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Visual Confirmation Bias

Nice term, Paul. Very impressive. Very scientific.

And original. Well, at least I’ve never seen it before so I’m going to claim it as my own.

Visual Confirmation Bias (VCB) is a variation on confirmation bias that postulates that your brain causes audio gear, particularly speakers, to sound the way they look.

I came up with this idea a week ago when I got my new (used) KEF LS50s. (Note: I’m sure that dozens of people have been talking about VCB for a hundred years. I’m not particularly interested in who preceded me but raising points like that is one of the reasons that this forum exists.)


I had read lots about the speaker and I was expecting accuracy and soundstage precision. Their rich, full sound surprised me. These were not adjectives that were usually attached to these speakers.

I’ve been obsessed with these speakers for the past week, reading about them constantly. I find myself most in agreement with The Absolute Sound, which described the speakers—just after they were released—as possessing a “prevailing sweetness, a harmonic saturation that lends it a dark, velvety overall character, and a bloom that is so pleasing that I began affectionately dubbing it the butterscotch sundae of small monitors.”


But in the years that followed, listener after listener reported a “hard” “bright” sound. And when I look at the speaker, those words make complete sense. A tiny metallic driver in a small box? They look tinny and bright so no wonder some people hear that.

My own strongest experience with VCB: Many years ago, on the pretense of looking for a CD player, I walked into Sound By Singer at its old 16th St. location. After just enough feigned interest, I asked the salesman to listen to something “really pornographic.”

Surprisingly, he was happy to take me into one of the listening rooms. The only specific piece of equipment I remember was a pair of Wilson Speakers. I don’t know which model but they were white and just over six feet tall. Each the size of a restaurant-grade refrigerator. They were somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000.

Then I settled into the listening chair as the salesman started turning stuff on. Preamp, monoblock, monoblock, God knows what else. I just remember him throwing switch after switch. I have to believe all that gear equaled the price of the speakers.

If ever a system should have disappeared, it was this one. If ever the music should have been revealed to me, it was now. But even with my eyes closed, all I could see—and all I could hear—were these huge speakers looming over me. They could not have been more present in my listening experience.

Visual confirmation bias kept me from enjoying the finest pair of speakers that I’ll probably ever hear. The phenomenon is not to be underestimated.
paul6001
cal3713's avatar
cal3713
1,421 posts
 
@thecarpathian In that demonstration, a visual stimulus creates an expectation that alters your auditory perception.  That is the conversation at it's most basic. 

The "word-forming apparatus" creates the expectation and the ears follow.  I could create the exact same effect by telling you before you hear the phrase that it's going to be "baa" or "faa."  Now we have a different stimulus manipulating expectations (now social information/gossip/rumor), but the effect will be the same. Once the expectation is made, the ears will follow.

A lot of people want to argue that we can't hear differences between gear because we're susceptible to such effects, but that's clearly not the case.  In the above example, you're not going to hear any word or phrase that the mouth makes, just ones that mostly conform the actual auditory stimulus that's impinging upon the senses.  
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,527 posts
 
If you believe you are immune from this effect, you can have your susceptibility demonstrated via a quick 1.5 minute youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM
Very interesting...

But we must remember that the processing of sound speech is a social interactive proximity phenomenon where the sound is totally associated with the mouth movement of the speaker at ALL time....Then the visual information associated with the PRESENCE of the person who speak dominate the isolated sound....

I am surprized but not so much if i think about it....The most important encompassing information dominate the secondary one and condition it ...

Very interesting.... The general fact that the multidimensional stack of information superseed the partial one is a universal phenomenon.......

A lot of people want to argue that we can’t hear differences between gear because we’re susceptible to such effects, but that’s clearly not the case.
Many people dont think.... They own an opinion and their process of thinking is a search to conform anything around this opinion.... The use of the "placebo" concept out of his medical context to explain an audio experiment is an illustration of this fact.... For sure we are all suggestible beings and thats play a role.... But using this fact to reduce anything that does not conform to our a priori opinion is not thinking very much nor experimenting either....

An example of this universal conditioning is the conditioned prejudice by the market practice that only an upgrading of gear will give to us a new better S.Q.
Most dont even think about that problem, they throw their money without thinking about the way to embed in all his working dimensions their system in the first place... 😁

I know it and for the last 2 years i made experiments and discoveries each week....

My last discovery is astounding for me..... It is about acoustic working dimension controls...

But it is another story for another post....


My best to you....

russ69's avatar
russ69
3,360 posts
 
So if I make my KEF LS50s look like the Genesis Prime, they are going to fool me into thinking I'm listening to the Genesis loudspeakers? I don't think so. 
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
One thing I have learned, so many people here talking about how they hear through their eyes, explains a lot. Reminds me of something I heard myself once upon a time. It goes like this:  

"Some learn through the eyes by seeing. Others learn through the ears by hearing. I learn through the mouth by talking."   

If the shoe fits....
audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
1,989 posts
 
Funny when a meager inexpensive looked down upon lowly speaker like the wharfedale diamond 225 can do pretty much 80 to 90 percent right. Amazingly so at a paltry $449 list. If I somehow ran into trouble and had to ditch my much more expensive speakers (imo) and be left to live with my diamond 225’s, I’d still be a happy camper.
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