This is the nightmare world of digital playback -- things that shouldn't make a difference apparently do on some people's systems, and some people are able to pick up these subtleties in the sound, listening at the same time to a particular system, and some don't. As far as evidence is concerned, this can be mighty hard to acquire, simply because the actual process of trying to capture data alters the environment enough to skew the results.
If an effect is noted, then that is all that matters; having a reasonable, technical explanation for such is totally irrelevant to the situation at hand -- that's for the future to sort out ...
If I always insisted on having a "good" explanation for what I was hearing, in this audio game, before trying to ameliorate or sort out the issue, then I would have got nowhere fast, certainly not to the point I'm at now ... so, first fix; then, understand ...
With regard to the "last words", yes, this may in fact indicate that the other bloke has a better performing system than the poster in regard to reacting to the 'nulls' - a system of "higher quality" doesn't necessarily highlight differences more clearly, subjectively, especially if they're not relevant to the recording
If an effect is noted, then that is all that matters; having a reasonable, technical explanation for such is totally irrelevant to the situation at hand -- that's for the future to sort out ...
If I always insisted on having a "good" explanation for what I was hearing, in this audio game, before trying to ameliorate or sort out the issue, then I would have got nowhere fast, certainly not to the point I'm at now ... so, first fix; then, understand ...
With regard to the "last words", yes, this may in fact indicate that the other bloke has a better performing system than the poster in regard to reacting to the 'nulls' - a system of "higher quality" doesn't necessarily highlight differences more clearly, subjectively, especially if they're not relevant to the recording
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This seems to sound a bit too "magical" for me. Either something does have an effect or it doesn't; there can be no other alternatives, and so, if there is a difference, there must be a means of measuring it. If humankind is capable of sending and receiving signals to and from a 30 year old spacecraft on the edge of interstellar space, with a turnaround time of nearly a day and a half, and discerning that signal from the massive noise of the cosmic rays that bombard us, I have trouble in understanding how the far simpler matter of discerning differences in audio signals, literally under our noses, can be an insurmountable problem that defies current science and methods of measurement.
On this sort of matter, I think James Randi has far more plausible, rational, reasonable and logical explanations for such phenomena.
There's means but no will. Hence doesn't get done.
Objectivists don't because they see no evidence that there is a difference (its subjective) and subjectivists put their ears above measurements so because they hear it there's absolutely no need to measure.
Then its quite clear you've drunk an awful lot of koolaid
Someday I will have to relate a story about James Randi. It may or may not appear in a biography someone is writing about him, as I never got an acknowledgment after he solicited a contribution.Then its quite clear you've drunk an awful lot of koolaid
Yes, of course it can be measured - but who's going to invest the resources to achieving that? With space noises, there were/are quite a few millions of dollars floating around, to be used to get the job done ...
A program like DiffMaker, which theoretically is designed to do the very job, struggles to deal with much more than obvious stuff - separating the wheat from the chaff is no trivial task. Myself, knowing that the signals are different by ear, and looking at the captured data - see the Fancy Interconnects thread - would be scatching my head if asked to point to precisely what the "signs" are in the waveforms that correlate to what I hear ...
I'm reminded of something that the great philosopher Bertrand Russell said - in a somewhat different context (that of math) - but which seems relevant here:
The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
@bcarso
@fas42
BTW, I don't touch koolaid. Too sweet, too much sugar and no "adult" flavour.
Since you have an interest in metaphysics, I suspect the story may not be complimentary.
@fas42
Are you suggesting Diffmaker doesn't do what is claimed for it? If so, please explain what it doesn't do? I was under the, maybe false, assumption that it actually did compare two digital files and reported if there was any difference, bit for bit (excluding volume and other stated exclusions).
You may have already been asked this question, however, I will possibly re-iterate; how do you KNOW, with absolute certainty that the "signals are different"? You stated, in an earlier post, that when an "inferior" track was played immediately after a "superior" track, you could not tell the difference. Might not the same vagaries of the human brain also account for hearing differences when none exist? From my readings on this, human hearing (as well as all other senses) are very easily deceived by any number of reasons, not the least of which is that we are never exactly the same as when the previous sensation was observed. Are we really able to have absolute faith in our senses when vast amounts of peer reviewed research has shown otherwise?
BTW, I don't touch koolaid. Too sweet, too much sugar and no "adult" flavour.
Stories are just that - stories. Its for the listener to decide if the story is 'complimentary' or not.
Incidentally, I wasn't meaning the literal Koolaid because in that story the stuff used wasn't Koolaid it was Flavor Aid.
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Yes, really.
No, it would cease to be a story and become a work of propaganda then. You weren't aware that there were any differences? Stories make no assertions about character, they just record and then re-tell behaviour. That a person has 'character' for example is a convenient assumption to make, it cannot be shown.
I do believe 'truth' is a defense under libel laws. But IANAL.
No its widely known - Flavor Aid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The reference is made under 'Jonestown'.
I am deeply touched that you've been paying attention.
Mr Randi had an honorarium secured by the late George O. Abell that paid him for a two-week stint at UCLA many years ago. He gave lectures and demonstrations. I was there as a research engineer on the nonacademic staff at the time.
We all learned a lot about stage magic.
Hmm, really? I'll let the following speak for themselves.
Propaganda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia spurious - definition of spurious by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. Semantics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Are you also suggesting that I cannot assume that you have a character, and, in doing so, I can say what I like about you without impugning it? Or, is that being semantically challenged, in a similar vein?
@bcarso
I don't know if being "deeply touched" is worthy of a very simple right mouse click.
In learning about stage magic, did it have the concomitant education on the ease of human deception?
Propaganda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia spurious - definition of spurious by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. Semantics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Are you also suggesting that I cannot assume that you have a character, and, in doing so, I can say what I like about you without impugning it? Or, is that being semantically challenged, in a similar vein?
@bcarso
I don't know if being "deeply touched" is worthy of a very simple right mouse click.
In learning about stage magic, did it have the concomitant education on the ease of human deception?
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The problem is, and will be for any program that attempts such an exercise, is to accurately compensate for 'reasonable' differences, and to sift out those are 'unreasonable'. Slight drift or wobble in the clocking; non-perfect alignment of the samples, eg., 2nd waveform bits occur at, say, a position 5/16th of the way between the time steps of the 1st; phase shifts of part of the spectrum; slight variation in gain between channels or over time of sampling. These are hard to completely account for, and unless near perfectly done the differences that do count will be swamped by the unimportant majority. The hearing system will do an excellent job of separating them, though.
I have tried to get DiffMaker to do a decent job on reasonable, real world samples, and am not impressed ...
The "inferior" following the "superior" test can fail when mind is tracking the musical 'message' is the point that I was making - the brain is adjusting, compensating so that it 'gets' the same story. The way to get around that is to listen to sounds, and combinations of sounds, that you 'deliberately' dissociate from having a musical meaning -- just then I was struck by the thought that this could be analogous to the concept of painting with the right side of the brain - that is, you don't "paint a face", you actually paint a combination of shapes and tones, that just happens to end up looking like a face.
If the story goes that person P entered a brothel at 11.15pm on Friday evening then in the absence of futher details its for the listener to decide if P is a pimp, a playboy or a plumber.
No, I'm not. Nothing I say should be construed as any restriction whatsoever on your freedom of choice.
ISTM you can say what you like about my behaviour without impugning me. If that was your question which does rather seem in doubt.
And one of those 'truths' is that if something is real, then it's not too hard for someone versed in the art of doing such, to fake it.
So, Hollywood could ''prove" the moon landings were faked by perfectly mimicing all the video footage taken at the time, and showing everyone afterwards the props used to create the artifice ...
We used a similar sort of Common-Gate mode input in '97 on our D1. Using
a fet there reduces potential rectification issues. Worked great. Low
distortion, no feedback.
It was updated more recently as the "Zen I/V", a complementary version
using Jfets posted on this site.
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