Just a seemingly minor correction - here it would be better to put 'NO change whatsoever (as far as we can tell) to the vibrations (or signal)' - sound being what he's hearing but the vibrations/signal being the stimulus that results in the sound via the perceptual process.
Yes, very.
Have you seen the video of the McGurk effect on YouTube yet? The one from BBC's Horizon program is worth checking out. Same aural signal, different visual stimulus -> different sound.why not buy a paper weight for a fraction of the price and have someone else tell you that it makes a big improvement
regards
david
Just a seemingly minor correction - here it would be better to put 'NO change whatsoever (as far as we can tell) to the vibrations (or signal)' - sound being what he's hearing but the vibrations/signal being the stimulus that results in the sound via the perceptual process.
Yes, very.
Quite - agree to both.
jan didden
why not buy a paper weight for a fraction of the price and have someone else tell you that it makes a big improvement
regards
david
That would work if you would be convinced that paperweights have that effect. The normal approach would be to a) present the paper weight not as a paper weight but in either a mystical or a highly technical form/shape (both seem to be convincing); b) have a very respected guru present a very enthousiastic story about the effect and c) put one or more zeros behind the price.
This last point is important as it d) helps convince the customer he gets something special, e) helps pay for the special packaging as well as for the guru and f) helps you make a bundle.
Edit: if this sounds negative its not on purpose. In the above scenario EVERYONE wins, including the customer.
Sometimes life really IS simple.
jan didden
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why not buy a paper weight for a fraction of the price and have someone else tell you that it makes a big improvement
It would surely matter who the 'someone else' was who told you. Given JC's cult following perhaps an ex-cathedra pronouncement could be delivered by him for a suitably fat fee?
<edit> OK, Jan you beat me by 1min
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About three or four years ago, a professor of electrical engineering I think somewhere at the University of California wrote a book about electrical noise that was considered startling at the time. Can't remember the name of the book or the professor.
His assertion backed by considerable documentation was that as electrical noise decreases, the ability of humans to discern subtle details whether in audio or video signals improves but counterintuitively only up to a point. As noise diminishes further, the ability to discern subtle details actually decreases. Therefore to get the subjectively sharpest image say from a video camera, a small amout of noise actually helps and is necessary.
His assertion backed by considerable documentation was that as electrical noise decreases, the ability of humans to discern subtle details whether in audio or video signals improves but counterintuitively only up to a point. As noise diminishes further, the ability to discern subtle details actually decreases. Therefore to get the subjectively sharpest image say from a video camera, a small amout of noise actually helps and is necessary.
Sounds like it could have been Bart Kosko. This book perhaps ?
Noise: Amazon.co.uk: Bart Kosko: Books
Noise: Amazon.co.uk: Bart Kosko: Books
I think it depends on whether the noise is correlated. Dithering comes to mind.
I also remember a study by IRCAM, the French perception institute, that in a situation where one tone was masking another tone, adding a third not related tone UNmasked the originally masked tone. IOW You hear a tone, add another one and you hear three tones.
Perception is very complex and ignored at your peril!
jan didden
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Frauds
That was great, thanks a lot! All joking aside, I think it was Steve who pointed out that as a low-pass filter, a Bybee could possibly keep RF or other contamination out of low-level stages, perhaps reducing intermod products.
I have never tested them nor listened to a system with them, so I currently have no opinion of them, other than the fact that they are poorly documented with a very suspect (gov't security) explanation as to why.
Not to belabor the point (oh, OK I will) in my day job I am sent around the country interviewing potential technological investment schemes for the owner of my company. I have debunked a few perpetual motion engines, oxygen enrichment air filters, harmonic resonance viral killers, magnetic impulse AIDS cures and others too embarrassing to mention. After interviewing tens of these people, commonalities in tactics begin to emerge.
I have realized that all great scammers have one thing in common: they are astute observers of human motivations and can read people as they unfold their pitch. It is eerie (and sickening) how WITHOUT FAIL their cover stories employ one or more of the following:
1) The reason that reputable Big Business has not bought the idea is because Big Business wants to get the idea and bury it, and they want people everywhere to have access to it.
2) If they detect that the target has a religeous bent they exclaim that God wants them to give this device to humanity, that is why they have not sold out to Big Business.
3) They claim to have been employed by some arm of the US Gov't in a secret capacity and cannot divulge certain aspects of the device under penalty of law.
The Bybee cover story comes perilously close to this last scam rationale and therefore triggers a big "SCAM ALERT!" to me, which is unfortunate if they actually serve a function.
Perhaps if they were supported by more technical details instead of this odd cover story that smacks of scam we could have a less biased discussion of them.
Just my $0.00.001 worth...
Howard Hoyt
CE WXYC FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
That was great, thanks a lot! All joking aside, I think it was Steve who pointed out that as a low-pass filter, a Bybee could possibly keep RF or other contamination out of low-level stages, perhaps reducing intermod products.
I have never tested them nor listened to a system with them, so I currently have no opinion of them, other than the fact that they are poorly documented with a very suspect (gov't security) explanation as to why.
Not to belabor the point (oh, OK I will) in my day job I am sent around the country interviewing potential technological investment schemes for the owner of my company. I have debunked a few perpetual motion engines, oxygen enrichment air filters, harmonic resonance viral killers, magnetic impulse AIDS cures and others too embarrassing to mention. After interviewing tens of these people, commonalities in tactics begin to emerge.
I have realized that all great scammers have one thing in common: they are astute observers of human motivations and can read people as they unfold their pitch. It is eerie (and sickening) how WITHOUT FAIL their cover stories employ one or more of the following:
1) The reason that reputable Big Business has not bought the idea is because Big Business wants to get the idea and bury it, and they want people everywhere to have access to it.
2) If they detect that the target has a religeous bent they exclaim that God wants them to give this device to humanity, that is why they have not sold out to Big Business.
3) They claim to have been employed by some arm of the US Gov't in a secret capacity and cannot divulge certain aspects of the device under penalty of law.
The Bybee cover story comes perilously close to this last scam rationale and therefore triggers a big "SCAM ALERT!" to me, which is unfortunate if they actually serve a function.
Perhaps if they were supported by more technical details instead of this odd cover story that smacks of scam we could have a less biased discussion of them.
Just my $0.00.001 worth...
Howard Hoyt
CE WXYC FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
That may be the one I was thinking of. I was very surprised when I first heard about this idea. It was a possibility I'd never considered. Does it give insight into how the human brain interprets stimuli? Does a small amount of noise provoke the brain to work harder to discern small details? Runs exactly the opposite of what you'd normally think. Live musical performances are invariably far from having dead quiet backgrounds. There's always the rustling of people in their seats, coughing, programs being flipped through, people whispering or worse. And that's at a classical music concert where people actually want to listen attentively to what they paid to hear and there are no monster sound reinforcement systems, just the sounds of the musical instruments themselves. Do the echoes of these sounds reinforce the sense of spatial perception because they are affected by the room acoustics? When is a quiet background too quiet?
I think the purpose of dithering is different. I think it's used to mask quantization noise at very low signal levels that is a consequence of the digital nature of recordings.
Not really 'mask' - that would suggest the effect is at the perceptual level. Rather it decorrelates quantization errors (which would otherwise be quantization distortion if not for the presence of dither) and renders them more benign, noise like.
If you google stocastic resonance you will find a lot of scientific papers on using "noise" to enhance resolution. In this case the Wiki article seems good too.
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Isn't it that the 'objective' noise level as measured with an audio-bandwidth meter is higher with dither than without?
jan didden
no dither: worse SFDR, lower noise floor bottom
dithered: better SFDR, worse noise floor bottom
Without dither, there's a gross non-linearity below the LSB - a signal just disappears if it doesn't make it up to the first quantisation level. So the no-signal condition can be amazingly good as regards noise. But it exhibits crossover distortion rather like an under-biassed class B amp. So to answer your question - yes, dither adds noise - in exchange for linearity.
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