jh6you said:
... maybe your memory system is as poor as mine. Nevertheless, if the tree had one apple, shining red color in contrast with remaining parts, but disappeared this morning, I might notice it. However, it doesn't matter. The whole tree is still there. No difference. Only thing is that the tree gives me somewhat different look and feeling, depending on outside weather condition.
Fully agree, if that one shining apple disappeared it would probably get noticed right away. If I may convert this analogy to the audio world, the 'apple' would be a gross defect or a really big difference between amps and clearly be audible.
But mostly we are talking about very small differences (if at all), like changing a cap from 470uF to 820uF or changing the brand of a resistor. These are the small differences that are completely un-identifiable in blind tests.
However, many people, especially the ones that make the change, clearly perceive a difference, mostly an improvement.
The perception is real and honest, no doubt about it, what is misunderstood is that this perception is caused by several factors, of which audible difference is just one, and one that mostly is not there after all (see blind test).
But there are other factors involved that cause a clear, real perception of differences, like level differences and the knowledge that you spend money and a day's hard work to make the change.
So, if you want to be intellectually honest to yourself (and your peers), and want to know if the perceived differences are really caused ONLY by the audible differences, you must find a way to isolate that from the other factors that influence your perception.
One such a way is a blind test. It is not popular, exactly because it is so effective. Who, strongly convinced that he/she hears an audible difference, would readily accept that he is completely misinterpreting his perception? I would hate it too! But again, if you want to be intellectually honest and really want to know the facts, there's no way around it.
Jan Didden
Gyrating to scientific
Hi Jan,
Yes, we must gyrate there. And so called subjective parameters must also be dealt with scientifically.
They're wrong, aren't they? Our perceptual response to sounds is not flat, our hearing is subject to masking effects, it appears from Geddes' and Lee's work (they say it's preliminary, but results, so far, seem powerful) that non linear effects of distortion products have an effect on our experience in listening to recorded music. I would seem they are developing a metric for you.
I don't think the statement needs be true in the light of Geddes & Lee's work. From your description, the Japanese effort years ago was flawed.
I don't know. What I'm going to do is read Geddes & Lee's book this winter. Table of Contents:
http://www.gedlee.com/contents.htm
I'm a DIYer so I've luxury of taking my time and dealing with each part of the music reproduction chain, (transducers, electronics, listening room) a step at a time. I can be methodical and that's first step to science. isn't it?
BTW, further up the thread someone was discussing listening to equipment for buying purposes. They said listen to the music not the equipment - not unempirical I think - they were listening for masking effects. But they could only work out relative effects among the gear present....and there's the pesky matter of the level control.
Hi Jan,
Yes, we must gyrate there. And so called subjective parameters must also be dealt with scientifically.
They're wrong, aren't they? Our perceptual response to sounds is not flat, our hearing is subject to masking effects, it appears from Geddes' and Lee's work (they say it's preliminary, but results, so far, seem powerful) that non linear effects of distortion products have an effect on our experience in listening to recorded music. I would seem they are developing a metric for you.
I don't think the statement needs be true in the light of Geddes & Lee's work. From your description, the Japanese effort years ago was flawed.
I don't know. What I'm going to do is read Geddes & Lee's book this winter. Table of Contents:
http://www.gedlee.com/contents.htm
I'm a DIYer so I've luxury of taking my time and dealing with each part of the music reproduction chain, (transducers, electronics, listening room) a step at a time. I can be methodical and that's first step to science. isn't it?
BTW, further up the thread someone was discussing listening to equipment for buying purposes. They said listen to the music not the equipment - not unempirical I think - they were listening for masking effects. But they could only work out relative effects among the gear present....and there's the pesky matter of the level control.
janneman said:
... I spent enough money for these to find differences, but in vain. It was mostly waste of expenses. Even though I feel somewhat difference by changing few components, witnin one week, I say to myself: "Heck...!!! where is the difference?"
... Once I read Japanese Stereo Sound (Autumn 2003, No.147). One audio critic reviewed sound of Pass XA160. He said: "How I can describe this kind of good sound? XA160 seems to have no particular charater in sound... Just good... excellent... Show innner side of the music and its real taste... Make me listen endlessly..."
Why we need to waste our energy in finding small differences in small details? Two trees are in the same shape even if there are somewhat different number of leaves!!!
janneman said:
How one perceives a sensory input is an interesting subject in it self.
I think all the above mentioned memory issues stem from the fact that as animals we are not required to act as precise data recorders but required to 'make connections' to enable us to respond to certain patterns that are in our best survival interests.
For instance when a growl of a large predator is detected , it is not the precise recollection of that sound that is important, but the image or emotional response pattern that is key.
It would be a bad idea if an animal spent time deciding on whether that growl was the exact type of growl previously heard when it should be running for it's life.....
It is no coincidence that certain frequencies or sonic effects can
elicit a common response from people, music would loose much of it's power if this were not the case.
The above aside , something that is of great interest to me is how
people actually 'visualize' the [sonic] memories.
For myself ,visualize is the key word here, as sound is for me
largely a visual experience.
This is very hard to explain, but for a specific audio sample there will be a correlating [ but fluid] 3 dimensional color textural response.[not forgetting the emotional response to these forms ]
My memory of a sound seems inextricably linked to this imaging
effect.
Sometimes even if the sound part of the memory seems uncertain
the 'color bit' can demonstrate a distinct difference , this often encouraging a double check...
Perhaps the partial conversion of audio memories into a visual
type [of file..hehe] may assist with a more acurate reccolection, if
visual memories are indeed better than aural , and that of course would depend on ones audio to visual converter. [AVC..hehe , no doubt ripe for a clock upgrade
], Another example of visualization, a friend of mine can 'see' mathematics, his wife a mathematician says she does not 'see'
mathematics.
Some people also see numbers as colors. [I do to some extent myself]
Finally, I may not be completely mad, just an artist...Hmmm
Anybody else here 'see' sound? [ or is usual to 'see' sound...
]Setmenu
jh6you said:
Fully agree. But I can see the pleasure in pursuing excellence in whatever you like to do. I like to design and built power amps, try new topologies, smarter ways of doing things, just for the fun of it.
I also listen to music for music's sake; I recently bought a Bose WaveRadioCD(tm) unit, outrageously expensive for something that looks like a kitchen radio, but its quality (soundwise) is far beyond the kitchen radio (that's why it is so expensive I guess). Now, this Bose's freq range, dynamics, resolution is no match to my main system, but when I get up in the morning and put on a piano CD, I really enjoy it!
Re: Gyrating to scientific
Seems like an interesting book. Can I buy it through Amazon.com?
I'm currently printing (and will have bound) Langford-Smiths' Radiotron Designers Handbook. 1100 pages of it. Man, we worry about things that those guys explained matter-of-factly 50 years ago! There may be nothing new under the sun, but there's a lot we ain't seen yet!
There's an interesting test I read in a French book from IRCAM (the perception lab near Paris) with masking, now that you mention it.
I don't recall all the exact details, but it's like this: You generate a tone and an harmonic in a certain ratio. Then you add a third tone, not harmonically related. If the ratio of the third tone is not above a certain level, the listener does not hear it, it is masked by the carrier and the harmonic, he just hears the two harmonics.
Now comes the clincher: You add low level broad band noise, without changing anything else to the set-up, and Bingo! the listener reports hearing THREE tones, the harmonics and the third non-harmonic one.
Can you believe that: you add noise and as a result you hear more separate frequencies. Who said hearing perception was simple and straight-forward?
Jan Didden
FrankWW said:
Seems like an interesting book. Can I buy it through Amazon.com?
I'm currently printing (and will have bound) Langford-Smiths' Radiotron Designers Handbook. 1100 pages of it. Man, we worry about things that those guys explained matter-of-factly 50 years ago! There may be nothing new under the sun, but there's a lot we ain't seen yet!
There's an interesting test I read in a French book from IRCAM (the perception lab near Paris) with masking, now that you mention it.
I don't recall all the exact details, but it's like this: You generate a tone and an harmonic in a certain ratio. Then you add a third tone, not harmonically related. If the ratio of the third tone is not above a certain level, the listener does not hear it, it is masked by the carrier and the harmonic, he just hears the two harmonics.
Now comes the clincher: You add low level broad band noise, without changing anything else to the set-up, and Bingo! the listener reports hearing THREE tones, the harmonics and the third non-harmonic one.
Can you believe that: you add noise and as a result you hear more separate frequencies. Who said hearing perception was simple and straight-forward?
Jan Didden
Some thoughts on level differences......and perceived sound
We've been saying a lot about small level differences making systems sound different... even the same system.
The following is for those who do believe it.
The ears sensitivity to signals with respect to frequency was well researched by Fletcher - Munson and they have published the famous response curves.
From these curves you can see that with decreasing level we need more bass and treble treble for the sound to 'sound' the same.
So if the level is say increased slightly we need less bass and less treble for the sound to stay the same ( not level ). But as the input signal does not change its frequency content , it will be logical to conclude that the ear will hear a slight "level increase" as a signal with slightly increased bass and treble. That way it will sound "better" than the lower level. Try this with a "slight " bass and treble boost and a tone defeat switch on your amp. The slightly boosted signal will sound better than the flat signal.
Have you noticed how incredible transients sound at higher listening levels and they sound sharper also as compared to it when played softly. That's the bigger picture !
Cheers,
Ashok.
We've been saying a lot about small level differences making systems sound different... even the same system.
The following is for those who do believe it.
The ears sensitivity to signals with respect to frequency was well researched by Fletcher - Munson and they have published the famous response curves.
From these curves you can see that with decreasing level we need more bass and treble treble for the sound to 'sound' the same.
So if the level is say increased slightly we need less bass and less treble for the sound to stay the same ( not level ). But as the input signal does not change its frequency content , it will be logical to conclude that the ear will hear a slight "level increase" as a signal with slightly increased bass and treble. That way it will sound "better" than the lower level. Try this with a "slight " bass and treble boost and a tone defeat switch on your amp. The slightly boosted signal will sound better than the flat signal.
Have you noticed how incredible transients sound at higher listening levels and they sound sharper also as compared to it when played softly. That's the bigger picture !
Cheers,
Ashok.
Quite amusing. I am not particularly good with images, colours and smells and i've never had any interest in developing these senses. Or maybe they are all distractions to a listener
The unfair advantages of blind audiophiles...I can imagine SY would be in a great position to 'taste' sound with his huge experience and knowledge of wines.
setmenu said:
How one perceives a sensory input is an interesting subject in it self.
I think all the above mentioned memory issues stem from the fact that as animals we are not required to act as precise data recorders but required to 'make connections' to enable us to respond to certain patterns that are in our best survival interests.
For instance when a growl of a large predator is detected , it is not the precise recollection of that sound that is important, but the image or emotional response pattern that is key.
It would be a bad idea if an animal spent time deciding on whether that growl was the exact type of growl previously heard when it should be running for it's life.....
It is no coincidence that certain frequencies or sonic effects can
elicit a common response from people, music would loose much of it's power if this were not the case.
The above aside , something that is of great interest to me is how
people actually 'visualize' the [sonic] memories.
For myself ,visualize is the key word here, as sound is for me
largely a visual experience.
This is very hard to explain, but for a specific audio sample there will be a correlating [ but fluid] 3 dimensional color textural response.[not forgetting the emotional response to these forms ]
My memory of a sound seems inextricably linked to this imaging
effect.
Sometimes even if the sound part of the memory seems uncertain
the 'color bit' can demonstrate a distinct difference , this often encouraging a double check...
Perhaps the partial conversion of audio memories into a visual
type [of file..hehe] may assist with a more acurate reccolection, if
visual memories are indeed better than aural , and that of course would depend on ones audio to visual converter. [AVC..hehe , no doubt ripe for a clock upgrade
Another example of visualization, a friend of mine can 'see' mathematics, his wife a mathematician says she does not 'see'
mathematics.
Some people also see numbers as colors. [I do to some extent myself]
Finally, I may not be completely mad, just an artist...Hmmm
Anybody else here 'see' sound? [ or is usual to 'see' sound...
Setmenu
We are moving now a bit off-topic (please bear with us Moderators), but you are right. The perception apparatus in your head has a lot of interconnections between the various senses, and sometimes there is a lot of cross-leakage. All these sensors are competing for attention. It is accepted that to listen carefully most people close their eyes. Another example is smell and taste and touch, they are very close connected. Tasting is a combination of the smell and also the touch of your tongue to the texture of the food you taste.
As for visualizing, I visualise numbers when I do calculations in my head. I also noted that the days of the week for me are connected to colors: Monday is black, Tuesday light blue, Wednesday is green, Thursday yellow-brownisch, Friday white, Saturday blue and Sunday light gray, metallic grey.
Jan Didden
Let me state from the start that my frustration of not affording exotic things like n hundred dollars worth cables finds a great relief in the kind of diatribe like mr Self's
This subject has flame war written all over it. Every time I think about getting into this kind of debate I face the problem of not being able to make some order into my ideas 'cause I have too much too say, and I end up saying nothing at all because it just feels pointless... But still, here I am, posting
Why do educated people (I'm not suggesting that I fit into this category) have to fight?
What follows is the most suggestive illustration of my view on "audio voodoo" as I call it.
I'd find myself on this site where I don't know what brand advertises it's 500$ cables. And the rock-solid argument is nothing but "poor cables have a high resistance". Never mind impedance, never mind antenna effect, never mind everything but resistance! Needless to say, I consider this kind of argument (as everyone should) intelligence-insulting. The sad thing is that many otherwise intelligent and educated people comfort themselves with this kind of arguments.
The truth that simple physical measurements cannot account for things happening in our brains in a time where n GHz's computers still can't "understand" simple sentences need not be discussed.
But there is a long way until crossing the thin line between wizardry and science. What caused people beginning to think that designing an amp has more to do with voodoo than with electronics? It's like those tubes weren't designed based on physics and math in the first place, but sheer inspiration coming from the valve-fairy.
The one simple question that I would ask any "subjectivist" is: why not submit to blind testing? There where times when the die-hard purists admitted upon blind listening tests that they thought 192kbps mp3's sounded better than the original! Evidently, blaming it on fatigue or poor cables! (yes, I do have an issue with cables if you're asking yourselves that )
I realize but you will find my argument rudimentary and not worth even responding to but...
PS: nevertheless, that oscilloscope family joke was great
This subject has flame war written all over it. Every time I think about getting into this kind of debate I face the problem of not being able to make some order into my ideas 'cause I have too much too say, and I end up saying nothing at all because it just feels pointless... But still, here I am, posting
Why do educated people (I'm not suggesting that I fit into this category) have to fight?
What follows is the most suggestive illustration of my view on "audio voodoo" as I call it.
I'd find myself on this site where I don't know what brand advertises it's 500$ cables. And the rock-solid argument is nothing but "poor cables have a high resistance". Never mind impedance, never mind antenna effect, never mind everything but resistance! Needless to say, I consider this kind of argument (as everyone should) intelligence-insulting. The sad thing is that many otherwise intelligent and educated people comfort themselves with this kind of arguments.
The truth that simple physical measurements cannot account for things happening in our brains in a time where n GHz's computers still can't "understand" simple sentences need not be discussed.
But there is a long way until crossing the thin line between wizardry and science. What caused people beginning to think that designing an amp has more to do with voodoo than with electronics? It's like those tubes weren't designed based on physics and math in the first place, but sheer inspiration coming from the valve-fairy.
The one simple question that I would ask any "subjectivist" is: why not submit to blind testing? There where times when the die-hard purists admitted upon blind listening tests that they thought 192kbps mp3's sounded better than the original! Evidently, blaming it on fatigue or poor cables! (yes, I do have an issue with cables if you're asking yourselves that
)I realize but you will find my argument rudimentary and not worth even responding to but...
PS: nevertheless, that oscilloscope family joke was great
I hadn't really thought about it before, but I think you might be right. Normally, I think of it going the other way- when teaching wine classes, I've used the analogy of a Cabernet versus a Merlot as being analogous to a guitar with steel strings and one with nylon (or catgut) strings.
Pinotage, in that vision, would be a pre-CBS Stratocaster run through a Marshall stack cranked to 11.
mr_push_pull said:
1 These issues touch very deep emotionally and people often feel as if their personal integrity is attacked. But all perceptions are real and honest, it isn't as if someone would be stupid or having a hidden agenda (although I suppose that does happen from time to time). So if I really perceive this sound difference and someone suggests to me I'm not really hearing it, I get angry. But that isn't the issue. The issue is that the perceptions are caused by many interrelated factors of which actual sound impinging our tympani's is just ONE factor. So it takes a lot of maturity and self-criticism to handle this in an intelligent, unemotional way.
2 I can only agree to this.
Another real-world example: a group of listeners does a listening test to determine their preference for a speaker from a pair of different manufacturers. The preference is for speaker A, which happens to be a famous make.
The testers switch the brand name plates on the speakers, and repeat the session with another group of listeners. They prefer brand B.
If you tell this to a perception-specialist, they look at you strangely and ask, well, what else did you expect? Tell it to an audio person and they immediately start to look for excuses, like the second group had another average preference, maybe they were older statistically etc.
Jan Didden
janneman said:
Hi Jan
There is certainly a lot of cross leakage, I would guess a lot of this is due to how processing systems have adapted over the millenia to process differing input stimuli.
If memory serves, ears or the bones in the ear are evolved from the gill bones of fish!
Other species of creature detect electric fields ,use echo location etc.
Perhaps if we could get inside the heads of such creatures we would find they perceived these differing stimuli in a familiar fashion or as a blend of those we are used to, echo location would seem an ideal candidate for visual sound perception....
Monday, very dark red black, Tuesday, fairly pale blue grey with a hint of red warmth, Wednesday, pale slightly metallic grey,
Thursday, much as You describe, Friday, the same with a hint of
violet, saturday, dark yellow green, sunday, sun, well it has to be a dark orange....
Obviously not too much consensus here
Perhaps scopes do have their place then...
Setmenu
janneman said:
... yes, you indicated the point. I do diy mainly for fun, persuing that excellence. But, the thing I want to talk about is that there is fun but often without actual improvement in results, particularly by changing the passive components.
The persuing sound based on personal memory is nothing but persuing a very subjective sound. It applies for me too. My diy is to persue the sound heard from movie track in cinema, live music, or concert hall, i.e. the sound in my memory. It's my own. As each has his or her own...
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