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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2014 15:22:18 GMT
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Post by MikeMusic on Dec 31, 2014 15:28:12 GMT
This is hopefully the same vid Ah no you beat me to it ! Gives me an insight into the other half who has to lip read sometimes
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Post by pinkie on Dec 31, 2014 17:02:19 GMT
That's the vid that got my "left brain / right brain" thread locked elsewhere .
People get very defensive about the idea that they don't just hear with their ears. The really big effect I notice is closing my eyes to shut off the visual input to the listening process. In part, maybe this just helps relaxation. But the major factor I consistently note is that the sound expands in space when I close my eyes. With my eyes shut, the sound (from my system at its best) comes from beyond the physical dimensions of the room. I "hear" the music coming from a place that must be next doors living room (to the left) or the dogs room (behind).
With my eyes open - the sound is confined to the gap between the speakers, or at best the room itself. It may appear to be "big" or "small" - and instruments may be crowded and blurred, or distinct and placed, but they are always constrained by the physical boundaries of the room that I can see. Shut my eyes - and the sound comes from a wider source. The room gets bigger!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2014 17:20:34 GMT
All of that makes sense to me. I don't recall the thread you mention, but I will take a look at some other sites. Sounds interesting to me and a pity it got locked. I really don't understand why anyone would want to stop discussion. It's not like anyone is forcing them to agree with or accept any of it.
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Post by MartinT on Jan 2, 2015 9:21:39 GMT
The 'McGurk effect' might offer one explanation of why I prefer listening with my eyes closed. I don't want or need visual stimulus when I'm listening.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2015 10:10:15 GMT
Hmmm...I didn't believe I was hearing that to start with...very interesting.
As someone who has hearing difficulties, I use visual clues to a large degree. The strange thing is that unlike Richard, when I'm listening to the hi-fi, I don't have any sense of space restriction but the sound can stretch beyond the room boundaries.
Even more so now, with the new stands for the Quads, they have improved the imaging quite a bit. Not sure why as the old stands were solid as hell but only fixed at the bottom whereas these extend all the way up the sides.
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 2, 2015 13:15:04 GMT
The 'McGurk effect' might offer one explanation of why I prefer listening with my eyes closed. I don't want or need visual stimulus when I'm listening. Dark room with the LEDs covered for me The darker it is the more detail there is in the music - due to the eye brain connection going offline and leaving more for the ears to work with I'm sure
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Post by AlanS on Jan 2, 2015 16:45:17 GMT
Potentially an invaluable thread to move forward in the I trust my ears scenario frequently encountered. Not sure the addition of ASA helps or confuses the subject.
I am also interested in the way differences are communicated, some statements advising difference in sound due to one change as though the experience was like changing from an iPod to a full blown electrostatic speaker panel system.
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Post by pinkie on Jan 2, 2015 16:59:06 GMT
Potentially an invaluable thread to move forward in the I trust my ears scenario frequently encountered. Not sure the addition of ASA helps or confuses the subject. I am also interested in the way differences are communicated, some statements advising difference in sound due to one change as though the experience was like changing from an iPod to a full blown electrostatic speaker panel system. It may prove interesting. Certainly this forum has members who seem to be much better able to discuss without getting defensive and hostile when issues which are contrary to their views are expressed. The "I trust my ears" is of course nothing of the sort, usually. Its "I trust my listening experience" which is a package, including visual and knowledge cues. (You can shut your eyes, and tape up the leds, but you still know there are cones under your amplifier). I think I have shifted my terminology for discussing this subjective "total listening experience" basis for evaluating equipment. It is of course completely valid and appropriate to the listening pleasure of the advocat of the method. It's limitation, is that to the extent that the experience depends on factors which are not universal (like the sound pressure waves arriving at the eardrum) the experience may not be universal. Others will experience differently. The "effect" cannot be universally shared in the way that (at least potentially) something which DOES change the sound pressure waves could be universally experienced. The ears can be used in (near) isolation to evaluate. But those trying it are usually the "objectivists" with blind trial procedures to help eliminate visual and knowledge cues. And that methodology is often frustrated by things like alleged burn-in, warm up, not to say the need for a relaxed "right brain" state, rather than a left brain one. Critically it is not available because those prepared to endure the "objectivist" methodology, should they fail to hear anything that way, haven't established that the effect is not due to sound pressure waves - the fault might lie with their hearing equipment. But those with the hearing equipment able to detect the effect subjectively are uninterested in making their equipment available for the purposes of the objective demonstration. As long as everyone is happy with what they hear, and their consequent decisions about what equipment to use and how to use it, it doesn't matter.
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Post by John on Jan 2, 2015 20:11:07 GMT
It is a balance we have aimed for
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jkeny
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Post by jkeny on Jan 2, 2015 20:16:27 GMT
I think we have a fundamental underlying problem in this whole area of why DBTs don't reveal the "night & day" differences reported in sighted listening. The problem is that we don't understand the nature of auditory perception. What I have gathered from my reading is that auditory perception is a moment to moment guessing game that takes the vibrations arriving at the ears & then begins the process of arranging & evaluating these vibrations (which have been turned into electrical signals on the neurons) into meaningful auditory objects. This requires ongoing & intensive processing. in other words we are always involved in arriving at our best guess about these signals & composing them into a scene that is representative of the real world as we know it. From this it follows that: - it's not "trust my ears" but "trust my auditory perception" - something can appear to be a "night & day" difference even from a small change if that change gives us better clues to our auditory processing. For instance if noise is reduced then we get a better, clearer signal & all the factors (timbre, timing, onset, decay, etc.) that our processing system uses to make sense of the signals are better defined, more easily perceived. This small change can therefore be perceived as a "night & day" difference. A very rough analogy to this in sight would be trying to read in dim light Vs good light - the processing load is much different. We are just not as aware of this "dim light" in audio as we are in vision & I suspect that this noise ("dim light") is not a a fixed level of noise but a "dynamic noise" that varies with the music. As an example, has anyone experienced the effect that a ground loop has on digital audio? It doesn't affect our perception as a buzz or hiss in the speakers (unless it is very bad) but rather as a veil over the music which tends to reduce the dynamics & take the life out of the perception of the sound. If anybody is interested in the role that noise has to play in what we hear & how it fundamentally affects our auditory perception, here's a demonstration of how modulated noise improves our abilities to hear a signal. It is a well known aspect of auditory perception with the confusing name of Comodulation Masking Release - it simply means that if something else is modulating at the same frequency as a tone, the tone will emerge from out of the noise. Whereas, without the other modulation (this is the comodulation bit) the tone is not heard. Try it here auditoryneuroscience.com/topics/comodulation-masking-releaseOh, I forgot to say that this is also what we encounter in real world sounds - very seldom do we hear pure tones in nature unaccompanied by some harmonics that comodulate with the pure tone. Another aspect of this "guessing game" is that when we are "just" listening to music we don't normally try to analyse it. When we are involved in a blind test we change our perspective, we change our listening to be more analytic. I'm of the opinion that this attempt at analysis (spotting the differences) adds an extra processing burden to our overall processing load & this causes some lessening of our abilities to do the moment-by-moment auditory processing necessary to now reveal the differences we had been sure were very evident before. How many times have we done an ABX test & second guessed ourselves - what we just thought sounded different, then doesn't sound any different in the next try. This is because of the processing load & it's affect on our auditory processing. So rather than ASA being a confuser in this whole area, I believe it is fundamental to unravelling why there are two very different perceptions between sighted & blind listening.
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Post by John on Jan 2, 2015 20:38:50 GMT
It is also important to note how we process information will vary from person to person I work in the field of Autism where this can be greatly exaggerated from Hyper to Hypo Sensitivity issues that can change in the individual throughout the day.
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Post by MartinT on Jan 2, 2015 21:27:32 GMT
As an example, has anyone experienced the effect that a ground loop has on digital audio? It doesn't affect our perception as a buzz or hiss in the speakers (unless it is very bad) but rather as a veil over the music which tends to reduce the dynamics & take the life out of the perception of the sound. Yes, I am very aware of how any grounding problems can affect the sound, frequently without any obvious hum. It's one of those lessons drilled into me, together with some WTF! moments
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 2, 2015 21:34:54 GMT
Thanks. More food for thought and ears
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 2, 2015 21:38:56 GMT
When I'm comparing kit now I let is happen. One reason - the amount of times I have been wrong footed by the *type* of differences have been mounting up. Being lazy it's also easier I try harder when I cannot hear any difference or it is minimal
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jkeny
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Post by jkeny on Jan 3, 2015 17:59:42 GMT
Maybe another piece in the auditory perception puzzle. I've been of the opinion for a long time now that noise which isn't directly perceived can have a significant bearing on our auditory perception - CM noise & it's affects, for instance. A recent paper link published (Oct 2014) that begins to tie together some disparate strands of information about noise that I have held onto. A Siencedaily summary of the paper www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141002092404.htm. The summary for this paper is : "Barely perceptible low-frequency signals nevertheless activate measurable responses in our auditory circuits. Neurobiologists have now characterized the remarkable impact of low-frequency sounds on the inner ear" "The human auditory system appears to be poorly adapted to the perception of low-frequency sound waves, as hearing thresholds become markedly higher for frequencies lower than about 250 Hz. Yet sensory cells do react to pressure waves with frequencies below 100 Hz, as revealed by the fact that such signals actually evoke detectable micromechanical responses in nerve cells in the inner ear" ""It turns out that low-frequency sounds have a clearly definable modulatory influence on spontaneous otoacoustic emissions," says Drexl. Following exposure to the 30-Hz signal for 90 seconds, the subjects' SOAEs exhibited slow oscillations in frequency and level, which persisted for up to 120 seconds. "Strikingly, the effect of the low-frequency stimulus on the cochlea persists for longer than the duration of the stimulus itself," Drexl points out. Further experiments will probe the possibility that this phenomenon may be linked to noise-induced auditory damage, one of the most common causes of hearing impairment in industrialized countries." So apart from the implications for industrial workers & those living near to a wind turbine, I believe it has implications for audio reproduction. I know from my own & others experience that reducing noise leads to a significant perceptual improvement & I'm not talking about noise that can be heard. The best example I can give is reducing or eliminating common mode noise (usually from a ground loop) results in a benefits across the sound stage - better separation of instruments, better placement, a more 3D soundstage, more dynamics - a generally more realistic illusion (if that's not an oxymoron ) The information about noise that I have considered significant & held onto: - Jocko (an RF & audio clock expert) has consistently claimed that close-in phase noise was the most significant aspect in clocks for auditory perception - a number of people, (including Abraxalito, Coris & Joe Rasmussen on DIYAudio) have reported the perceptual improvements in using a huge over-capacitance at the supply pins of audio chips (both digital & analogue). We are talking about 10,000 more than the usual 0.1uF bypass cap specified in datasheets for this pins. - Abraxalito also premised that noise modulation was the big issue with modern D-S DAC chips - In my own experiments, although not targeting LF noise directly, I have found that reduction in noise sources greatly improve auditory perception in a way that was surprisingly unexpected - every aspect changed as mentioned above for CM noise reduction/elimination. I have agreed with Abraxalito's opinion that some re-evaluation of our perception influence of noise floors is needed & overdue. This new research helps to bring together these strands & focus attention on what may be a crucial factor in our auditory perception.
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Post by MartinT on Jan 4, 2015 13:27:34 GMT
Some experiments when TonyC came around proved to me without any doubt that mains-borne interference cannot be directly heard but its effects most certainly can be. We were amazed at the results we could achieve by improving the filtering and listening. It led me to make some simple changes that have yielded great results.
I do everything I can in my household to quieten the noise on mains (no unnecessary switched-mode wall-warts, plug-in filters everywhere, no mains networking etc.) and it really does pay off.
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 4, 2015 16:10:14 GMT
An engineering company next door to where our factory used to be had a generator on most of the time
You didn't really notice it
until it was turned off
Then it was like a weight being lifted from you and a relief
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Post by AlanS on Jan 10, 2015 12:00:31 GMT
I enjoyed the thought provoking nature of the NLP perspective. It was/is open ended rather than the prescriptive contribution of Mr K which seems that it is heavily advocating one element of audio perception which he has focused upon in his work to enhance one product. NLP is the obverse it made me look outward and whilst I have have little that is worthy of posting as yet it would be a pity if examining how humans perceive sound (and any illusions that may occur) were not given the chance to allow us to understand ourselves and others who share our love of music thanks to those peskin electrons tickling our ears
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2015 9:49:06 GMT
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