[pbarach]

I'm right there with you.
There is so much to unpack here regarding ANC, noise dosage, hearing loss etc. I find it super fascinating.

Of course, a good pair of ANC earbuds/headphones would have been perfectly suitable for the job.

Nonetheless, thanks for watching, @Satir. Happy to hear you found it interesting.

I use a set of Sony WH-1000MX2 for cutting the grass, weed-whacking, and escaping the sound of other people's lawn equipment when I want to listen to music. I've adjusted the EQ with the Sony app on my phone, and they are a decent temporary stand-in for my non-ANC headphones (Focal Clear, HD-600).

As a psychologist, I've used the Sony routinely for doing telehealth therapy sessions during the pandemic. Clients hear me clearly (although I can barely hear myself talk while wearing them), and they hear not much of the noisy window air conditioner about eight feet behind me.

 

[pfzar]

Great talk, Jacob.

I would like to point out to all the readers a few simple opinions.

The auditory system is an amazingly complex NON-Linear computer, that we are still attempting to understand.

Lastly, think about all the other things that we do with audio and how Psychology comes into play for understanding audio and its role with consumers.

 

[Mr.Jacob]

This was excellent, thanks for sharing your learning! I may have questions later... but for now, I’m digesting the meal

Enjoy the soup
Look forward to hearing from you.

 

[csglinux]

Interesting video and great presentation style. Jacob, if the audio industry goes belly-up because of the pandemic, you have a future in either sales or politics

Now to my usual thing of playing Devil's advocate... I feel somebody here needs to defend the humble fast Fourier transform.
This video bashes "FFT analysis" several dozen times. IMHO, any suggestion that an FFT analysis is completely wrong is completely wrong. With the relevant phase information, the Fourier transform is completely reversible - one can hop back and forth between time and frequency domains and lose nothing that the microphone was able to capture. There *may* be some rare hypothetical pyschoacoustic effects that aren't easily captured, e.g., separate L and R FFTs without crossfeed wouldn't capture the beat frequencies generated in the brain when the left and right ear are fed separate tones, but I don't think this analysis covered anything like that, did it? It sounds like you're just using a weighting function (one geared more toward speech recognition?). That's fine (it should be obvious that overall sound pressure level is a silly metric), but an FFT analysis with a weighting function is still an FFT analysis. Or was there something else going on beyond a weighting function that wasn't mentioned in the video?

P.S. Completely agree with the comment made by @Satir. Good quality plugs, especially foam, do a far better job of external noise suppression than any existing ANC. It would be interesting to see Etymotic come up with an ANC version of the ER4 series? @EtyDave, I want a % cut of your next product sales

 

[sidecross]

Thank you. In case someone reads this and is not 100% aware, Noise-cancelling buds/headphones in and of themselves provide little protection from hearing loss. They do (generally speaking and variation dependent upon specific NC device worn) allow users to listen to music at lower volume as they reduce background noises. We make it clear that NC devices are not a substitute for properly fitted earplugs with good NNR rating. We provided earplugs with 32dB NRR to employees. We had four yearly group meetings to stress to all employees to listen to their music on the job at lower volumes. Being one who spent many years at concerts w/o hearing protection, I've become a bit of an advocate for hearing protection to the younger demographic. If they spare themselves from the hearing loss I deal with, and with the aweful Tinnitus I have, I will have done my job. Although we provided earplugs, those earplugs were most beneficial to employees working in loading/packaging areas where dB levels were appreciably higher. To repeat: NC devices in general do not protect you from hearing loss, but enable you to listen to your sound source at a lower volume. Whether one uses NC devices to listen at lower levels is their choice. One can easily listen at damaging volumes with the NC engaged.
[/QU

Interesting video and great presentation style. Jacob, if the audio industry goes belly-up because of the pandemic, you have a future in either sales or politics

Now to my usual thing of playing Devil's advocate... I feel somebody here needs to defend the humble fast Fourier transform.
This video bashes "FFT analysis" several dozen times. IMHO, any suggestion that an FFT analysis is completely wrong is completely wrong. With the relevant phase information, the Fourier transform is completely reversible - one can hop back and forth between time and frequency domains and lose nothing that the microphone was able to capture. There *may* be some rare hypothetical pyschoacoustic effects that aren't easily captured, e.g., separate L and R FFTs without crossfeed wouldn't capture the beat frequencies generated in the brain when the left and right ear are fed separate tones, but I don't think this analysis covered anything like that, did it? It sounds like you're just using a weighting function (one geared more toward speech recognition?). That's fine (it should be obvious that overall sound pressure level is a silly metric), but an FFT analysis with a weighting function is still an FFT analysis. Or was there something else going on beyond a weighting function that wasn't mentioned in the video?

P.S. Completely agree with the comment made by @Satir. Good quality plugs, especially foam, do a far better job of external noise suppression than any existing ANC. It would be interesting to see Etymotic come up with an ANC version of the ER4 series? @EtyDave, I want a % cut of your next product sales

As I have previous noted, I use anc not for high ambient noise suppression but for a more natural silence without a 'bottled up' experience provided by earplugs.

ANC use of the onboard microphones component blend noise cancellation with a much more natural quietness that passive earplugs cannot.

 

[pfzar]

I think point here is that the humble FFT doesn’t always tell the whole story.

Psychoacoustics being Rare, in the case of things that we can’t measure with a microphone is a false assumption.

This video bashes "FFT analysis" several dozen times. IMHO, any suggestion that an FFT analysis is completely wrong is completely wrong. With the relevant phase information, the Fourier transform is completely reversible - one can hop back and forth between time and frequency domains and lose nothing that the microphone was able to capture. There *may* be some rare hypothetical pyschoacoustic effects that aren't easily captured, e.g., separate L and R FFTs without crossfeed wouldn't capture the beat frequencies generated in the brain when the left and right ear are fed separate tones, but I don't think this analysis covered anything like that, did it?

 

[csglinux]

As I have previous noted, I use anc not for high ambient noise suppression but for a more natural silence without a 'bottled up' experience provided by earplugs.

ANC use of the onboard microphones component blend noise cancellation with a much more natural quietness that passive earplugs cannot.

I totally understand that. I bet that's the majority view of ANC. I suspect what @Satir is pointing out most people won't care about until it's too late.
E.g., you spend all day with your ANC headphones on, avoiding the occasional 100 dB spike that your friend (who's not wearing any ANC headphones) hears, but all the time you're listening to Justin Bieber at 95 dB. Who ends up better off? (Careful, this is a trick question. Note the choice of music.)

I think point here is that the humble FFT doesn’t always tell the whole story.

So I invert the FFT and recover the original time-domain signal. What part of the story is it missing?

Psychoacoustics being Rare, in the case of things that we can’t measure with a microphone is a false assumption.

Well, then Jacob's in trouble isn't he. Wasn't he using microphones to measure his ANC headsets?

 

[pfzar]

Never mind. You already seem to know everything about audio.

 

[csglinux]

Never mind. You already seem to know everything about audio.

Here's an idea. Instead of making sarcastic comments, why not explain your position with reasoned argument?

 

[lantian]

Could you clarify what you mean by blindly trusting whatever measurements they have? And also what you mean by disregarding anything not showing up on it? It's like saying you shouldn't 'blindly trust' a measuring stick to measure your height or a weigh scale to measure your weight.

Audiosciencereview's goal is to indicate as close to precise measured signal outputs of these components (DAC and AMP) - which is how the engineering of these devices are done. It's hard to see what is 'blindly trusting' when measurements are already based on facts. The baseline threshold they use is the average audible frequencies a human ear can perceive. This does not mean all humans have the same hearing range (disregarding placebo effect and such).

Even though I have a general idea of how ANC works, I'll be watching this video later once I have more time to see what other information I'm missing on how they work.

Simply put just frequncy response will never tell if the thing actually sounds good or not. Just like thd and imd . There is nomeasurement for good sound.

 

[sidecross]

Here's an idea. Instead of making sarcastic comments, why not explain your position with reasoned argument?

I would agree about well expressed arguments cut many ways and often improve a better understanding. I would like a better reason on the complaint csglinux had made about Jacob and his testing procedure.

Simply put just frequncy response will never tell if the thing actually sounds good or not. Just like thd and imd . There is nomeasurement for good sound.

I never felt Jacob tried to bracket his comments and observation with a definition of 'sounds good or not'; your argument presupposes certainty as opposed to simple relativity as Einstein showed in 1905 with Special Relativity.

 

[descloud]

Simply put just frequncy response will never tell if the thing actually sounds good or not. Just like thd and imd . There is nomeasurement for good sound.

You look to be talking about a different topic altogether. My previous comment was not about 'good sounding or not', and I don't know what you're referring to. Are you talking about an amplifier, headphones, or dac? Because those can't be directly compared just by a simple "frequency response". DACs and amplifiers have a different set of measurements to work with compared to headphones. It's not that simple.

The other guy's comment was saying this about AudioScienceReview (ASR):

"The people over at Audio Science Review could really learn few things from this guy. Great to see someone actually doing scientific work to explain what humans perceive, rather that just blindly trusting whatever measurement standard they have, and disregarding anything not showing up on it, as lies and delusions of filthy humans..."

And I responded to that particular jab because the other comment looks to be generalizing the goal of ASR because of the toxic people commenting on it, just like if some people would generalize this forum because of the toxic people here as well.

So please do a little bit of context reading before making such simplified statements like that.

 

[descloud]

Here's an idea. Instead of making sarcastic comments, why not explain your position with reasoned argument?

Usually that kind of response means the other person does not have any reasonable arguments to go on so they side swipe you with such comments.

 

[pfzar]

Sarcasm in this case is from both sides.

So at 21:40 in the video Jacob talks about 3 Quest which is in measurement based on subjective data. This is one example of the use of psychology and psychoacoustic evaluations to derive data.

The impulse response and the FFT are powerful things, they tell us many things about a particular event.

But they do not tell us anything related to any non-linear events presented to the human brain.
Here is an example of what an FFT cant tell you. The FFT tells you that there is comb filtering but it does not tell you why the sound image is so wide. Or where exactly the sound image is. sample
Listen to stereo speakers, and on headphones.

Well, then Jacob's in trouble isn't he. Wasn't he using microphones to measure his ANC headsets? Or does he use magic unicorns for that part?

Here's an idea. Instead of making sarcastic comments, why not explain your position with reasoned argument?

 

[sidecross]

The back and forth with more than a touch testosterone is why there may be few women on this web site. (Tongue in cheek comment)