What are we objectivists missing?


I have been following (with much amusement) various threads about cables and tweaks where some claim "game changing improvements" and other claim "no difference".  My take is that if you can hear a difference, there must be some difference.  If a device or cable or whatever measures exactly the same it should sound exactly the same.  So what are your opinions on what those differences might be and what are we NOT measuring that would define those differences?

jtucker

My wife has a better hearing than me and she cannot tune my room because she has never train herself in acoustic experiments......

You seems to separate brain and ears...

Acoustic is a physical science, psycho-acoustic is not...

I seems most of you can’t "comprehend" the fact that everything a human can hear can be measured.

Do you read what is posted here?

Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle

Jacob N. Oppenheim and Marcelo O. Magnasco
Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 044301 – Published 23 January 2013

This was discovered few years ago in experiments in psycho-acoustic...

If you were right about what you just claim, we know all there is to know about human hearing by ELECTRICAL measures apparatus , this article would have been characterized useless. and never published..

Your claim is dogma.... scientism... Not science...

In psycho-acoustic the concept of timbre is impossible to define rigorously without correlating in a dynamic set of measuring process, electrical measures, physical acoustic conditions, and human perceptive experience...

Many concept and experience are inseparably subjective and objective correlative process...

Hearing +interpretation by learning history and training, is not reducible to few electrical information gained from measuring tools, nor completely predictable...

A musician is not a trained dog...a good acoustician too...

To make my point simple for your understanding: hearing =ears...listening= brain history... The two are correlated but listening cannot be reduced to only hearing acuity...It is more complex...

And the article above prove by experiments that listening skill can beat what physical science said was the ears limit before 2013...

 It is why i can tune any room, my wife with a better hearing status cannot...

It is called positive learned biases....

 

 

Those are subjective preferences, hearing ability isn't. Young females between the ages of 10 and 14 have the most acute hearing ability. 

Let us try again:

You are confusing "listening" skills with "hearing" abilities. Not sure if on purpose or by mistake

 

djones51 We can measure the audible spectrum for humans. We can even measure the spectrum for dogs and dolphins so I have no idea what your asking for.

Thyname +1 You are confusing "listening" skills with "hearing" abilities. Not sure if on purpose or by mistake

@jjtucker Well, this did not go in the direction I had intended,

Which intention?

1. My take is that if you can hear a difference, there must be some difference.

...be some difference in what? "Sentence fragment".

2.If a device or cable or whatever measures exactly the same it should sound exactly the same.

No device or cable ever "measure" exactly the same as another. Should they, then they are effectively the same device.

Anyway, cables and {electrical} devices don’t make the sounds that you perhaps are referring to. I digress.

3. So what are your opinions on what those differences might be

See point 1. I dunno, you are telling the story.

4. what are we NOT measuring that would define those differences?

The differences between what and what? Once there is an audible difference, there does exist a test that suggests what is causing that difference. Your assertion that there is something not being measured is one of your own making.

Perhaps if you seek a specific direction, the question must be framed in such a manner that is specific to your enquiry without mistakes of logic. Perhaps refer to a circular reference issue Excel users may occasionally bump up against - it sometimes takes some thought to figure out.

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps everything we hear CAN be measured, but - clearly - not everything measured can be heard.

Our individual ears, and brains, and personal listening spaces (including gear) are all............individual.  Simply put, we don't hear things the same, regardless of measurements.  Our systems could "measure" the exact same.  We won't respectively hear them that way because my left ear has some high frequency loss, likely due to a lifetime of shooting sports. You may have some loss in certain frequencies that makes YOUR hearing entirely unique.  Like a fingerprint.  No measurement will change that.  It is what YOU hear with YOUR ears/brain that makes some things sound good, others not so much.  Throw in individual "listening skills" and it would seem to sharpen further, recognizing that being a good "listener" still won't fill in those lost (audible) frequencies (though a decent EQ might help you out a bit....).  But it certainly adds to even more individualized hearing.

"If you can hear a difference, there must be some difference."  The difference could be that I moved an armchair from one corner of my listening room to another, and it completely changed the room acoustics, all else being equal.  Does that count?

I don't understand why this subject is such a sticky wicket.