JD you sound like a 10 hz tone to me...you have me stand in awe, not only do you keep late night studies with the ladies, you also do the most complex experiments in other fields until, what was it, you had two of the 24 year old ladies squished? Terrible. You must be Dr. Strangelove in real life, please admit it. There is so much of that hz tone in my ears, that I am AWEfully confused. What will you do now...get new ladies and fiddle with their shortchanged abdullas? WOW... and Jostler, thanks for the enlightenment. I would say psychoachoustics is even older, it goes back to the Greeks and early China and India, but you would say, that was prescientific, which of course it was in a more narrow sense. You were right in assuming, that I meant the emotional impact of music on us, where to my knowledge science so far has no real answers yet.A question, seriously, don't want to bug you, I had put it in another thread and never got an answer: Do you have any idea for an explanation about those odd experimental data, which showed, that if you play music to people whose hearing is limitid in the upper ranges, I forgot where the cutoff point was exactly,but it must have been around 10 khz or above, and in playing it, you cut off the frequencies, which they were not able to HEAR, they all and sunder at once noticed this fact all the same practically always and could thus differentiate between music played normally and cut off in the highs, even though "psychoaccoustically" they should not have been able to hear any difference at all. Another thought, I wonder if you could not develop a mathematical model, which would "prove", that the more complex and "rich" a musical offering, the greater the chances to hear "subtle differences". Would be an interesting hypothesis to go after. JD bring out your 24 year old rats, or what was it again, the 24 girls from P.E.T.A? I am so confused, there is that tone again........... |
I've found blind tests, be it in a rudementary fashion or through elaborate setups, always helpful. What is wrong about trying to objectify, what we are percieving? I tend to rely heavily on female ears. Women, as far as our hobby is concerned, seem less exposed to those bouts of occasional infatuation with this gear or another, which may be a wonderfully satisfying part of our hobby but often enough "colours" our hearing acuity. Great thread by the way. |
Hi Sugarbrie, fascinating point you are making. My experience were rather to the contrary though. Will put it to a double blind test (; and yes Jademo6, tell your wife its purely scientific and between you and me, they should be over 16.... |
Musicians have to be trained to listen to "systems" in very much the same way we've trained our listening acuity through the long years of our hobby. This is, because when you sit and perform in the middle of other performers, such things as soundstage, depth, et al is not of your concern and music on stage is perceived very differently from say a listening position in a hall or a club. So Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles would have been of little use to you anyway. But then I forgot, it would have been a social gathering, since you would not need their opinion anyway. Basically though, I agree with you, George. Through the years, you learn to trust your ears, you learn where you preferences are and you build your systems around those. I would rate personal contentment higher than the quest for an absolute, which you will only find in a live event anyway. All the same, I sometimes appreciate the opinion of a musically educated person, because I, like all of us, have my aural "blind" spots. |
Mike, I think you make a very good point here, namely that we are all prone to be taken in by clever marketing and gushing reviewers, however I think you underestimate the power of a trained ear. I think that well trained hearing acuity beats "modern technology" any day in hearing subtle differences. On the other hand, I'll grant you the case of Vladimir Sushurin, the designer of the LAMM gear. He seems not to listen at all, only to "measure", but then measure according to his very special theory of human hearing, which, if I am informed correctly, runs very much diverse from mainstream thinking on this topic. I myself can hear the difference cones make, not under all and every gear, but under some, CD players especially and some preamps, yes even in blind testing. I think its difficult to generalise in this our topic. There are lots of opinions floating around, but no hard and fast rules, except for those basic ones, which however do not necessarily indicate exactly how a given unit will perform. Not that it matters, on the contrary, it makes life more interesting for all of us. |
Jostler, we are of the same school here. The other day though, I changed cables between my cd player,the Purcell upsampler and the DAC, not really expecting anything in particular, perhaps a slightly better definition and coherence and to my surprise I seemed to get a wider soundstage. Tried all sorts of software and the phenomenon did not go away. Changed back to the old cables and there was shrinkage. Cannot explain this. Mabe its really a case of those solder joints! But then jitter would not influence soudstage, would it? |
Just got four minuses more for my second last post. Someone must have taken it personally. Good! |
A little story comes to mind:
When CD's first came out, there were those nuthead believers, who maintained that interconnects between the CD players and the other gear sounded different and worse, that they even had directivity. Of course they were ridiculed by "Science" and probably told to klick their heels (-; ( by the way,works only with gear from Deutschland) because bits were just bits after all. Until it was found out, that even minute faults in the solder joints would cause jitter and suddenly those first ridiculed, became rehabilitated. The history of science is full of similar stories. It is not just a question between knowing and believing, there is something inbetween, namely "experiencing", gathering empirical evidence, which would lead to new hypotheses ( and those at first are generally "beliefs" ) which then in time could be turned into knowledge, widening the scope of science.
I think we should not bicker with each other, but rather listen to and learn from another. The believers should learn to be sceptical and careful, the scientists to be curious and openminded. Obviously looking at many posts here in Audiogon, this is a difficult thing to achieve. Everybody rides his own high horse, he should rather get down of.
Well, I'll get off my donkey now too and shall try to repeat J.D.'s experiment and invite six 24 year old women over and then we'll see (hear) about them cones, hopefully , I'll not be too distracted. JD, did you listen with the lights on or off? This seems an important parameter as well. I've got goospimples all over in nervous anticipation and I must be off now and get on the phone, to get things rolling. Sorry Jademo, can't klick my heels, because my gear is either Brits or US colonial. Should I sing "Rule Britannia" perhaps? |
Yes JD, you make sense, Holland is close to Germany, but then you should only klick heels, wearing those funny wooden sandals, the Dutch are famous for and that's also why all the SACD stuff needs wooden cones...and besides stereo, did you also try multi channel and did you use one or serveral power purifiers at the time? I am sure your powercables were Master Couplers, weren't they, but then probably Jostler the wizard will prove me wrong. But all the same I would like to ask him, if one or more ladies were inadvertedly to sit on the gear fired on, would that cause a brown out? Oh and don't worry JD, I won't play with positions at all. I've got my speakers on cones you see. |
Oh heck JD, I forgot France as well. My Jadis stuff just hates it, when I click my heels. All the tubes flare up red in a very dangerous fashion and then there is a bubbly sound through my Quads, like that of VICHY water being poured. Maye I should be kissed by a princess and be turned into a frog and then klick my heels. that might work for the Jadis. But I don't know any royalty.....and I don't know how frogs hear. Jademo you are the scientist, how do frogs hear? |
Sorry, not JD, Jostler is the scientist i meant.....and ahem Jostler:
1. You cannot train gullibility. What you can train is to be a better charlatan in knowingly to pretend to hear differences, which are not there or to pretend not to hear differences which are there. You cannot train something which is preconscious--like gullibility, suggestibility, naivite and such.
2. Scientists who study hearing do so in controlled circumstances which are generally carefully limited to a few essential parameters. All this has nothing to do with the complexity of a musical event, be it live or in audio. The science of psychoaccoustics is still completely in its infancy. So far there are no satisfying explantations why music does to us what it does, except for a few isolated facts, like that frequencies below 16hz or so, will scare the shit out of us. Will induce awe. (Used in the church with a decent organ and by the ancients in battle) |
Oops, just got my self I nice set of minus points. 4in all.
JD you were right, if you try to be funny on Audiogon, you get into trouble. You live and learn. What I dislike is the anonimiy in it all. They can crawl out of the woodwork and then snuggle back in. Aw well. There is freedom of speach ain't it and even the greatest knucklehead is entitled to his opinion. So I will not retaliate in kind. On the contrary, I aplogise if I hurt anybody's feelings or sense of propriety , but then she/he should speak up.
Jostler, thanks for your reply. I think the people tested were really deaf at these frequences. That had been established beforehand. Did not know about the pink noise experiment. Intuitively it makes sense at first sight, but would you not think, that more complex things like soundstage spread in all its possible dimensions would need more complex information than pink noise, which by the way is not without complexity in itself. ? (Still think this is a great thread, even if the minuses should keep on coming!) |
George, shall I get some more, to make you feel even better? Glad to and thanks! |
702..not so seriously intended but for the sake of a little laugh, which I hope you can share:
Who would you be in this your little story? The guitarist or the bass player...and p l e a s e don't say "the drummer". Regards, |
702 thanks for your clever and witty response. Nice to have you on board, though we often disagree. But that makes life interesting. |
