I mentioned it because I hoped it would be an easily understood example of why the term "accurate representation" is not helpful. I will retract the example and state instead that unless you are made aware of what is missing in your perception, you do not perceive it. Hence the majority of the population are evidently satisfied with their means of music reproduction.
Indeed. Although I have always wondered how she "hears" in modern auditoria with substantial concrete floors.
Ahh....ok your a bit hard to follow sometimes, so your saying it is possible for some to have a grasp on reality just not most?
I will help out here and cite the late Angus MacKenzie - a hi-fi reviewer from the days before "PRAT", "microdynamics" and other such ill-defined terminology. He was blind and attributed his extraordinary hearing acuity partly due to his compensation for that disability. I have witnessed him being the sole person at an AES meeting full of professional engineers that was able not only to accurately identify differences in audio reproduction systems, but also to reliably attribute them to a cause. I learned not to hold the same respect for many other hi-fi journalists that followed him.
No. I am saying that everyone has their own individual grasp on reality as they perceive it. That perception is the product of their individual observation (sense) of reality and their propensity to discern objects and their behaviours in that observation.
I’d say it’s a safe call that some have a better grasp on the baseline than others, but you make it sound as if there is only individual reality amongst billions of humans. This is a guess but maybe there’s 5% that actually get it?
Someone once debated with me at length whether the perception of height was valid. Not 2-channel reproduced height, real life height like an airplane overhead. A mid-life adult participating in audio forums had to test the concept with an assistant before being convinced. Many years later this still amazes me.
One has to put that into the context of the times. The electronics and speakers of the day were more primitive and had clear flaws (in many cases).
soundbloke,
you have raised the discussion to an almost philosophical level. I am impressed as well as surprised.
But this is incorrect. You should at least accept the unsatisfactorily substantiated categorization conscious learning and unconscious learning, or maintain as I do that learning is a nonconscious event, a primeval capability.
you have raised the discussion to an almost philosophical level. I am impressed as well as surprised.
But this is incorrect. You should at least accept the unsatisfactorily substantiated categorization conscious learning and unconscious learning, or maintain as I do that learning is a nonconscious event, a primeval capability.
There is one reality and the population's individual unique perceptions of it.
The experiment I referred to concerned low levels of noise floor modulation that is as valid in today's context as it was then. Even in his older days, his hearing acuity was demonstrably greater than many of the professionals around him.
That I regard as a shortcoming since it leaves matters much more open to (mis)interpretation.
All cognitive learning is conscious. It is the level of consciousness and its extent in time that varies markedly. But it remains impossible to acquire knowledge of something without first becoming aware of it. The distinction in what I have posted here is the cognitive part - and what I have grouped as knowledge, namely the information of which we perceive - that is of which "we know we know" - or at least think we do! Philosophy heh!
The whole of out neural network is capable of learning - even the "simple" reflexive servo-like networks in the spinal cord that elicit basic movements. This is then unconscious learning. However, our perception is created solely from our cognitive representation of our sensed reality and the response of all those other parts to it. And in developing such perceptions, each new percept arises from conscious awareness of the error between our sensed reality and the prior perceptual model of it.
I should have made this more clear previously. My apologies. Although I am not so sure I have explained it clearly now!
The term "delusion" can be used (according to my dictionary) with quite wide ranging meaning and I'd say it should be in this context more like illusion, meaning our mind is mistaken in its interpretation of the brain's reaction to auditory stimuli (due to distraction, bias, memory retrieval/storage problems, inattention and so on).
But we as listeners have to accept that our perceptions, if stated consciously, can be wrong; we have to be open-minded in this regard too, otherwise it would be a claim of infallibility.
That's what I've had in mind; learning to distinguish between differences in presentation and differences in perception is crucial, albeit difficult. IMO this one of the reasons why the proportion of false answers in "same/different" trials is often large, when participants in fact are listening to an identical stimulus twice in a row.
Further complicated by the different internal judgement processes triggered by different test protocols.
Of course; not least as it is most likely a combination of several cognitive abilities and physiological features.
The problem with illusion is that the whole of our perception is an illusion. I used delusion to distinguish those parts of the illusion that have no basis in reality.
It's more that the model must account for not only our ability to learn as we go along but also that there are many modulators of our behaviour. We are highly non-linear and unlikely therefore to be describable completely by linear means.
As so often, I simply did not understand what your motivation this kind of "one liner" really could be, hence my question.
Numer of people who are interested in the topic? Number of people believing that it is interesting for a larger proportion?
Just as an example, are discussions about Hilbert transforms (for envelope detection) on suppressed carrier modulation for the masses, but what we talking about in this thread is just for few?
What about osciallators with below -150 dB harmonic distortion?
Don't get me wrong, I'm often interested in these topics too (although not able to participate always), but why should the number of people thinking it is important matter?
+1
I have not been completely convinced by blind test results for audio. It is logical to expect audio tests done by the blind would be very sensitive.
It should matter at least to those concerned with marketing.
Last edited: