?

if so, any serious imbalance in frequency response can be annoying, even for a short time, without producing neurological fatigue, or a sense of physiologoical fatigue.

"fatigue can occur, as has been suggested when one attempts to focus, i.e., listen critically and analyze, for some period of time.
"

So there must be a lot of fatigued audiophiles out there according to this.

I thought listening to music was supposed to be relaxing?

listening to music can be relaxing if one listens for pleasure rather than to assess the sound quality of a recording or stereo system.

perhaps superficial listening is a way of avoiding fatigue. if your nerves aren't firing to much to begin with, you won't have to be concerned with a slow down.

Our ears use certain odd-ordered harmonics in order to determine loudness. We are very sensitive to these harmonics; if they are altered even by trace amounts we will develop 'listener fatigue' as it was know as in the old days.

Anything that can enhance these harmonics is a culprit: global loop feedback is a major sinner (which is why there are zero feedback amplifiers out there), non-linear devices such as transistors, transformers, cheap coupling capacitors, poor connections, breakup modes in loudspeaker drivers...

IMO a good system will not exhibit loudness artifact- no matter what volume level it is playing at, it will always be relaxed.