Fully agree to this, have experienced it multiple times.
The only comment I would make is that it isn't the ears that adapt. The ears are just sensors, they don't have an opinion on their own.
It is the interpretation in the brain auditive area that is highly adaptable - and it does so constantly.
There is a wider implication, and that is, that all our senses and sensors are interpreted relatively. Come into a 20C room after a 30C hot outside and it feels cool.
Come into a 15C room from a 0C refrigeration room and it feels comfortably warm.
Jan
The only comment I would make is that it isn't the ears that adapt. The ears are just sensors, they don't have an opinion on their own.
It is the interpretation in the brain auditive area that is highly adaptable - and it does so constantly.
There is a wider implication, and that is, that all our senses and sensors are interpreted relatively. Come into a 20C room after a 30C hot outside and it feels cool.
Come into a 15C room from a 0C refrigeration room and it feels comfortably warm.
Jan
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If your ears are so discerning, why stick to such an outdated speaker concept?
I think it was SY or Wavebourn here who sent an audio signal through a banana.
Tom
Yes both through banana, steel wool, etc.
I made this test setup and transferred a file from one PC to another.
And it's through very cheap headphone amplifier with DAC, minimixer with ADC, sericoupled cheap capacitors and 6 meters of the cheapest usb printer cable.
Not a single one could hear the difference between the original file and the same file that had been through the setup.
Some even tried to put the files into Audacity to compare them, but could not find the difference
Well put Jan.... sorry... I forgot to include the interpreter = the brain.
As for the temperature equivalent... you "nailed" it
Hi Tom, No. The outlier I'm referring to is the listener, not the device.
From a 2010 Stanford Medical Center research paper pre-release article ,
"A typical healthy human brain contains about 200 billion nerve cells, or neurons, linked to one another via hundreds of trillions of tiny contacts called synapses. It is at these synapses that an electrical impulse traveling along one neuron is relayed to another, either enhancing or inhibiting the likelihood that the second nerve will fire an impulse of its own. One neuron may make as many as tens of thousands of synaptic contacts with other neurons, said Stephen Smith, PhD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of a paper describing the study, to be published Nov. 18 in Neuron" . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . 'Observed in this manner, the brain's overall complexity is almost beyond belief, said Smith. "One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor -- with both memory-storage and information-processing elements -- than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth," he said."
As Jan's mentioned raw data from the ears is processed by a brain with such complexity, one that we also know restructures itself in response to its own experience, I think it's certain that there are some among us who end up using the raw data in ways that others of us are not aware of.
And while I do trust scientists' and engineers' statements of what they're measuring, I'm also open to the possibility that what they're measuring in any particular occurrence may not be the only phenomena that are there to be measured.
Again, I'm not interested in "better". My purpose here is to question the idea put forward that if it's not measured it's not heard.
After the various tests I have done at home, I am completely convinced that if you can not measure the difference, then it can not be heard either.
There are even differences that CAN be measured but which cannot be heard.
An example is that you can measure the distortion on one amplifier to 0.00005 and on another amplifier it can be 0.003 and should there be a sound difference between the 2 amplifiers, then it is certainly not the distortion number that does it.
It was also said that 2 amplifiers that were 100% identical would sound so different that they could not be used for biamping.
Or put another way, a person thought that for example Dali Megaline was an impossible speaker, because it requires 2 amplifiers due to electronic crossover and it was impossible to find 2 completely identical amplifiers.
But if 2 identical amplifiers should be so different, then the right and left channels must also be different.
The problem is just that the difference between right and left speaker is far greater and even greater in a room
The story about Dali Megaline and the 2 amplifiers I can only laugh at, as the 2 amplifiers will play in 2 different impedances and 2 different frequency ranges and how you will be able to hear the difference between 2 identical amplifiers playing in different frequency ranges, it must be some imagination that happens up in the head.
You can measure pretty much everything in hospital equipment, space rockets and measure the size of a rock lying on the moon and then some people think that you can not measure everything relevant in hifi? That too funny
And just as funny is that those who think to sit with the most excellent hifi setup and even have listening experience and gold ears, they could not designate the original file out of 4 where the 3 had been through my test setup.
Boydk who also writes here in the thread could hear if the file had been or had not been through capacitors.
But no one could hear the difference between the file through a $ 7 capacitor and a $ 2000 capacitor.
And as Boydk said, it was only because it was a test where you force yourself to listen for differences that you heard the difference, as it was so unusually small that under normal circumstances you would not notice it.
This is what happens when you are only allowed to use your ears and are not affected by what you know or can see.
And that's why there is almost always storytelling when it comes to selling hifi, your brain is told in advance what it is to hear and then you hear it.
The best example of this was an amateur club in Denmark where they had to listen to RCA signal cables. And they heard both big and small differences and there was a lot of talk about the sound from the different cables. Right up until one of the participants saw that the switch was not at all on the input they used. It was on balanced XLR and they had been listening to the same cable all along, but just the fact that they saw the cables being changed was enough for the brain to tell them there was a difference.
Man is unusually easy to cheat and in the hifi world you cheat yourself even easier due to the money spent, the enthusiasm, the expectation and that you have changed it yourself.
But I understand well those who have spent for example $ 30,000 on a setup, do not want the cheapest cables, it will look completely wrong, even if the sound will be the same.
There are even differences that CAN be measured but which cannot be heard.
An example is that you can measure the distortion on one amplifier to 0.00005 and on another amplifier it can be 0.003 and should there be a sound difference between the 2 amplifiers, then it is certainly not the distortion number that does it.
It was also said that 2 amplifiers that were 100% identical would sound so different that they could not be used for biamping.
Or put another way, a person thought that for example Dali Megaline was an impossible speaker, because it requires 2 amplifiers due to electronic crossover and it was impossible to find 2 completely identical amplifiers.
But if 2 identical amplifiers should be so different, then the right and left channels must also be different.
The problem is just that the difference between right and left speaker is far greater and even greater in a room
The story about Dali Megaline and the 2 amplifiers I can only laugh at, as the 2 amplifiers will play in 2 different impedances and 2 different frequency ranges and how you will be able to hear the difference between 2 identical amplifiers playing in different frequency ranges, it must be some imagination that happens up in the head.
You can measure pretty much everything in hospital equipment, space rockets and measure the size of a rock lying on the moon and then some people think that you can not measure everything relevant in hifi? That too funny
And just as funny is that those who think to sit with the most excellent hifi setup and even have listening experience and gold ears, they could not designate the original file out of 4 where the 3 had been through my test setup.
Boydk who also writes here in the thread could hear if the file had been or had not been through capacitors.
But no one could hear the difference between the file through a $ 7 capacitor and a $ 2000 capacitor.
And as Boydk said, it was only because it was a test where you force yourself to listen for differences that you heard the difference, as it was so unusually small that under normal circumstances you would not notice it.
This is what happens when you are only allowed to use your ears and are not affected by what you know or can see.
And that's why there is almost always storytelling when it comes to selling hifi, your brain is told in advance what it is to hear and then you hear it.
The best example of this was an amateur club in Denmark where they had to listen to RCA signal cables. And they heard both big and small differences and there was a lot of talk about the sound from the different cables. Right up until one of the participants saw that the switch was not at all on the input they used. It was on balanced XLR and they had been listening to the same cable all along, but just the fact that they saw the cables being changed was enough for the brain to tell them there was a difference.
Man is unusually easy to cheat and in the hifi world you cheat yourself even easier due to the money spent, the enthusiasm, the expectation and that you have changed it yourself.
But I understand well those who have spent for example $ 30,000 on a setup, do not want the cheapest cables, it will look completely wrong, even if the sound will be the same.
Expensive looking cables don't have to be expensive. Some can be had for little over standard zip cord price.
Man has been evolved to the point that it can use all available data to decide whether it should run or not. A bird song will not scare you, but the rumbling noise that sounds like a tiger does.
You KNOW that low, rumbling sounds come from large animals with large cavity chests, which intend to eat you. You KNOW that large speaker boxes are better for bass reproduction than smaller ones.
That is the reason that in Floyd Toole's sighted test, the big boxes were preferred above the smaller ones, but when he repeated it blind the picture changed dramatically. Because some smaller boxes actually had better bass than the big one.
But in the sighted test, because you KNOW that big boxes go lower, they ended up eclipsing the smaller ones that actually had lower bass.
Once you look a bit into perception, it all makes so much sense that it becomes a no-brainer.
What continues to amaze me is that the average audiophile, who is all about listening, has no interest in how his listening impression is formed.
Jan
You KNOW that low, rumbling sounds come from large animals with large cavity chests, which intend to eat you. You KNOW that large speaker boxes are better for bass reproduction than smaller ones.
That is the reason that in Floyd Toole's sighted test, the big boxes were preferred above the smaller ones, but when he repeated it blind the picture changed dramatically. Because some smaller boxes actually had better bass than the big one.
But in the sighted test, because you KNOW that big boxes go lower, they ended up eclipsing the smaller ones that actually had lower bass.
Once you look a bit into perception, it all makes so much sense that it becomes a no-brainer.
What continues to amaze me is that the average audiophile, who is all about listening, has no interest in how his listening impression is formed.
Jan
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I think we humans are archaic in that most of us belong to a herd.
This may be religious, by culture or whatever.
1. rule: We are the good ones and supreme
2. rule: All other flocks are inferior and evil
And here we see the flock of audiophiles, neglecting any reasonable arguments.
On the other side the "objective" flock, laughing at them, i.e. another flock.
My home is the second herd.
It is as simple like that.
This may be religious, by culture or whatever.
1. rule: We are the good ones and supreme
2. rule: All other flocks are inferior and evil
And here we see the flock of audiophiles, neglecting any reasonable arguments.
On the other side the "objective" flock, laughing at them, i.e. another flock.
My home is the second herd.
It is as simple like that.
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That is to say, we all still have a pleistocene mind and the music reproduction technique had just arrived one century ago
Strange that the sound quality is constantly rising when no sensible people either do-it-yourself or manufacturers use blind tests, or maybe that's why.
Hifi is about having a reference/the live music and approaching this, it is not about what people like or what they imagine they like. it is only relevant if you make "McDonald's hi-fi", where it is a matter of hitting the tastes of as many people as possible, hitting the lowest common denominator. That which Sean Olive og floyd tool have worked a lot on
To find the best compromise, of course you do not have to work blindfolded, the job is really difficult in advance, it is absolutely not necessary to complicate it further with blind tests, as nothing sensible says.
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Hmmm, You Guys! You're asked to think about a perspective a little wider than what you've been living with for the past thirty years and all you hear is "Gentlemen, Start your engines!"
I think it was Maugham who offered this self check. "If you don't change your beliefs your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?"
I think it was Maugham who offered this self check. "If you don't change your beliefs your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?"
You may want to look up the Better-Than-Average effect then. I would also imagine that upward and downward social comparisons come into play with audiophiles (and humans in general).
I'm amazed by the human brain too. There's a good reason I steered my psychology degree more in the direction of neuroscience towards the end. But I think it's important to keep in mind that while the human brain is amazing, it is also fallible. The brain cannot process every sensory input it receives. Thus, a large part of perception is attention. We perceive what we pay attention to. The brain also uses many shortcuts (schemas for example) to save energy and to select what is paid attention to. The list goes on.
If you're interested in human cognition (i.e., the science of how we think) I suggest starting with Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking Fast and Slow".
Right. But the restructuring doesn't occur instantly in real time. It takes days or months for the restructuring to occur. That's why it takes a while to recover from a stroke.
But if experience and brain restructuring is what makes some people better (more perceptive?) listeners than others, why does Olive & Toole show that trained listeners (professional musicians, audiophiles, Harman Kardon trained listeners) have the same preferences in blind tests as random college students pulled off the street? Basically they concluded that you don't need trained listeners in listening trials. Untrained ones have the same preferences for which component sounds better as the trained listers (with restructured brains). The only difference between audiophiles and others is that the audiophiles tended to rate the equipment under test lower than other listeners. Maybe audiophiles are just notoriously cranky...
I question that too. Did you read my response in Post #13? I basically agree with you that the engineering measurements don't account for all experiences in a sighted trial. That's because in a sighted trial psychology and human cognition pays a much larger role than they do in a blind trial.
So I think the measurements can explain most or all of the perceived differences, as long as you include the measurements of human biases in the equation. I.e., perception = psychology + engineering in sighted trials, whereas perception will correlate much more strongly with engineering measurements in blind trials.
Tom
I have absolutely no idea what the point is in this. If there is any. It appears that you have no idea what perception is, no idea how that opinion about what you hear is being constructed in your brain. Your missing so much!
"Strange that the sound quality is constantly rising " haha, you crack me up! People pay more than the original price for vintage amps, surely because they are so nicely bad. You're really funny!
Jan
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Since this is diyAudio forum, diy cable dressing is a good way to get the look you want for very little money above the zip cord price.
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