John, you are absolutely right, but it's a train we can't stop, nor should we want to. The problem with human endeavours is that you tend to go in deeper in your own field, but the field moves on through the new people entering it. In 1978 or so I attended my first AES in Eindhoven and the cutting edge in speaker measurement was cutting off the time response after some mSecs to be able to ignore the early reflections, so you could do 'quasi-anechoic' measurements in a normal room. Quite a feat involving lots of logic boards. Nowadays every amateur does this as a matter of fact. I think we all agree that is progress however you measure it.
BUT, if you are deep in anechoic measurements, there's nothing to invent anymore. John Vanderkooij had a paper on it a few years ago where he discussed the fact that cutting off those early reflections also deleted the speaker LF response of course, and he proposed to solve that by 'filtering' the time response by the inverse of the speaker lf roll-off to add that lf response back in. But people were yawning all around me: they already had been there, done that. They probably moved on to inventing DSP algorithms to make cell phones more intelligible (sp?) with less power or something like that.
The moral is, that when you get to our age, you ALWAYS feel like there's no longer any appreciation for what you do, be it audio or whatever engineering practise. I myself have a lot of fun playing with power amps and error correction, but no professional at the AES has any interest into that: been there, done that, it's documented, lets move on.
It may seem like some grand conspiracy to shut us out but the truth of the matter is, the organisation moves on but individual members slow down, get stuck in their favorite routines and get replaced by newbee's with grand plans and even grander ideas that fit society's interests of the day. Until they get replaced.
I have decided to enjoy it for as many years as possible, but we analog audio engineers and serious diy-ers are becoming a lunatic fringe. There would be something seriously wrong with society if it was otherwise.
jd
Please, Jan, I may not hob-nob with Dr. Lipshitz, but I get plenty of appreciation. I had 3 of my designs at the latest hi fi show. People come up to me in the hallways. This dismissal of any modern efforts is a political one, rather than one of finding audio 'truth'. That includes people in the background finding me or my colleagues, obsolete, as if we do NOT subscribe to new ideas, as some physicists in the past, appeared to do.
What we find a problem are things such as: Bandwidth can be limited to 20KHz or so without any significant change, or that double blind tests that show very little if anything of difference between electronic components have any real meaning to people who hear differences.
What is directing me to talk about this is the fact that an engineer friend of mine is giving a paper or two at the next AES. He has done his homework and measurements, but I told him last night, to not necessarily expect that he will get into the JAES. If things are what they have been over the last decades, he will be rejected. Still, it is about time that his work sees the light of day.
Of course, he is only an engineering graduate from UCB, worked at AMPEX, Sony, and many other companies and has a number of patents. Still, I have concerns.
What we find a problem are things such as: Bandwidth can be limited to 20KHz or so without any significant change, or that double blind tests that show very little if anything of difference between electronic components have any real meaning to people who hear differences.
What is directing me to talk about this is the fact that an engineer friend of mine is giving a paper or two at the next AES. He has done his homework and measurements, but I told him last night, to not necessarily expect that he will get into the JAES. If things are what they have been over the last decades, he will be rejected. Still, it is about time that his work sees the light of day.
Of course, he is only an engineering graduate from UCB, worked at AMPEX, Sony, and many other companies and has a number of patents. Still, I have concerns.
Gee, my 23KHz rating at age 18 for a sonar test in a soundproofed room within a room at a Naval base must have been outa-space-cake.
On the other hand, alien abduction would be the perfectly sensible rationale for ending up such a total crackpot.
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Hell, I think I can hear that now. Only trouble is that there is no source playing.
Maybe it was the aliens who abducted you making you think they were the navy! It sounds like an alien human conspiracy and makes as much sense as some things that get posted on this web site!
Yes, the subconscious is a wonderful thing and the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time. From what I read, and I didn't read it word for word, they were measuring stress. They took a lot of effort to make the participants comfortable.
And like I said before, if the results are consistent and repeatable then it's a good indication that they heard the high frequency. They did it backwards and forwards, double blind, Jan.
When I spend a long periods (days) listening to only SACDs and LPs I have a difficult time going back to CDs, even very good recordings. It takes my ears time to adjust. I find them more fatiguing for whatever reason.
janneman said:
Surely you saw the pictures Jan.
I'm certainly no expert in reading PETs or EEGs but it sounded like they knew what they were doing.
John
@ janneman,
of course in the JAES only a small percentage of the convention papers can be peer reviewed and get published. Not to mention any additional material send in that was not presented at a convention.
The topics at the conventions reflect the direction in which the industry is walking and this direction is mainly not related to the best possible reproduction quality overall.
The review process can not ensure that every material is absolutely perfect nor that every problem of the specific topic is solved, but should insure that methodology and experimentation is done according to scientific standards and that any reasoning does not violate rules of formal logic.
I can´t judge if there is some ´political movement´ influencing the review process but the span in quality of the published articles is indeed surprising.
Sometimes you can´t believe that all reviewers are working with similar guidelines.
BTW, could someone link me to the ´discussion to death´of the Oohashi papers? I was not able to find it.
of course in the JAES only a small percentage of the convention papers can be peer reviewed and get published. Not to mention any additional material send in that was not presented at a convention.
The topics at the conventions reflect the direction in which the industry is walking and this direction is mainly not related to the best possible reproduction quality overall.
The review process can not ensure that every material is absolutely perfect nor that every problem of the specific topic is solved, but should insure that methodology and experimentation is done according to scientific standards and that any reasoning does not violate rules of formal logic.
I can´t judge if there is some ´political movement´ influencing the review process but the span in quality of the published articles is indeed surprising.
Sometimes you can´t believe that all reviewers are working with similar guidelines.
BTW, could someone link me to the ´discussion to death´of the Oohashi papers? I was not able to find it.
Yes I think you and Jakob are right. They seem to have found a link between that HF presence and audible perception, not just brain activity. Well. What do we do now?
jd
True, the walls of soundproofed rooms in the late 70s sorta looked like the ones individuals in a straightjacket monitor.
In later years, a sound and vibration professor taught me that they're not supposed to look like that.
(this guy : http://www.shipstructure.org/pdf/78symp08.pdf)
On a good day, i can still hear the scratching sound of spider's feet walking across a table, from close distance.
Likely the reason why i keep spending silly amounts of money on silly audio gear.
Makes as much sense as staring blind at 2000dB per octave formulae.
HI
well now I feel good, but last year my hyperacusis like a lot my turntable and not the 1541 nos or walkman , cd ,pc mp3
the TT give me the only way to ear mymusic....
Glad you're feeling better!
janneman said:Yes I think you and Jakob are right. They seem to have found a link between that HF presence and audible perception, not just brain activity. Well. What do we do now?
Yes, you could be right about that, but we don't really know since they didn't test the subjects hearing from what I read, unless I missed something.
Another interesting fact is that people with hyperacusis often can hear in the negative decibels on a hearing test. They often hear in the down to -7dB or below. So people can hear sounds they're more sensitive to, better.
John
Actually it is considered normal to hear -7 at midrange frequencies! This has been incorporated in a few standards!
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. But not many people can hear that quiet, if you trust the audiologists, and ENT's I've talked with. It usually varies between 0dB and +15 for normal hearing. What about -17dB? Well, that's what one person claimed she was tested for. Don't know how accurate that was.
I know my ability to hear quiet sounds improved in a hearing test when my sound sensitivity got worse. Hearing in the -dB range is typical of people with hyperacusis, unless they have hearing loss.
...(this guy : http://www.shipstructure.org/pdf/78symp08.pdf)
On a good day, i can still hear the scratching sound of spider's feet walking across a table, from close distance.
So your amps described as "Built like a battleship" still does vibrate along with your battleship loudspeakers?
Simon, I just brought that up because people have a natural dislike for some sounds that the brain turns up the gain for. I think I can say these sounds often exist is reproduced music. Could be that we can hear these sounds at even lower levels than we can hear other sounds.
Sounds you dislike are annoying. But, some sounds our ears are naturally phobic to, as well. Sounds you're phobic to can hurt your ears, and a sound my ears were naturally phobic to is what initially caused my hyperacusis.
This is all theory, but it's a theory works very well in treating hyperacusis, phonophobia (fear of sounds), misophonia (dislike of sounds).
Sounds you dislike are annoying. But, some sounds our ears are naturally phobic to, as well. Sounds you're phobic to can hurt your ears, and a sound my ears were naturally phobic to is what initially caused my hyperacusis.
This is all theory, but it's a theory works very well in treating hyperacusis, phonophobia (fear of sounds), misophonia (dislike of sounds).
Well, I'm glad that some here can hear more than MP3 or even CD. I thought it was 'proven' by jj and everyone else in academia that everything else was a waste of useful bandwidth. ;-)
I feel that it is not so much 'why' we hear, but what we hear, at least those of us who can hear differences in audio equipment.
Of course, we can be fooled, or mistaken at times, but so what? Do we have to reject everything, just to minimize some possible mistake?
I feel that it is not so much 'why' we hear, but what we hear, at least those of us who can hear differences in audio equipment.
Of course, we can be fooled, or mistaken at times, but so what? Do we have to reject everything, just to minimize some possible mistake?
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