[bigshot]

I think these things have more to do with the intersection of psychology and bias than it does the intersection of acoustics and bias.

 

[KinGensai]

I think these things have more to do with the intersection of psychology and bias than it does the intersection of acoustics and bias.

? Our understanding of bias in a cognitive heuristics sense is completely derived from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, so it's not an intersection of itself. The study of psychoacoustics is an intersection of psychological heuristics and acoustics, hence the nomenclature.

 

[bigshot]

The resistance to accepting the facts about perceptual error have to do with a personality type that can’t admit any flaw in themselves. When that’s the case, it really doesn’t matter if the two sounds are different or the same. The answer comes from the ego, not the ears. It isn’t a listening test, it’s 100% self validation.

 

[FunkyBassMan]

Really? Half of my reason to bother making this thread was to avoid this.

"This" being?

If someone does argue that you are stupid because you believe in something they don't, you can report it as a personal attack. It's not a scientific position or a proof, it's someone trying to put you down.

Agreed.

Yes, someone is going to bring up Dunning-Kruger to call someone stupid. And someone will think you're a fool for not understanding how a biased experience should never be fully trusted.

Well, I disagree (and I'm sure you do too) that someone not understanding how biases affect our perceptions certainly does not mean they're stupid. For example, the neuroscience of how we experience every moment of our lives is driven by something called prediction and simulation. In short, we don't perceive first: we predict and then error-correct if what we perceive does not match our prediction. This is core neuroscience orginated by Barsalou and later extended and developed over recent years by Lisa Feldman Barrett and others. The long and short of it is that there is no experience independent of prediction (and biases are prediction). Thence comes the essence of my argument: claiming audiophiles are inferior because they listen with biases is patently ridiculous, because you do too. It is daily claimed here that X,Y, Z all sound the same (exceptions for faults, misuse, whatever), but they don't, not to audiophiles, not to anyone. Because they can't. Predictions (a subset being biases) are brought by everyone to every experience. The same way an audiophile might here a $100,000 whatever and think it sounds better than a $10 whatever, the "I'm enlightened and audiophiles are all stupid dolts on leashes being dragged around by marketing (or whatever nonsense) will hear the $100,000 device sounding equivalent to the $10 one because of their biases.

This does not mean anyone is "stupid"; it's simply how the brain works.

And someone will say that if it's not measured, it certainly isn't audible and imply stupidity for believing otherwise.
I'm sure all of that happens, I know it does.

Again, this points to the ridiculous of the argument:
1) You can't hear it if it's not measureable!
2) Your hearing is driven by your biases!

Pick one. Because, try as hard as certain participants do here, you can't have it both ways.

But, first, the elephant in the room. Those are personal opinions, not demonstrations. They could have posted, "lol U dumb" and it would have had the same argumentative value about sound, audibility, or someone's being stupid.

Exactly. If the "i'm holier-than-thee, audiophile" contributors would post actual science directly relevant to the discussion, then we'd get somewhere. But they don't. They say stuff and seem to think it's somehow scientific just because it came out of their mouth (keyboard). This is why I occasionally point out the ridiculous idiocy that is regularly posted as scientific fact.

Second, let's be honest that kind of stuff goes both ways, @FunkyBassMan who is quite experienced at insulting others and calling what they say stupid, knows it well.

I'm simply fighting back against those who regularly spew vicious insults audiophiles' way on an hourly basis. Be mad at me? Then be mad at them too.

Just being somewhat interested in measurements and objective testing get ridiculed on an almost daily basis

This is a pure lie. At no point have I ever ridiculed anyone for being interested in measurements and objective testing.

I'm sure you know the general level of respect given to the Sound Science section and people in it.

Sound Science would immediately gain respect from others if it showed respect to others. (In fairness, many do, but arguably the loudest ones don't).

Someone is going to get butt hurt, someone is going to get mad at someone else, someone is going to generalize and put that guy in a box with a certain group of people. Again, it is how our brains work, and it does often lead to actions with little dignity or logic.

Indeed.

Rapidly, what is being discussed isn't even the point, someone out of argument will try to win the internet instead.

Of course, I'm the exception. I'm never wrong, I never attack a person instead of his ideas, I never ever call a group I mean to criticize, "they", "so called subjectivists", "audiophools". I don't do that because I'm never biased, and I know when I'm right!

Haha!!

My strong suggestion is to try and understand more about ourselves, others, and our very many flaws, more so for a hobby where we matter quite a bit I would say ^_^. If along the way it helps be more patient with others and their obvious biases, that's a cool bonus.

Exactly. The intersection of biases and physics is fascinating stuff.

 

[bigshot]

No one is saying audiophiles are stupid because they have biases. Everyone has biases, even objectivists. That’s why everyone- audiophile and science based listeners alike- should compare blind.

And there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is just not knowing something. No one can know everything. Stupidity is refusing to know when presented with the info. No one should be stupid. We need to learn from the world around us.

 

[BS5711]

Thence comes the essence of my argument: claiming audiophiles are inferior because they listen with biases is patently ridiculous, because you do too. It is daily claimed here that X,Y, Z all sound the same (exceptions for faults, misuse, whatever), but they don't, not to audiophiles, not to anyone. Because they can't.

Again, this points to the ridiculous of the argument:
1) You can't hear it if it's not measureable!
2) Your hearing is driven by your biases!

Pick one. Because, try as hard as certain participants do here, you can't have it both ways.

I see your train of thought but I think it revolves around splitting hairs with the specific words that may have been used rather than the obvious intention of the words.

The science guys are saying that technically, biases aside, these items “should” sound the same because they measure essentially the same and any difference is within the inaudible range for humans.

If they don’t sound the same the difference in perceived sound is due to biases. As you said we all have biases and they can’t be avoided because we are human. We can however acknowledge them and consider them in any listening comparison but that essentially never happens in discussions around gear on the wider head fi forums.

That is fine except when the listener, or worse yet a self appointed reviewer that gets freebies, who perceives a difference tells others that the difference exists in reality, as in there is a tangible reason they sound different, not an intangible difference due to biases.

Very often those that hear different sound quality from lets say two small dongle DACs never entertain that biases play a part in their perception of a different sound and pretty much state as fact that the dongles genuinely sound different. If one questions that the comeback is that if you don’t hear it you don’t know how to listen properly for the differences or something of that nature.

I see your name pop up here and there in the wider head fi forums, I am sure you know what I am driving at. It is commonplace, in fact the existence of Head Fi would seem to rely on it.

 

[FunkyBassMan]

I see your train of thought but I think it revolves around splitting hairs with the specific words that may have been used rather than the obvious intention of the words

The science guys are saying that technically, biases aside, these items “should” sound the same because they measure essentially the same and any difference is within the inaudible range for humans.

If they don’t sound the same the difference in perceived sound is due to biases. As you said we all have biases and they can’t be avoided because we are human. We can however acknowledge them and consider them in any listening comparison but that essentially never happens in discussions around gear on the wider head fi forums.

That is fine except when the listener, or worse yet a self appointed reviewer that gets freebies, who perceives a difference tells others that the difference exists in reality, as in there is a tangible reason they sound different, not an intangible difference due to biases.

Very often those that hear different sound quality from lets say two small dongle DACs never entertain that biases play a part in their perception of a different sound and pretty much state as fact that the dongles genuinely sound different. If one questions that the comeback is that if you don’t hear it you don’t know how to listen properly for the differences or something of that nature.

I see your name pop up here and there in the wider head fi forums, I am sure you know what I am driving at. It is commonplace, in fact the existence of Head Fi would seem to rely on it.

I see your train of thought but I think it revolves around splitting hairs with the specific words that may have been used rather than the obvious intention of the words.

The science guys are saying that technically, biases aside, these items “should” sound the same because they measure essentially the same and any difference is within the inaudible range for humans.

Ok, makes sense. The problem is nothing (see Lisa Barrett, "prediction/simulation") can ever sound the same, even if it measures the same. So I think the problem is the same: either biases matter or they don't. One can't have it both ways.

If they don’t sound the same the difference in perceived sound is due to biases. As you said we all have biases and they can’t be avoided because we are human. We can however acknowledge them and consider them in any listening comparison but that essentially never happens in discussions around gear on the wider head fi forums.

Right, I get that, and agree. But also understand that if they DO sound the same, it's because of biases too.

That is fine except when the listener, or worse yet a self appointed reviewer that gets freebies, who perceives a difference tells others that the difference exists in reality, as in there is a tangible reason they sound different, not an intangible difference due to biases.

Right. I have no doubt that's often a thing. That does NOT, however, mean that every reviewer is corrupt and every audiophile is helpless before the great Satan of marketing (or whatever silliness is routinely contended around here).

Very often those that hear different sound quality from lets say two small dongle DACs never entertain that biases play a part in their perception of a different sound and pretty much state as fact that the dongles genuinely sound different.

I think this is right. People listen to listen. They don't listen to question biases.

However, in the end it doesn't matter, because biases are inescapable and they'll like what they like and if told they have biases, will likely say, "so what, we all do?"

If one questions that the comeback is that if you don’t hear it you don’t know how to listen properly for the differences or something of that nature.

I get what you're saying. However I would add that listening to music for pleasure is what in psychology known as a system 2 activity (unconscious, fast and energy-efficient). The act of consciously analyzing what you're listening to for differences or whatever is a system 2 activity (conscious, slow and energy-intensive). These are vastly different processes which leads to the arguable idea that consciously listening for difference is not a useful activity because the value of music listening comes in the unconscious system. But that's a debate for a whole nother day (and I'm not aware of good science on it, either, so I'm not sure how useful such a debate would be).

I see your name pop up here and there in the wider head fi forums, I am sure you know what I am driving at. It is commonplace, in fact the existence of Head Fi would seem to rely on it.

Yup, for sure. It may not seem like it, but I really do understand where the objectivists (to just use shorthand for now) are coming from. Many of the things pointed out are real issues, for sure, imho.

 

[bigshot]

The way to determine if two things sound different or the same is to reduce the effect of bias and perceptual error as much as possible, then do multiple trials and average the results. Those averaged results will give you the answer.

A difference is a matter of fidelity, not appreciation of sound quality. Audiophiles don’t make an effort to separate hearing and listening. They are two different things. Hearing is perception, and listening involves our brain processing what we hear.

 

[sander99]

Again, this points to the ridiculous of the argument:
1) You can't hear it if it's not measureable!
2) Your hearing is driven by your biases!

Pick one. Because, try as hard as certain participants do here, you can't have it both ways.

To clarify further what @BS5711 maybe had in the back in his mind with "splitting hairs with the specific words":
Not everyone here uses the word hearing with the same intended meaning, and even the same person doesn't always use it with the same intended meaning.
In 1) the intended meaning is that it can not be heared purely by the sound alone
In 2) the intended meaning is the total subjective hearing perception, not based on the sound alone

 

[FunkyBassMan]

To clarify further what @BS5711 maybe had in the back in his mind with "splitting hairs with the specific words":
Not everyone here uses the word hearing with the same intended meaning, and even the same person doesn't always use it with the same intended meaning.
In 1) the intended meaning is that it can not be heared purely by the sound alone
In 2) the intended meaning is the total subjective hearing perception, not based on the sound alone

I think that's exactly right, and important, in fact.

Because it really (imho) is important that what we ulitmately experience as audio in our heads is neurologically filtered by biases because that's how we evolved to understand what's our environment (the neuroscience behind this is that it would be far too time-consuming and energy-intensive to process what we're hearing in real time: we couldn't survive. That's why prediction (biases, as part of that) evolved: so we could be quick enough to get the hell out of there when we heard the lion because we already knew what the lion sounds like).

Listening to music is cool and all, but our hearing evolved only to help us survive. This is (imho) why when people "hear" (think they perceive, let's say) difference between gear, it often takes place in the definition of the space, say, rather than the quality of the bass or the groove or whatever. Studies have shown that our brains are incredibly good at precisely evaluating spaces aurally.(1) Which makes sense, because evolution had billions of years to come up with something that allows us to understand our environment and respond to it.

So, back to your point, figuring out some way to be clear about the difference between 1) the objective sound in the air and what registers 2) in our conscious awareness and 3) in our unconscious (which is far and away the most important part of our brain's processing), is a pretty important thing to try to do.

(1) as just one great example, check out Frederic Ira Simon and John Rudolph Curwen's 1969 study, titled "Auditory Localization: The Role of Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Cues."

 

[castleofargh]

"This" being?

The first post.

Well, I disagree (and I'm sure you do too) that someone not understanding how biases affect our perceptions certainly does not mean they're stupid. For example, the neuroscience of how we experience every moment of our lives is driven by something called prediction and simulation. In short, we don't perceive first: we predict and then error-correct if what we perceive does not match our prediction. This is core neuroscience orginated by Barsalou and later extended and developed over recent years by Lisa Feldman Barrett and others. The long and short of it is that there is no experience independent of prediction (and biases are prediction). Thence comes the essence of my argument: claiming audiophiles are inferior because they listen with biases is patently ridiculous, because you do too. It is daily claimed here that X,Y, Z all sound the same (exceptions for faults, misuse, whatever), but they don't, not to audiophiles, not to anyone. Because they can't. Predictions (a subset being biases) are brought by everyone to every experience. The same way an audiophile might here a $100,000 whatever and think it sounds better than a $10 whatever, the "I'm enlightened and audiophiles are all stupid dolts on leashes being dragged around by marketing (or whatever nonsense) will hear the $100,000 device sounding equivalent to the $10 one because of their biases.

This does not mean anyone is "stupid"; it's simply how the brain works.

I did not say XXXXX was a fact or that I believed it was correct, I said someone will say it. Big difference.

Again, this points to the ridiculous of the argument:
1) You can't hear it if it's not measureable!
2) Your hearing is driven by your biases!

Pick one. Because, try as hard as certain participants do here, you can't have it both ways.

Same thing. I wrote "someone will say.....". I'm not defending anything.

I'm simply fighting back against those who regularly spew vicious insults audiophiles' way on an hourly basis. Be mad at me? Then be mad at them too.

Don't! Again, if something is offensive, you can mention it, suggest an edit to the poster(will probably work better if you don't insult him along the way), and just say when it's going too far, as an observer, not with war paint on your face. You can report the post and I or someone else will decide to act, or not.
Be it a forum or real life(well, in most places), vigilantism is not allowed. Reacting to something that shouldn't be posted by posting something else that isn't allowed, at some point you must understand how that directly makes you part of the problem.

This is a pure lie. At no point have I ever ridiculed anyone for being interested in measurements and objective testing.

And if your quote contained the end of my sentence, "by some people on Head-Fi.", it would have been clear that I had stopped talking about you.


You misread a lot of what I posted. It's a long, boring post, so you have some excuses. But if that happens with my posts when you seem to feel no particular animosity toward me, imagine how many times you might have done it for the often long posts of gregorio? More so when you clearly seem to hate the guy and try hard to find faults in his messages.
The positive thing here is that we excellently manage to stay on topic. Bias indeed!

 

[FunkyBassMan]

I did not say XXXXX was a fact or that I believed it was correct, I said someone will say it. Big difference.

Indeed; apologies if I missed that.

Same thing. I wrote "someone will say.....". I'm not defending anything.

Ok.

Don't! Again, if something is offensive, you can mention it, suggest an edit to the poster(will probably work better if you don't insult him along the way), and just say when it's going too far, as an observer, not with war paint on your face. You can report the post and I or someone else will decide to act, or not.
Be it a forum or real life(well, in most places), vigilantism is not allowed. Reacting to something that shouldn't be posted by posting something else that isn't allowed, at some point you must understand how that directly makes you part of the problem.

I do understand. And I won't, going forward.

But you freely allow it on one side, and (occasionally) come down like a ton of bricks on the other side. I'd humbly request you run the forum fairly. You obviously have the power not to, but continuing to be so one-sided, as you seem to have yourself noticed, just makes the whole forum look silly.

And if your quote contained the end of my sentence, "by some people on Head-Fi.", it would have been clear that I had stopped talking about you.

Fair enough. I appreciate your implication that I'm not "some people".

You misread a lot of what I posted. It's a long, boring post, so you have some excuses.

Meh, if I'm asking precision of others, I need to be precise myself too.

But if that happens with my posts when you seem to feel no particular animosity toward me, imagine how many times you might have done it for the often long posts of gregorio?

Again, I have no animosity toward anyone. We all have our issues; I am no exception and in no position to judge anyone else's situation.

What I do have animosity toward is totally wrong things being stated as facts proven by science when (at least in the cases I tend to point out) even a child could tell you how wrong they are. I also have animosity toward, following the making of such claims, the unending stream of condescension, arrogance, and insults that follows as their errors are pointed out.

More so when you clearly seem to hate the guy and try hard to find faults in his messages.

Lol, I have no time (or desire) to hate anyone! I guess it comes across that way because I only tend to chime in when really, really wrong things are said. And the often ridiculous ways he tries to weasel out of it deserve response, only because he seems to find it such a moral outrage that someone could possibly disagree or that he might make a mistake from time to time.

The whole nonsense would go away instantly and the conversation might even be blissfully constructive if he would simply say, "yeah that's right, I misstated that", or "well it's my opinion that [x,y.z] but I admit I can't prove it", or (as you have often done, which makes me think you may be a scientist because this is how scientists speak in my experience), "Based on what data I have, it's extremely unlikely that [x,y,z]", or any of the variants a scientist might use to intentionally respect science by being precise about how much can possibly be known and what could possibly remain unknown (all the while having even strongly-held opinions).

The positive thing here is that we excellently manage to stay on topic. Bias indeed!

Ha, true! What happened there??!!

 

[castleofargh]

So, back to your point, figuring out some way to be clear about the difference between 1) the objective sound in the air and what registers 2) in our conscious awareness and 3) in our unconscious (which is far and away the most important part of our brain's processing), is a pretty important thing to try to do.

My mother is never going to care about that , But yes being able to know we're judging sound when we think we are, is certainly valuable and sometimes important.
Biases have also been a hot topic for musicians in competitions for a while. Some competitions did act on the findings about blind test, some then turned 180° on blind tests because it resulted in winners that didn't please the social structure, like not being the predicted winners, or racial quotas, or whatever else that had even less to do with sound.
But we now know, not only that the visual performance has a big impact on the judges, but from another experiment, they demonstrated how people only being shown the video without sound, were statistically better at finding who won the competition than those who only had sound. Suggesting that the judges might have also voted for the visual performance without knowing they did.
And of course we have the famous blind test with a Stradivarius VS new stuff, where the Stradivarius didn't do well given the price and reputation they carry. And guess what, some people argued that the test was wrong, wrong judges, wrong room, bad humidity levels, blind test=bad. Of course, it happened, like it always does. And perhaps some of the critics had value, but only as a critic they lead nowhere. While a blind test gives statistical data, even if about a dry room and bad judges, or whatever it is that really happened.

People can always decide to do what they want in the end, but more power to them if they at least know what might influence their impressions of "sound".

Studies have shown that our brains are incredibly good at precisely evaluating spaces aurally.

Small disagreement here, we're alright at best IMO. Of course, it's a matter of interpretation, but we suck in different ways compared to many animals(Man, I would love those independently turning ears!!!! Would be terrible for headphones though), and we kind of suck compared to evaluating space visually.

 

[castleofargh]

But you freely allow it on one side, and (occasionally) come down like a ton of bricks on the other side. I'd humbly request you run the forum fairly. You obviously have the power not to, but continuing to be so one-sided, as you seem to have yourself noticed, just makes the whole forum look silly.

Again, we might be right in the middle of biases. How you perceive moderation, and me, how I act. Based on me being a human and all, it's likely that I'm even more partial than I think I am. I'm willing to consider that. Then again, I'm somewhat pro method and pro data for audio and moderation. So here's the data:

For this week, I've had 2 posts reported in total by different people. Both are your posts being reported! I'm not joking, you pick a bad time to bring this up.
BTW, I let one be and deleted the other.


Now, if we're discussing rules,

We don't allow discussion of moderation on the forums. See the Moderation FAQ for further information.

I technically should remove those posts too. See how biased I am toward you ^_^. It's not even the first time.

 

[gregorio]

But the goal of the personal audio is what happens inside, bias and all. What if a certain impression is due to bias? Cool. Then find a way to force that bias to happen more often to make listeners satisfied, because that subjective impression is the goal and the “objective reality” of personal audio. Even if a 00000.1dB change is inaudible, if it / they manage to convince (“trick”) enough / a lot of listeners into “hearing” it and makes them satisfied with their experience, then it’s not a trick and perhaps one should research to find a way to control that illusion better.

Ah but there’s a fundamental flaw in that reasoning, actually 2 flaws:
Firstly, it ignores preference. There isn’t “that subjective impression is the goal”, we all have different subjective impressions and different preferences, in fact even the same person has different subjective impressions, we could listen to the exact same recording twice and focus our listening on different aspects of the recording and therefore have somewhat different subjective impressions each time, and our preferences typically evolve/change over time.
Secondly, some perceptual biases/illusion are a consequence of normal human hearing, they apply to everyone roughly the same (assuming no impairment/disability) and we have found “a way to control that illusion better”, the stereo effect being an obvious example but there are others. Some other biases develop over time, with experience but still apply to the vast majority of people and those illusions/biases too are relatively well controlled. While other biases are very individual, they are dependent on individual expectations/knowledge/understanding, only work for some people, only some of the time and are relatively fragile. A relatively minor change in conditions or expectations, knowledge or understanding can sometimes change or even defeat them entirely. Without locking someone in a sensory deprivation tank forever, we do not know how control all those variables in order to provide control over those biases/illusions.

Thence comes the essence of my argument: claiming audiophiles are inferior because they listen with biases is patently ridiculous, because you do too.

Ah, exactly! No one is “claiming audiophiles are inferior because they listen with biases”. So you arguing against that claim is an absolutely classic example of a strawman argument, which YOU yourself state is “the essence of my argument”. Exactly, I couldn’t have put it better myself!! lol

It is daily claimed here that X,Y, Z all sound the same (exceptions for faults, misuse, whatever), but they don't, not to audiophiles, not to anyone. Because they can't.

Of course they can. Don’t you even know what sound is? Sound is pressure variations/vibrations that propagates as an acoustic wave through a medium, air in our case. We can detect those vibrations (that’s what a microphone does) and measure sound. Typically though we just measure the analogue signal output of a DAC, amp or analogue cable because the sound produced is entirely dependant on that signal. Therefore we absolutely can determine if the sound of X, Y, Z is the same or audibly the same (because human hearing thresholds are known) and in many cases they are. You don’t seem to realise you are talking about something entirely different, you are talking about perception, the human brain’s response to sound, NOT sound itself. Perception is affected by numerous biases as the OP indicates, but X, Y, Z and sound are not affected by any biases, because neither X, Y, Z nor sound have a human brain!

Again, this points to the ridiculous of the argument:
1) You can't hear it if it's not measureable!
2) Your hearing is driven by your biases!

Pick one.

It does indeed again point to the “ridiculousness of the argument” but as is so often the case, you seem oblivious to the fact that it’s your ridiculousness! Hearing is not driven by biases, it’s driven by sound waves and the anatomy/physiology of your ears, while your perception is driven by the signals sent to your brain from your ears and your eyes and then interpreted by your brain, which is where the cognitive biases come into play. Neither sound nor your ears have any cognitive biases. So yet again, this is effectively a strawman!

If the "i'm holier-than-thee, audiophile" contributors would post actual science directly relevant to the discussion, then we'd get somewhere. But they don't. They say stuff and seem to think it's somehow scientific just because it came out of their mouth (keyboard). This is why I occasionally point out the ridiculous idiocy that is regularly posted as scientific fact.

Yes “they” do, “they [we] say stuff and seem to think it’s somehow scientific” because it’s reliable scientific proof/evidence that can be verified with an encyclopaedia, text books, standards organisations, published scientific papers or other reliable sources. That’s why it’s coming out of their mouth/keyboard! The reason you “point out the ridiculous idiocy that is posted as scientific fact” seems to be because you do not verify what is coming out of their [our] mouth, you commonly don’t even read it properly, let alone understand it and instead of asking for clarification, you just assert it’s “ridiculous idiocy” (or other insults) and never do what you are demanding (post actual science to support it). So it’s clear to everyone where the “ridiculous idiocy” is coming from!

I also have animosity toward, following the making of such claims, the unending stream of condescension, arrogance, and insults that follows as their errors are pointed out.

But you’re not pointing out “their errors”! Just insulting people and their arguments by stating it’s “ridiculous idiocy” is not pointing out their errors, you actually have to point out what their error is with some explanation reliant on verifiable/reliable evidence. This is a science discussion forum, not the kindergarten playground that some are trying to turn it into!

G