The Objectivist Audio Forum: Post #5 : Is Is Possible To Hear Something That Can't Be Measured? - Page 6

In that case, grasshopper, good luck trying to measure the soundstage as a whole parameter in audio...which it is not...

BTW which unit will you suggest to use for that parameter: meters, volts, watts, ohms, angles, maybe a %, ????

This is my favourite post and pretty well verbatim in concept to what I posted in another (perhaps the original) Objectivist thread. A great book to read for a foundation is Your Brain on Music. Scientists from many fields and their research as the foundation for a very well received book. Seriously a must read by everyone interested in the topic at hand.

I'm a scientist too, well trained and all that. I don't have as much experience as some here but I have enough to feel the same was as wavoman feels, science surprises us OFTEN and enough to never ever declare that we know everything about anything. IF people are claiming they hear differences, smart people, scientists, engineers...people who "ought to know better" then perhaps there is something to this. Testing and retesting using new and improved methods is the key. Either there is something to their conclusions or there isn't. Placebo or not etc. etc. The interesting part if figuring out which is which. The hard part is coming up with the experiments to test the hypotheses.

You keep leaving off the word "yet", as in "cannot be measured yet, with today's instruments, and theories behind them".

My guess at the answer is "no". I think we can today measure everything about the transmission from the headphone amp to the headphone, or from the power amp to the speakers ... i.e., what's on and what affects the wire, right at the input to the phones (or speakers).

I also think we can measure everything about the physical movement of the transducers, and the air they push. Pretty hard, but it can be done. Ditto for how the ear works, right to the brain synapses. So is there anything we can't measure in the process, up to but not including perception? IMO, no.

But I cannot prove this "no". It is a leap of faith. I have argued this in many other posts -- we might discover a new force, as we did in 1947 etc. But even though I say we can't prove it, I believe it. Maxwell was a pretty smart guy and I think he nailed it.

Other posters argued with me, but I think they thought I beleive there are things we cannot measure. I don't. But we must always tell ourselves that we are assuming that. Pretty good evidence, but not 100%, never can be.

Honestly I don't think this is an important, or even relevant, question. Sorry. But there must be a reason this thread gets fewer views than "Coke vs Pepsi" by a factor of 3.

The important question is perception, as many here have said better than me.

Two points on perception have been made:

(a) The soundstage debate. Well analyzed by many here. Summary: we can measure all the attributes of the soundwaves in the room that lead to the soundstage illusion, and even understand them well (how the illusion happens) but we can't yet combine and correlate all the measurements to define this perception right. Some DSP units have tried. Part of the problem is we can't even define this perception well, as others have said. It has no units. Just like "red" visual perception can be defined and measured, but "pretty" is harder. Yet we have analyzed the visual attributes of a face photo that lead to the "pretty" perception. However we have not defined units for it yet. Same with soundstage. But all this presents no problem. Just ask people. Miss Universe has judges tell us if people are pretty. See where I'm going -- listening tests.

(b) We might perceive something other than what we hear physically. We fool ourselves -- placebo, fanboy-ism, please-the-crowd, follow-the-tester's- enthusiasm -- all reasons to believe we heard something we didn't.

The only roadblock we face is (b). Nothing else. And I believe that listener-blind tests can be done to eliminate much of this.

I also hope that cat scans can tell us what part of the brain the thought derives from, and maybe maybe we can smoke out placebo or other effects. But I have no idea, I am just starting to research this. Does not seem in the slightest bit practical at the moment, but worth thinking about.

So we are back to carefully designed experiments to eliminate the problems just listed.

Why CAT scans? Surely fMRIs would suit our purposes better. And yes, I agree, as most research scientists would: In principle, there's nothing we can't measure. Unless there are immaterial souls and Platonic musical qualities. Then we're stuffed.

Thanks Zanth for the nice words ... and gee, I hope I didn't plagiarize you subconsciously (it happens).

Just ordered the book from Amazon ... only $10 for the paperback! And took all of their suggestions (great technology!) for related books, 3 more also at about $10 each. Here's the full order:

• Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
  
• This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
• Music and the Mind
• Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination

There's an old line: "An expert is a jerk in trouble". The updated version is: "An expert is a jerk with an Amazon One-Click Account".

Will report.

Can I make it to 400 posts tonight? Party time! But I don't look at my post count. It can't be measured. I like it only because of the placebo effect.

I'm sure you're right -- I know nothing about this. CAT scans, MRI's ... ??? I just want to see into the brain, that's all. I need to read about this stuff, obviously.

I will have to check out the other books. The author of Your brain on music (YourBrainOnMusic.com) has a new book in the works. I hope it is as good as the last.

OK...so, by hear you mean "vibrates the tympanic membrane"? That's an odd way to use the word hear. But let's rephrase anyway:

Are there are any unquantifiable or immeasurable qualities in an audio signal that nevertheless cause vibrations of the tympanic membrane?

It's now even easier to answer, "No." Why? Because before, we had the possibility of an immaterial soul and Platonic musical qualities. Now, we've removed all discussion of immaterial souls. The tympanic membrane is a physical object, as far as we know, all physical events have physical causes (with the possible exception of the Big Bang, but that's a topic of discussion disallowed on Head-Fi). That is, the vibrations of the tympanic membrane (physical event) must be caused by some physical properties about the audio signal. And if they're physical, in principle we can measure them. But of course, I'm not saying anything new here, really.

Ok, If I understand what you're saying now, you're not really looking to make sense of any of this, you just want discussion. Maybe you can help me. Let's go back to the "thing" to which you refer. The "thing" to which I referred, doesn't work for you, so tell me again more about this "thing" that you can hear, but can't measure. Describe it to me as best you can and we'll go from there. Sorry if I was on the wrong track before.

Hey, great question! What should we call it? Wouldn't it be nice if you could read a spec sheet and know how well an amp, interconnect, etc imaged? You can infer that now from some specs, but you really can't know until you hear the gear for yourself.

Let's see, maybe we could call it imageQ? Maybe stageQ? There would actually have to be two separate parameters. One would describe the capability of the measured piece of electronics to preserve the image contained in the program material, the other parameter would be the capability of a set of cans or headamp to create/model HRTF.