[71 dB]

I have been a bit absent from this forum (never really felt a valued member to be honest...) and concentrating on learning music theory and making music, but I decided to make this new thread. I haven't seen this aspect of human hearing talked alongside crossfeed so I bring it here: Cerebral dominance.

So, since the left and right cerebral cortexes process the sounds differently, it means that stereophonic recordings with large channel separation listened to with headphones causes the musical information in left channel be processed differently from the right channel (apparently even if there are strong ties between the cortexes) and this is even different between listeners. Since crossfeed sends a filtered copy of the channel content of the opposing ear, it means both channels get processed by both cerebral cortexes.

Personally I believe the unnatural aspect of excessive spatial information is much bigger problem, but cerebral dominance can be seen as another justification for the use of crossfeed with headphones.

 

[Steve999]

Well, without getting into the cross-feed crossfire (I do most of my listening on speakers anyway), I do think there is an aspect of this that I had always suspected. There is a lot of deep research and thought that humans are able to process grammar fluently in a way that other primates can only learn with great halting difficulty, if at all. I would say better than any other mammals but I’m pretty respectful of whales and dolphins and don’t really know how complex their communication gets. People learn grammar as part of their early development, and there seems to be an innate neural structure in the brain of humans that facilitates this.

Now I have had all of my kids play instruments, not because I want them to be great musicians (odds: about 1 in 50,000, if that?) but because I just wanted them to get the language of music, to read it, to play by ear, to improvise, etc. How good they got at it was not that important to me. I just wanted them to get it, as a life experience. And I think that worked.

Anyway, the other day, we were just having a free-ranging discussion, and one of my kids came up with the idea that our unique ability for music ties into our unique ability for grammar. And I thought now that is a pretty cool idea. And it would tie into your cited research that fluent listeners kind of switch the side of the brain that is dominant for processing the melodic aspect of music, to the side that seems to be most used for language. Because aspects of musical logic and phrasing do to me have an abstract similarity to grammatical structures.

Now I think music ties into other of our unique abilities, like math, and thinking about time in the abstract, and evoking emotions purposefully through art, so I am not going to get overly simplistic with this. Additionally, in my casual reading, it seems the more we learn about our minds the less of a compartmentalized view we take as to how it works and the more flexibility and plasticity we find our mind has, even as we grow older, if we keep it active. This I have read extends even to continuing biologically to replenish or grow new grey matter if we keep thinking effortfully and creatively.

I think of music as something that is not necessarily an evolutionary advantage but a perfect and remarkable storm of convergences of special abilities we did develop in order to enhance our survival.

I guess I am thinking crossfeed is not going to make you process music like a musician or an experienced listener. I think learning to play music is the straightest and most reliable path to that goal. Unfortunately that or developing advanced listening skills takes a lot more time and effort than just using crossfeed. I prefer having variable crossfeed for headphones but that is a preference. I am not going to advocate for or against it.

I think there is the corpus callosum to zip massive amounts of information from one side of the brain to the other as needed. It’s kind of a brain crossfeed, if you will. That’s likely a large part of how all of that melodic information moves to a different part and side of our brain as we learn to process it in a more advanced or experienced level. I would think of auditory crossfeed as neither necessary nor sufficient to accomplish this.

 

[SoundAndMotion]

@Steve999 Nice. This is for your kid: https://www.npr.org/sections/health...nderstand-language-and-appreciate-tchaikovsky
Let me know if you want the original article.

@71 dB That section you posted is not really accurate on a few points, and doesn't really support the need for crossfeed. Perhaps you don't feel valued because your posts don't have a community-minded feel. Rather than saying "Headphone listening without crossfeed creates excessive spatial info and that's wrong. I learned about it in university. You must do it unless you like wrong sound", you might try to sound helpful "I like crossfeed. I learned about spatial processing of sound in university, and that could explain why I like it. You might want to try it and see if you like it too"
FYI the third letter is r, not l: cerebral, not celebral

 

[bigshot]

The problem is listening to headphones in the first place. Most recorded music is designed to be listened to speakers in the home.

 

[castleofargh]

@Steve999 Nice. This is for your kid: https://www.npr.org/sections/health...nderstand-language-and-appreciate-tchaikovsky
Let me know if you want the original article.

@71 dB That section you posted is not really accurate on a few points, and doesn't really support the need for crossfeed. Perhaps you don't feel valued because your posts don't have a community-minded feel. Rather than saying "Headphone listening without crossfeed creates excessive spatial info and that's wrong. I learned about it in university. You must do it unless you like wrong sound", you might try to sound helpful "I like crossfeed. I learned about spatial processing of sound in university, and that could explain why I like it. You might want to try it and see if you like it too"
FYI the third letter is r, not l: cerebral, not celebral

already tried suggesting this several times to no avail. he want the entire world to agree that a very simplified simulation of an already unrealistic way to diffuse sound must be glorified because it's in some ways(and only in some ways) less wrong than default headphone listening.
I suggested too many times in the crossfeed topic to just go with "hey I really like this!", which is totally my case. but @71 dB wants recognition in a way that is IMO not correct, so it's not likely to ever happen.

 

[castleofargh]

I have been a bit absent from this forum (never really felt a valued member to be honest...) and concentrating on learning music theory and making music, but I decided to make this new thread. I haven't seen this aspect of human hearing talked alongside crossfeed so I bring it here: Celebral dominance.

​

So, since the left and right celebral cortexes process the sounds differently, it means that stereophonic recordings with large channel separation listened to with headphones causes the musical information in left channel be processed differently from the right channel (apparently even if there are strong ties between the cortexes) and this is even different between listeners. Since crossfeed sends a filtered copy of the channel content of the opposing ear, it means both channels get processed by both celebral cortexes.

Personally I believe the unnatural aspect of excessive spatial information is much bigger problem, but celebral dominance can be seen as another justification for the use of crossfeed with headphones.

the stuff quoted has no relation to crossfeed, you just create your own correlation about it.


I think you're a valued member who gets weird when the matter of crossfeed comes up. which is not in itself that uncommon. most members here are overly sensitive/passionate about a specific topic, and I can just on the top of my head think of a handful who have extremist views on something and each time that trigger subject comes up it turns into a "me against the world" kind of situation, where, spoiler alert, usually the world has a point.
it's not great, it's really not fun for anybody, but you're clearly not unique in being the misunderstood poor lonesome cowboy when a particular topic is being discussed. as to you being valued, your nickname immediately brings to mind the stuff you explained on a few occasions about damping, how it works, how mechanical, acoustic or electrical functions can all pretty much be expressed and simulated as an electrical circuit which you even bothered creating for a few headphones(to actually go and work on something for someone else on the web, that alone puts you in some 0.1% or less of the population). most engineers have come across those stuff or even used them, but in my case it's another story entirely to remember it today, and yet another to be able to express things so that even the layman person could feel like he learned something. to value someone doesn't mean we have to agree with everything they say.


lastly about the article you quote, I have a very clear anecdote on this, I understand languages better in my right ear, and it's even more obvious with foreign languages. as guy wearing IEMs pretty much anytime he goes out, I've had thousands of occasions where I would take one intra out to hear an announcement or someone who was trying to talk to me. and which side I would clear did matter. not like I don't understand anything with the other ear, but if we're in a noisy place or my music is playing loud in the other ear, I'll have a much harder time understanding what is being said in my left ear. I have a pretty balanced hearing, with a notch around 7Khz in one ear and around 8kHz in the other, it's not even really 1kHz apart, I notice that they're not perfectly aligned only because when I play a sine sweep in a headphone, I can feel the sound rapidly jumping from one side to the other and back to center. that's about the only noticeable variation I'm aware of in my hearing and it seems to be a pretty high frequency for speech recognition, so I'm not confident that it explains my great many experiences. IDK, that's my anecdote, I don't have a clue if it's the same for everybody or if it has anything to do with which side of the brain does what. I'm left handed if that matters in any way which as far as I remember doesn't really. but I thought the percentage of people with stuff being dominant on the same side wasn't something as big as 97%. I thought it was more like 80 or 90%. dominant but not overwhelmingly so like 97%. I don't remember where I read about that stuff so who cares ^_^.

 

[bigshot]

The human mind usually is able to multi-task and engage in multiple activities at once. Priority is given to different subjects for attention, and those priorities shift as points are made and solutions are reached. However sometimes a subject will get stuck in a person's mind and they can't make themselves let go of it. Sometimes, the focus becomes so intense that the single subject is all the person can discuss, and the people around them refuse to discuss it with them. That's when they go into internet forums.

 

[Steve999]

@Steve999 Nice. This is for your kid: https://www.npr.org/sections/health...nderstand-language-and-appreciate-tchaikovsky
Let me know if you want the original article.

Thanks @SoundAndMotion !

I found a legal redirect to the original published article for anyone who's interested in some actual "Sound Science."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-019-0410-7.epdf?referrer_access_token=eo4ee7uGaYDVSUiSvT6omdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NcnAJEz4AOvsjWoj0zPNTc5bg7oNmNeyO7-NGl6j63jt_ctil0EY9OU2uiQskNA53HBMzCqf5kkMIUSGtSiz6SIchq_BaUVX9aQsYsbn0YtZh23WncX5CaJ6unhLWRUgC_Z1P2gUf7WaqcWIu_g_rFF4RCRcbNyot6i_Au6d8PZ9JQW3Mfl8kyASBos-ryygep2ptD_JYomHsjRJRQYNw1Fj6iKZ0AviGQvygpTlouTcp-QHrP-wZVSFhZIs6g20VVzncxZGPivcQRetRPz4mG3jr2Wpyjf1yRKhP5PWqN5sLK_x_eWtuwwAzNUpnxKzc=&tracking_referrer=www.npr.org

 

[71 dB]

remove this please

 

[71 dB]

@71 dB
1. That section you posted is not really accurate on a few points, and doesn't really support the need for crossfeed.
2. Perhaps you don't feel valued because your posts don't have a community-minded feel.
3. Rather than saying "Headphone listening without crossfeed creates excessive spatial info and that's wrong. I learned about it in university. You must do it unless you like wrong sound", you might try to sound helpful "I like crossfeed. I learned about spatial processing of sound in university, and that could explain why I like it. You might want to try it and see if you like it too"

1. It is an acoustics textbook* used in my acoustics 101 course. Are you suggesting the textbook is rubbish? Rossing does not talk about crossfeed here, but I came up with the connection myself and that's why I created this thread. I have this kind of thoughts. Am I supposed to keep them to myself or share with other on boards like this?

2. I have asperger. I don't understand or care about concepts like "community-minded feel." I have things to say and I say them. That's it.

3. Headphone listening creates excessive spatiality compared to speakers to which the recordings are mixed for. Saying headphone spatiality isn't excessive or wrong is like saying 3 is not more than 2. Sure, newer recordings are often better suitable for headphones (pop producers know to mix bass mono etc.), but that just means newer recordings need less crossfeed or no crossfeed at all. Old recordings are what they are and they often need tons of crossfeed.

Sure you CAN listen to headphones without crossfeed (as I did up until 2012 when I finally realized the problem of excessive headphone spatiality myself) and even like it (I didn't hate or like it because I didn't know there's something better), but science says it's wrong and in 2012 my head finally connected the dots. A lot of people like smoking, but science says smoking is bad for you. I emphasize science, because in my case science made my discover and try crossfeed. I had the scientific knowledge in my head for years, but I never applied the knowledge to headphone listening until winter 2012 when for whatever reason the dots got connected. People who have tried crossfeed as a gimmick without scientifuc motivation maybe don't realize how much science supports crossfeed.

Everyone here seems to have tried crossfeed decades ago. I am the slow one here. I was into speakers and thought headphones are so straightforward there is nothing to them. You just put them to your head and start listening. No room acoustics/speaker placing/radiation patters/power responses and all that complex stuff we have with speakers. Turned out, headphones are much more complex than I thought.

_____________________
* My copy is second edition

 

[StandsOnFeet]

Are you suggesting the textbook is rubbish?

This is entirely possible. I've seen textbooks in my field of competence (computer programming) that contained a number of major errors. Just being a textbook is no guarantee of accuracy.

 

[71 dB]

This is entirely possible. I've seen textbooks in my field of competence (computer programming) that contained a number of major errors. Just being a textbook is no guarantee of accuracy.

Too bad my professor never said: "By the way, this book we are using in our course is rubbish." I have lived a quarter of a century thinking what I learned in the university is scientifically accurate. What is the point of studying in an university if it isn't? Sure, there are typos in textbooks here and there, but never did I thought professors would pick rubbish textbooks as course material…

…I wonder what Rossing got wrong with cerebral dominance.

 

[WoodyLuvr]

the stuff quoted has no relation to crossfeed, you just create your own correlation about it.


I think you're a valued member who gets weird when the matter of crossfeed comes up. which is not in itself that uncommon. most members here are overly sensitive/passionate about a specific topic, and I can just on the top of my head think of a handful who have extremist views on something and each time that trigger subject comes up it turns into a "me against the world" kind of situation, where, spoiler alert, usually the world has a point.
it's not great, it's really not fun for anybody, but you're clearly not unique in being the misunderstood poor lonesome cowboy when a particular topic is being discussed. as to you being valued, your nickname immediately brings to mind the stuff you explained on a few occasions about damping, how it works, how mechanical, acoustic or electrical functions can all pretty much be expressed and simulated as an electrical circuit which you even bothered creating for a few headphones(to actually go and work on something for someone else on the web, that alone puts you in some 0.1% or less of the population). most engineers have come across those stuff or even used them, but in my case it's another story entirely to remember it today, and yet another to be able to express things so that even the layman person could feel like he learned something. to value someone doesn't mean we have to agree with everything they say.

So very nicely and fairly put good sir... and in more ways than one! If only we all could be so cordial, polite, and insightful especially when conversing highly subjective matters. Again your post is a perfect example of why you are such a good and much appreciated moderator

 

[71 dB]

the stuff quoted has no relation to crossfeed, you just create your own correlation about it.

Exactly, I created my own correlation about it. That's how new ideas arise. Albert Einstein made his own correlations and came up with the theory of relativity. He of course was a genius and I am not, but I can still create my own correlations no matter how stupid, can't I? If not then what the hell are we non-geniuses supposed to do with our lives?

Now, if you want you can always explain why you think my correlations are incorrect.

I think you're a valued member who gets weird when the matter of crossfeed comes up. which is not in itself that uncommon. most members here are overly sensitive/passionate about a specific topic, and I can just on the top of my head think of a handful who have extremist views on something and each time that trigger subject comes up it turns into a "me against the world" kind of situation, where, spoiler alert, usually the world has a point.
it's not great, it's really not fun for anybody, but you're clearly not unique in being the misunderstood poor lonesome cowboy when a particular topic is being discussed. as to you being valued, your nickname immediately brings to mind the stuff you explained on a few occasions about damping, how it works, how mechanical, acoustic or electrical functions can all pretty much be expressed and simulated as an electrical circuit which you even bothered creating for a few headphones(to actually go and work on something for someone else on the web, that alone puts you in some 0.1% or less of the population). most engineers have come across those stuff or even used them, but in my case it's another story entirely to remember it today, and yet another to be able to express things so that even the layman person could feel like he learned something. to value someone doesn't mean we have to agree with everything they say.

From my perspective people here get weird when crossfeed comes up. I don't get how excessive spatiality is a good thing. Makes no sense. I have this "me against the world" feel, because I don't think I get much support for my claims. It's not as if 10 crossfeed lovers fought against 10 crossfeed haters. Sure, a lot of people here seems to use and like crossfeed, but they don't FIGHT for their opinion. I feel I am the only one fighting althou I'm losing my motivation. That's why I have been absent and studying music theory instead.

 

[Steve999]

1. It is an acoustics textbook* used in my acoustics 101 course. Are you suggesting the textbook is rubbish? Rossing does not talk about crossfeed here, but I came up with the connection myself and that's why I created this thread. I have this kind of thoughts. Am I supposed to keep them to myself or share with other on boards like this?
_____________________
* My copy is second edition

Yes, things have changed a little in recent years. The theory of “cerebral dominance” has fallen out of favor. Brain processing in the cerebral cortex is now thought to be more balanced and nuanced and flexible than that theory would predict. Some of that theory’s predictions have proven untrue. It is now referenced in the modern conception as lateralization of brain function. Unfortunately the Internet is littered with bad info and outdated writings and popularized trash on the subject. After that things get over my head pretty fast and I start not knowing what I am talking about, but I do know that much. But you can find information on this by Googling, if you look in the right places. You can read the academic article @SoundAndMotion referenced and I linked to in a post above to get an idea of the complexity and a feeling for the more modern view.

And to get your feet wet here’s a relatively (too) simplistic article I found that tries to convey the modern view and what the theory of cerebral dominance got wrong:

https://www.healthline.com/health/left-brain-vs-right-brain