I can only guess at how the perception would change. But the means by which that perception and any other was produced would remain the same.
Until you show that something that interferes with the hearing of voices also interferes with misperception of music reproduction, I must take your claim with a grain of salt.
Why? The perception of voices, of music and anything and everything that has meaning to a subject is rendered by the same cognitive apparatus. The perception might be assimilated from different cortical areas in response to different contexts, but it is the same perception forming process regardless of its content or its origin.
That may be, but when people hear voices (a hallucination) those people may or may not believe what the voices say and or may not believe the voices are from other people (delusion). Sometimes people argue or talk back to the voices, in which case they obviously don't think they believe what the voices are saying. Sometimes they know the voices come from their own brains, but hearing the voices may or may not still be disturbing and or distracting.
When people misperceive music reproduction, they may or may not be deluded depending on their level of confidence that they heard correctly. Whether or not what they heard was an hallucination remains unclear.
It seems to me that sometimes (not always) people misperceive music reproduction because they focus attention on one aspect of the sound when listening to one A/B device and focus attention on another aspect of sound when listening to a second device. In that case the error mechanism might better be classified as illusory, rather than something more severe and commonly associated with mental illness (hallucination). Olanzipine might be just the thing to unravel the relative probability of illusion verses hallucination in misperception of music reproduction for the population 🙂
The above would not be to say that delusional beliefs could not arise from illusory experience, of course.
Whether or not delusional beliefs form from an erroneous perceptual experience may depend on another element of personality: The need for certainty. Some people seem to have much more need of it than others.
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But the hallucination is a perception. Likewise if you listen to a singer singing next to you, you also perceive them. And if you listen to a recording of that singer, you also perceive them. They are all perceptions.
The distinction is that the hallucination is obviously a delusion because it is created in the mind of the subject, where as the listener sat next to the singer is perceiving a real event. For the case for the person sat listening to a pair of loudspeakers, I will leave you to make up your own mind...
But our perception is always an illusion of the reality in which we find ourselves.
I would guess that many contributors here would agree that the satisfaction (and possibly the extent of any illusory experience) they gain from listening to reproduced music is aided by less-powerful drugs too. An interesting survey beckons maybe?
That is true but appears to arise from a fundamental propensity to anxiety from which the need for certainty emerges as a symptom.
Amir's panther value scale appears arbitrary, subjective and often divorced from the measurements. The Yamaha HS5 and today's Elac Debut Reference DBR-62 for examples. Many, but especially at ASR, confuse lambasting gurus or taking mortal offense at equipment prices with scientific rigour. The measurements are welcome and great but so is ASR's function as a containment pen.
@soundbloke,
I'd think Markw4 is pointing to the difference between our minds creating something without auditory input while the different perception in case of identical stimuli might be depending just on distraction or narrowing of conscious attention.
As an example, the "gorilla in our midst" experiment; would we call it hallucination if one does not consciously detect the "gorilla" at first?
Presumably we would call it hallucination if one sees a "gorilla" all the time as long as the scene lasts......
Otoh, obviously I know next to nothing about whats happening in our brains when hallucinating, but it seems natural to distinct between a malfunction and a difference in processing.
I'd think Markw4 is pointing to the difference between our minds creating something without auditory input while the different perception in case of identical stimuli might be depending just on distraction or narrowing of conscious attention.
As an example, the "gorilla in our midst" experiment; would we call it hallucination if one does not consciously detect the "gorilla" at first?
Presumably we would call it hallucination if one sees a "gorilla" all the time as long as the scene lasts......
Otoh, obviously I know next to nothing about whats happening in our brains when hallucinating, but it seems natural to distinct between a malfunction and a difference in processing.
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But the means of perception is still the same, regardless of its origin. I can sit hear now and imagine a band playing that has no (direct) sensory origin. It might be formed from a memory of a real event (or a reproduction of it) or it might be created entirely in my mind. But the perception of the event is rendered in the same manner.
Any "distraction or narrowing of conscious attention" is the result of that perception, not its cause - for so long as it lasts. Possibly we might find a hallucination that is also caused by such prior narrowing and in turn causes an errant percept. But that is not a necessary cause of the hallucination, since a subject may also be devoid of the knowledge to know otherwise even without such narrowing.
The formation of a perception (or the sudden perception of a gorilla emerging from the mist or even hiding in plain sight) is one of the processes I have been talking of previously re the convergence of our perceptual apparatus on some percept. It is a very difficult process to model, not least because we can develop new percepts - whether they are delusional or not and whether they arise from real direct (obviously causal) sensory inputs or not.
And here I will take one more (last!) chance to push for my poll about stereo reproduction - please take 1 minute to go here:
Reproduction - Y/N?
//
Except that we know we are very easily fooled when it comes to our auditory perception. Especially because our ability to remember exactly what we heard a moment ago is terrible. Yet a cow has never jumped over the moon.
So because you just admitted that it's possible the differences were imagined, and the chance of that happening with humans is extremely high, I'm going to assume that's what happened.
There is a difference between a high risk in people who aren't aware of the underlying mechanism and a general inability to control bias (at least to a certain degree), you exclude that possibility that people are able to learn controlling bias effects (admitted that humans aren't perfect).
It would arguably be unethical to give drugs to people not needing them. Perhaps better to study some people already taking them. If they don't hear voices then they maybe they should also not misperceive audible differences from identical audio devices. My guess would be that the combination of mechanisms that result in hearing voices is not the exact same combination of mechanisms leading to misperception of audible differences in music reproduction. In any case, we don't know for sure at this time, and delusion is still probably not the best word choice for describing mild cases.
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I was referring to alcohol, although rather vaguely. I should have been more explicit.
But the mechanism of rendering our perception is the same. You are describing the same process emanating from different cortical areas and perhaps in different sensory modalities. But nevertheless, a perception is a perception.
It describes a false conclusion/hypothesis rendered in our perception (or part of it) very well. I cannot see a reason for further qualifying the process. A delusion is essentially an illusion that can be demonstrated to be false, unlike the remainder of our perceptions that are still an illusion but have a source in reality.
If you are going out of your way to try to fool people all it shows is one can contrive ways to fool people. Nothing new there.
Nothing new about any of this. Some people are remarkably good at skilled listening, even though you may not have encountered any of them yet. Your chances of meeting someone who can teach you something useful go down dramatically if you refuse to allow that of few of them do exist.
de·lu·sion
/dəˈlo͞oZHən/
noun
1. an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
"the delusion of being watched"
2. whatever soundbloke says it is.
Is anyone here fooling themselves into thinking that any of this matters to more than a tiny portion of the listening public.
@soundbloke,
I'm unfortunately also struggling with the meaning of the term (foreign language doesn't make it easier) and IMO it is even more complicated wrt multidimensional evaluations.
Some perceptual mistakes are obviously hard wired for the majority like the perception of a virtual sound source in case that two frontal seperated speakers are both reproducing the same stimulus.
Would you denote it as delusion or/and hallucination?
I'm unfortunately also struggling with the meaning of the term (foreign language doesn't make it easier) and IMO it is even more complicated wrt multidimensional evaluations.
Some perceptual mistakes are obviously hard wired for the majority like the perception of a virtual sound source in case that two frontal seperated speakers are both reproducing the same stimulus.
Would you denote it as delusion or/and hallucination?