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post #46 of 170
8/17/08 at 12:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Todd R View Post
Happens all the time.

Used to be all CD players were considered "perfect" but people still heard differences. No explanation until "jitter" was discovered.
Until then people were told it was "all in your head".

I'm sure the measurements still haven't caught up with everything that can be perceived by the human hear.
I can bet you that the differences you hear in the CD player are rarely due to the jitter anomalies, and more due to other part of the circuit, as the analog stages etc...




I think that the emotional side of the feelings we perceive can not be measured while listening music, and other subjective perceptions. Mainly those are related to the relation between you and the music played, and maybe the way you feel, sad, happy, stressed out, tired, etc...


Mitch I don't know what kind of engineer are those, but the soundstage is a result of location of the drivers/mikes while recording, phase, and delay of the signal and it could be altered during the recording process, by different methods, and of course measured and controlled, here is an article about that process, written by Christopher Huston Senior Acoustical Engineer of Rives Audio, a recording engineer and producer with over 80 gold and platinum albums to his credit, with over 30 years experience in studio and listening room design. His experience and insight into this subject is second to none, and how to control acoustics in different evironments...but it is true that it is a combination of factors and not very easy to measure, IMO it is more a result, than a parameter to be measured...

Sound that at the end we screw them all in our homes...
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post #47 of 170
8/17/08 at 1:09am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by braillediver
...ask what is that parameter and how do you measure it. I’ve never gotten an answer- more like hmmm interesting question.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wavoman View Post
Oh that's wonderful! Brilliant and clever. I wish I could see their faces!
No so fast.... Electrical engineers know their field like you know yours and I know mine.... we are all professionals in what we do.

So far, no one has been able to describe what we are taking about....

"This mysterious unknown quantity that can't be measured."

Don't make me call Michio Kaku. This isn't partical physics and we're not talking about the super string theory. It's plain old, "Mr. Watson, come here," sound over a wire.

Regarding the large expansive sound stage and the phone booth: there are reflections, echos, attacks and decays, etc, that account for this. Not only has this been measured, it is also available to you as DSPs. You can change the size and shape of your listening room as well as placing yourself in an outdoor arena, concert hall, or bathroom. If I'm not mistaken, there are programs that mimic the acoustics of famous venues like The Royal Albert Hall. All these subtleties have been measured, reproduced and are available on your surround sound receiver.

So, come on now... what are we talking about? What is this mysterious thing that not only cannot be measured, but now cannot even be described?

USG
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post #48 of 170
8/17/08 at 1:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by upstateguy View Post
No so fast.... Electrical engineers know their field like you know yours and I know mine.... we are all professionals in what we do.

So far, no one has been able to describe what we are taking about....

"This mysterious unknown quantity that can't be measured."

Don't make me call Michio Kaku. This isn't partical physics and we're not talking about the super string theory. It's plain old, "Mr. Watson, come here," sound over a wire.

Regarding the large expansive sound stage and the phone booth: there are reflections, echos, attacks and decays, etc, that account for this. Not only has this been measured, it is also available to you as DSPs. You can change the size and shape of your listening room as well as placing yourself in an outdoor arena, concert hall, or bathroom. If I'm not mistaken, there are programs that mimic the acoustics of famous venues like The Royal Albert Hall. All these subtleties have been measured, reproduced and are available on your surround sound receiver.

So, come on now... what are we talking about? What is this mysterious thing that not only cannot be measured, but now cannot even be described?

USG
While it may be difficult for many to describe, it is commonly observed by many individuals. Just because you didn't "study" it in school doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That, unfortunately is the attitude of many young engineers. If they didn't study it in school, then it doesn't exist. It has taken a number of years to convince a number of the guys I used to work with of the fact that things do exist beyond the realm of their understanding and specific schooling. They are no less valid because they haven't been studied by someone. Michio would agree with me. Observable, repeatable phenomena have validity.
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post #49 of 170
8/17/08 at 2:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwkarth View Post
They are no less valid because they haven't been studied by someone. Observable, repeatable phenomena have validity.
The problem is that some of them have been studied for decades, just that many people do not like the results, and insist in believe the opposite....and the other problem is that the only observable repeatable phenomena we have seen from the opposite field is their anecdotal experiences time after time....
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post #50 of 170
8/17/08 at 2:10am
To be honest, the mechanics and psychoacoustics of soundstaging are fairly well understood by many. There are a number of measurable quantities that contribute to or destroy the observable phenomena. Some of the factors that affect soundstaging; Three obvious ones that come to mind are frequency response contour, in band phase response, and channel to channel phase & timing relationship. I'm too tired out to talk any more about this tonight, but would be glad to discuss it more in depth tomorrow. 'nite all.
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post #51 of 170
8/17/08 at 3:11am
Thread Starter 
I was reading some back posts when I came accross this one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonShine

Science has far more sensitive instruments than the human ear so no: It is not possible to physically hear something that cannot be measured).
Followed by:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wavoman

You simply cannot claim you can measure everything the ear can receive --


While I completely agree with wavoman, that we may not be able to measure everything the ear can sense, the converse seems to be true as well.

We cannot hear everything a wire can transmit.

However, we can measure things which can be transmitted over a wire that cannot be heard.

So where does this leave us? With the ability to measure the things a wire can transmit far in excess of our hearing.

I'm having so much trouble with this concept.

USG
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post #52 of 170
8/17/08 at 3:23am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwkarth View Post

While it may be difficult for many to describe, it is commonly observed by many individuals.

How can something be both commonly observed and difficult to describe? (I doubt Michio would agree with this.)

And even if it is difficult to describe, could you attempt to describe it so that we might understand what it is?

So let's see what we have:
  • We have something that is transmitted over a wire
  • We have something that can be heard
  • We have something that cannot be measured
  • We have something that is commonly observed
  • We have something that is too hard to describe


I'm sorry KW, I'm at a loss tonight.

The more everyone dances around and the less straight talk there is, the more I'm beginning to think this is a psychoacoustic phenomena.

USG
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post #53 of 170
8/17/08 at 3:42am
Erm...let's see. So we have a sound wave, right? And it had physical properties, expressible in terms of frequencies and amplitudes and other such things, right? So...is the question: Can we hear things that are not ultimately expressible in terms of these quantities or interactions thereof? Or, more colloquially, "Can we hear things that are not in the sound itself?"

This might lead to a more fundamental question: What's the relationship between our qualia (e.g., pitch, colour) and the physical properties of sound (e.g., frequency) and light (e.g., frequency)? If two of us listen to the same audio wave or see the same ray of light, do we have the same perceptual experience?

Isn't it the case that we all bring something to the perceptual experience? That it's not a simple case of receiving the information that's "out there" in some unproblematic way? Perception is an interaction between some facts about the world and some facts about us. If so, exhaustively capturing a perceptual experience in a measurement will involve making relevant measurements of the sound wave and of the person involved. In principle, this is possible, of course. But I'm not holding breath.

Have I muddied the waters?
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post #54 of 170
8/17/08 at 3:56am
Is It Possible To Hear Something That Can't Be Measured?
Yes, of course.
As long as we haven't come up with a measuring device that is as good as our brains...... Which we haven't, because we don't even know how our brains work in that respect.
By the way, perceiving placebo sound in the brain measures exactly the same as the real thing. Test have been done for this to measure the voices people (mental patients) hear in their head. As far as the equipment is concerned that is measuring their brain: there are actually voices.
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post #55 of 170
8/17/08 at 3:58am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonathanjong View Post
Erm...let's see. So we have a sound wave, right? And it had physical properties, expressible in terms of frequencies and amplitudes and other such things, right? So...is the question: Can we hear things that are not ultimately expressible in terms of these quantities or interactions thereof? Or, more colloquially, "Can we hear things that are not in the sound itself?"

This might lead to a more fundamental question: What's the relationship between our qualia (e.g., pitch, colour) and the physical properties of sound (e.g., frequency) and light (e.g., frequency)? If two of us listen to the same audio wave or see the same ray of light, do we have the same perceptual experience?

Isn't it the case that we all bring something to the perceptual experience? That it's not a simple case of receiving the information that's "out there" in some unproblematic way? Perception is an interaction between some facts about the world and some facts about us. If so, exhaustively capturing a perceptual experience in a measurement will involve making relevant measurements of the sound wave and of the person involved. In principle, this is possible, of course. But I'm not holding breath.

Have I muddied the waters?
Hi jonathanjong

Welcome aboard !

I'm not sure what we have.

If we have a sound wave, it is measurable.

If it's something else, what is it?

We're not even up to the perception part of it, because no one seems to be able to describe what it is.

Want to take a crack at it?

USG
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post #56 of 170
8/17/08 at 4:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by upstateguy View Post
I was reading some back posts when I came accross this one.



Followed by:





While I completely agree with wavoman, that we may not be able to measure everything the ear can sense, the converse seems to be true as well.

We cannot hear everything a wire can transmit.

However, we can measure things which can be transmitted over a wire that cannot be heard.

So where does this leave us? With the ability to measure the things a wire can transmit far in excess of our hearing.

I'm having so much trouble with this concept.

USG
What we measure is not what we hear.
So there are things we hear that we don't measure and the other way around: we measure things we don't hear.
What's complicated about that?
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post #57 of 170
8/17/08 at 4:03am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kees View Post
Is It Possible To Hear Something That Can't Be Measured?
Yes, of course.
As long as we haven't come up with a measuring device that is as good as our brains...... Which we haven't, because we don't even know how our brains work in that respect.
By the way, perceiving placebo sound in the brain measures exactly the same as the real thing. Test have been done for this to measure the voices people (mental patients) hear in their head. As far as the equipment is concerned that is measuring their brain: there are actually voices.
Hi Kees

The way this is developing is that we have something that is transmitted over a wire that can be heard but not measured.

Do you have any idea what this something is?

Have you ever heard it?

USG
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post #58 of 170
8/17/08 at 4:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by upstateguy View Post
Hi Kees

The way this is developing is that we have something that is transmitted over a wire that can be heard but not measured.

Do you have any idea what this something is?

Have you ever heard it?

USG
Yes.
The error most people are making is in thinking that the stimulus (=sound) is the same (1-on-1 mapping) of the perception of the audio in our brain.
IT IS NOT.
The sound is just a trigger that sets off a lot of very complicated processes in our brains (audio perception).
We can pretty accurately measure a lot of aspects of the trigger, but we cannot accurately predict the response it will have in our brain.
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post #59 of 170
8/17/08 at 4:21am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kees View Post
Yes.
The error most people are making is in thinking that the stimulus (=sound) is the same (1-on-1 mapping) of the perception of the audio in our brain.
IT IS NOT.
The sound is just a trigger that sets off a lot of very complicated processes in our brains (audio perception).
We can pretty accurately measure a lot of aspects of the trigger, but we cannot accurately predict the response it will have in our brain.
Is the something I'm trying to identify a sound?

We're not talking about the perception of this sound, just what it is.

So, this thing that your heard is a sound?

USG
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post #60 of 170
8/17/08 at 4:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonathanjong View Post
This might lead to a more fundamental question: What's the relationship between our qualia (e.g., pitch, colour) and the physical properties of sound (e.g., frequency) and light (e.g., frequency)? If two of us listen to the same audio wave or see the same ray of light, do we have the same perceptual experience?

Isn't it the case that we all bring something to the perceptual experience? That it's not a simple case of receiving the information that's "out there" in some unproblematic way? Perception is an interaction between some facts about the world and some facts about us. If so, exhaustively capturing a perceptual experience in a measurement will involve making relevant measurements of the sound wave and of the person involved. In principle, this is possible, of course. But I'm not holding breath.

Have I muddied the waters?
Nice post, I'm glad that you brought up "qualia" as I think be a useful term for the purposes of discussion about audio, perception and hearing.
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