Difference between /ɚ/ and /ɹ/?

[Vajra B. Hairava]

Me and Red August got into a bit of a tiff over pronunciation, one of the main issues being the difference between these 2. I know that /ɹ/ is the alveolar approximant and is the /ɚ/ "r-colored vowel", but despite him trying to show me the difference or anything else for that matter, I am completely unable to distinguish the 2. So, whats going on here? I am completely clueless. They sound exactly the same to me. He talked about it like it is such an obvious difference that anyone should be able to see, but despite that, I simply cannot. So, whats the deal with those?

(Nothing against you here August, I really do wanna know what the hell is up with these sounds.)  

[Eccentric Iconoclast]

Basically, [ɚ] is a vowel and thus can be used as a syllable, and [ɹ] usually can't, unless it's syllabic, in which case it's pointless to distinguish the two. [ɚ] can also be written as [əɹ], by the way.

Oh, and this goes in the Linguistics forum!  

[Vajra B. Hairava]

So, are they essentially the same thing? It seemed to me that from the descriptions I was getting, The only difference between them is the position in a word in which they are used and for some reason they want to distinguish if it is being used as a consonant or a vowel, even thought the 2 sound the same. Is that it then?

But the main thing is, do they really sound different? Because thats the impression Red 8th Month was giving me. I feel like I'm just over-leaping something obvious like I do so often.

For example, apparently the "er" of "her" and the "r" of "red" sound different somehow. Do they? They sound exactly the same to me. In super crappy phonetic transcription of what I say and hear, /hɹ/ and /ɹɛd/ respectivley.  

[Eccentric Iconoclast]

As far as I can tell, in most American dialects they're identical. In British English and Australian English, there are some notable differences; note that we're talking about the phonemes themselves rather than the phones.

I'm going to go to that thread and correct some stuff; you were both wrong on a lot of points.  

[Vajra B. Hairava]

Yeah, I agree. Thats why I was so confused I guess.

Go right ahead. Anything I know about linguistics is totally self-taught, so I'm happy for a smarty-person to show me the way.  

[belladonna_cupcake]

in my dialect they are different. [ɹ] ( commonly known as american r ) is more pronounced. if your dialect has short r or the r is just removed, like in the boston dialect than you would use [ɚ]