What about studies that posit the ear is a non-linear transducer & also that is an active transducer - actually modifying it's response. It's seems not just that the brain interprets it in the way it desires in the moment but that the ear actually can change it's responsiveness (under the control of the nervous system obviously). This is not the same as your statement that the ear is a passive transducer!
Maybe we have restricted the focus on certain parts of the signal because of the model we have been using for the ear/hearing?
I agree with you - we are so far away from recreating the "live" experience that we must question what it is that is missing. That's why I said that the mechanism of hearing still needs a lot of studying before we can say that one method of sound reproduction is superior to another. The criteria for making this judgement may be so off the mark. It strikes me that we are at the point that painting was at before perspective was discovered.
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The problem is that the vibrations are not the same.
IMO it is not possible for any house system to really reproduce a live events... but there can be some good aproximations.
For that we need very wide bandwith (from DC to ultra freq).
My brain is fairly adept at recreating the musical illusion from a wide range of information carriers and transducers. Once the music takes over, very different systems with widely differing characteristics become equally transparent. However, and this explains my fascination with sound reproduction, some artefacts created by sound systems can destroy this illusion. Even when this happens for a split second, the magic is gone.
It is my experience, that vinyl is just more prone to creating such artifacts. I already mentioned the inner track issue; there where some albums I just did not play the last one or two songs on a side. With CD this just doesn't happen that often. Some are mastered in a way I dislike, but I can attribute that to a specific volume, not to a whole technology.
In short, when listening to a well done CD, I can be fairly confident that it will sound right all the way through. With vinyl, it is allways waiting for the next pot hole.
I agree with you but would actually say the opposite of what you say in the next paragraph - to me most digital seems to have some artifacts or incongruous nature to it that ruins the illusion!
You should try an air-bearing linear tracker arm!
You make it sound as if a car is an active machine because it changes behavior and direction under influence of a driver. If that is your interpretation of 'active' yes, than an ear is an active transducer. I see it differently, but that's OK I guess.
BTW If you are interested in knowing more about this stuff, try to get an hour with someone who designs hearing aids. You will never look at your ears quite the same way again 😉
jan
Yes the premise is wrong. Even if the vibrations on the ear are identical in all aspects as at the live event, you will still not experience, not perceive, the live event. You never will, unless you are at the live event.
jan didden
You seem to be saying that you know the field & yet it seems you don't know what I'm talking about? So firstly tell me is the ear a linear transducer?
Is this the experts from whom you have ascertained your model of the ear - interesting? Are you serious?
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The physiology of hearing (James O. Pickles) and the psychology of hearing (Brian Moore) are well studied subjects, and a vast knowledge already exists in that field. Some of these insights are relevant to sound reproduction, and some others are not. Just to mention some you can verify for yourself with a piano, a pulse generator and two pieces of flexible tubing:
- Combination tones: if the ear is stimulated by two tones at the same time, combination tones may be heard which are not physically present in the stimulus. One is the difference tone at f2-f1, another the cubic distortion tone at 2f1-f2 with f2>f1.
- Missing fundamental: consider a sound consisting of short impulses occuring 200 times per second. The sound has a low pitch very close to the pitch of a 200 Hz pure tone, and a sharp timbre. It contains harmonics with frequencies at 200, 400, 600 etc. If the sound is filtered so as to remove the 200 Hz component, the pitch does not change; the only change is a slight change in timbre.
-Inherent noise cancelation: take two flexible tubes of about 15 cm, 2 cm diameter. Dimensions are not very critical. Go to a source of random noise like the hood over your stove. Listen to the noise with one ear closed and one ear through the tube. Now do the same with two ear through two tubes. You will notice a large drop in perceived noise.
The first two phenomena to me do not readily seem to be relevant to sound reproduction, but the third is to a high degree. The reason is that it shows a lot of post-processing takes place to filter out ambience related artifacts, and that this requires binaural input. Studies in which auditoria where measured at a very high resolution (mapping the frequency response at many locations) showed enormous fluctuations, even at short distances. Yet, subjectively, no differences could be discerned that correlated to these fluctuations. Main lesson here: when subjectively judging loudspeakers or other components, do it in mono. By doing it in stereo, the brain will mask shortcomings that might otherwise be heard.
I didn't miss the point. I agree with everything after your comma. I disagree with everything before your comma.
My point was simply that measurements and instruments are all we have. And our senses. I tend to trust them, even though I know they may be wrong or fooled or whatever. It just means they are imperfect, not invalid, or flailing around in the dark in your words.
The instruments are not invalid - just the application of them to the problem. Again, if we don't fully understand how hearing operates then how can we use measurements as the criteria to judge if A is better than B as far as hearing is concerned? Are we not just flailing around in the dark?
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Here's a quote for Janneman if he still thinks that the ear is just a passive transducer as he said - "It is generally accepted that the acute sensitivity and frequency discrimination of mammalian hearing requires active mechanical amplification of the sound stimulus within the cochlea"
Ah. To say if something is better there must be common standards. Most life-like? Through measurements or just hearing? That's the rub of this entire thread. And why it's a long trip that ultimately goes nowhere.
Well that's the point - there are those here who cite the better linearity of digital as proof that is is superior to vinyl. Linearity may be a complete red herring & unimportant as far as getting closer to the recreation of the illusion of the original performance through our hearing. Only a detailed understanding of the functioning of both the ear & hearing will allow us to say what are the important measurements & what can be ignored.
The model that seems prevalent here & stated by Janneman is that the ear & hearing mechanism is simply a passive transducer & that it has no part in actively shaping the sound we hear - that all the shaping is done in the brain, hence the focus on linearity.
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The thing is: the ear and subsequent neural processing are non-linear and lots of active filtering, masking and generation of artifacts take place. If any componant in your stereo system would behave like that, it would get thrown out immediately.
Fortunately, however, that very same, from a technical point of view deeply flawed hearing system, is involved in the perception of both live and reproduced music. In other words, these imperfections do not detract from the idea that in the faithful reproduction of music, linearity in a number of dimensions is important.
Well, I see lot's of people criticising SETs & Tube amplifiers in general as non-linear devices & yet lot's of people who claim that they are the most natural sounding amplifiers that they have heard - same with horns. So maybe your point is not correct or maybe it is - I'm just raising possibilities that might be worth considering?
That's a bit of a leap, don't you think? Who says that linearity is the important factor? "Faithful reproduction", according to the ear, may have nothing to do with linearity. How do we know without a detailed understanding of the mechanism of hearing? It would seem to me that linearity has a lot to do with measuring equipment though. I understand what you're saying but disagree with your presumptions. It might be that we might hear a more "faithful reproduction (according to our ears) without adhering strictly to linearity?
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Oh, but we do know quite a lot about human auditory perception. Read a book that addresses tinnitus from the neurological point of view, as a decent introduction.
It is just that the whole premise of two-channel stereo with replay over two loudspeakers in the average living room is fundamentally flawed.
And now try to think it through: something may be better, while something else may sound better. There is no conflict there. And there is no need for invoking magical properties of one or the other system, medium, or even ear.
Get it?
Why not tell us what you know & if we have the full model yet? Do you, for instance, subscribe to the model of the ear as a passive transducer as Janneman?
Yes, probably correct so arguing over which is the best way of using this flawed system Vinyl or CD is a bit mis-directed?
If all we want from our audio system is the best auditory illusion of the original performance then it's the ears that decide & not measurements, so if by "better" you mean measures better than this is of no consequence to the objective. Hence trying to argue one system is inferior to another by comparing measurement is meaningless when the objective of the system is to provide the best auditory illusion of the original performance.
Get it? Have a little think!
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I don't know that quote, but it could be. I know that there's level-dependent attenuation and freq response modification, independent from the brain control, by the ear mechanism. There's also resonance effects which can be seen as amplification. Maybe others I don't know.
But don't lose sight of the original issue: the ear is not involved in interpreting what is heard, is not involved in interpreting the sound that comes in through it. In that context we were discussing, the ear is a passive sensor, the perception is done between the ears.
jan didden
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