[ralphp@optonline]

  Going to rename the thread to: "The  feel free to bash each other here thread".

I'm sorry to say this but you did start this thread by asking a very reasonable question which was then followed by some very reasonable and well thought out responses. What happened is that an individual, the same individual who feels that it his duty to start a flame war on each and every thread here in the Sound Science section, decided that this would be a good thread to start yet another flame war and so it began. I have done my part and have sent a PM to the Sound Science moderator asking him to step in and stop all this nonsense. Hopefully he will be successful and the Sound Science section will once be free of these annoying little flame wars.

 

[VNandor]

BTW quite off topic but I got lost pretty fast in the provided literature. I started reading the wiki which I kind of understood. However even the first ppt from the AES link is too hard for me to understand. I have no clue what's going on after the Sampling and quantization. Might be because English is not my first language...

 

[mmerrill99]

BTW quite off topic but I got lost pretty fast in the provided literature. I started reading the wiki which I kind of understood. However even the first ppt from the AES link is too hard for me to understand. I have no clue what's going on after the Sampling and quantization. Might be because English is not my first language...

Here's a website on Auditory Neuroscience which is both fun & easy to understand

 

[gregorio]

Originally Posted by VNandor /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Science actually says I can hear real differences between the sounds despite hearing the exact same thing?! This seems to be pretty unreasonable for first glance to me.

 
Indeed and for many audiophiles it seems not only unreasonable but so completely unbelievable as to be beyond even the slightest consideration. The fact that there is a considerable difference between reality and what we perceive as reality is not seriously contested (except by extreme audiophiles), in fact music composers have known and exploited this fact for over 400 years. Modern science tells us that the human brain receives roughly ten times the amount of sensory data than it can process, the brain effectively discards 90% of that data and what is left is our perception! From a scientific standpoint, it's not a question of whether there are any differences between reality and perception but of how come our perception achieves any accuracy at all when 90% of the information is discarded. This is the field of psycho-acoustics and currently, some aspects of psycho-acoustics are very well understood, while others are very poorly understood. Indeed, some of the tasks which are so trivially easy for us that we take them completely for granted, turn out to be so complex that science is yet to progress beyond several different competing theories to explain how the human brain accomplishes them.
 
To appreciate that a concatenation of data occurs, that perception is an artificial construct generated by throwing away most of the sensory data and combining everything that's left (not just the aural data) into a single and potentially highly flawed perception of reality is well known and trivially easy to demonstrate:
 
 
 
EDIT: Sad to have to say but I concur with the opinions of others expressed here regarding mmerrill99.

 

[castleofargh]

  I realize this forum is called sound science and not sound philosophy but my limited knowledge prevents me to ask about actual science stuff. Still this could be the best place to ask for a bit of education and raise some qestions that bug me.
 
After reading some of the threads here I noticed that nearly all of the discussions are turned into flamewars because someone says product X makes a difference and someone says it doesn't make (a significant) difference.
 
I also read about something called pscho acoutstics.(Still in this forum). I assume the next thing could happen: let's take the overused example of sighted testing cables, a cheap and an expensive one, having expectation bias. I make a sighted test and I claim there's a difference. Now let's assume I'm clever enough to make accurate measurements and draw conclusions from it. After making the measurements I conclude that the signals were identical to the point of inaudibility causing no perceivable changes to the sound.
Therefore I come to a conclusion that the actual sound waves doesn't make as big difference as what I (think to) know about the cables' quality, instead of saying my measurements were flawed or I have a wrong idea about what's being audible. Science actually says I can hear real differences between the sounds despite hearing the exact same thing?!
 
This seems to be pretty unreasonable for first glance to me. Did I misinterpret something when I read about psychoacoustic related posts around here? (Not like I have a better explanation to that theoretical test, given the other alternatives are said to be known and measured easily) I know our minds can be tricked easily but that's still a bit ludicrous in a way.
 
I'm not fighting for (presumably) snake oil products, I personally don't hear any difference between cables, or 320kbit mp3s compared to lossless. I'm just curious what makes some people to think that.
 
Anything that needs to be corrected or no matter how strange it seems to be that's how world works?
 
Also I'm intrested where some of you guys studied about that. I didn't have psychoacoustic lessons in school.

. In fact noone heard about it around here.

the main problem in all this comes down to trying to answer the question: "how do we measure a thought?" and of course with basic old school tests we can't always do it. maybe soon we'll have tools for that, we can already recognize patterns to the point of doing a few actions by thought, or to have a computer guess correctly what image we're thinking about(withing a given list). so some day we can expect to put all those lame arguments to rest. but right now, it's a giant mess. ^_^
because music is heard by people, listening to music is always in the end a subjective experience, so you can pretty much believe and say anything, you can always hide behind the out of jail free card with "I'm a subjectivist" written on it. sometimes it's a valid reason, often it's just a shameless abuse of an idea, to avoid facing the fact that we were wrong.
 
the fact is that our thoughts and all our senses are linked at all times, we get plenty of thoughts and information from all that, then we don't really have the ability to record it all, so our brain uses tricks to record more like ideas of what happened than what really happened. and if possible, using previous ideas of what previously happened, because that way we only have to recall a memory instead of having to create a complete new one. so idea of idea of what looks like what happened once before). and depending on your mood, the same music could sound different. listening to ABBA while a cow is cut in 2, will not be memorized the same way as the song being played when in bed with your lover.  or like the examples offered before(tap water), if you are told that something is different, you will usually notice a difference even where there wasn't one.  brains are playful spongy things. believing in something is enough to alter our impression of it.
 
another way to get fooled is that vision takes priority over sound. if you can go left or right, see a tiger running toward you on the left, and hear a tiger on the right but see nothing, where are you going to escape? to the right. it's a very natural behavior and just like the McGurk effect, it shows how what we see does change what we hear, with priority to vision to decide what is real to us. most audiophiles can't even consider the idea, and those who do often believe they have enough experience in audio not to be influenced

which is ludicrous and can be proved to be false any day of the week. still you even have renowned people making reviews with that very idea as basis for their job. so of course they are somehow wrong almost all the time. and can find differences in anything they please even when putting crystals on top of a cable. see different, think different, "OMG it's different!!" ... or not.
 
when you make the list of all the possibilities to be fooled, you usually end up not trusting yourself very much, and trusting sighted evaluation of audio stuff even less. that's simply doing the obvious rational choice, but somehow in audio, that's called being an objectivist and counts as a clear minority.
anyway, because those people still wish to get answers, they decide to rely on tests and measurements as often as they can to confirm their subjective experiences, instead of relying only on sighted evaluations from themselves or other people.
 
and that's exactly where you start to fight over everything without even caring about the subject itself. because all topics end up being a guy who trusts a test or a measurement, vs a guy saying that said test/measurement isn't enough, is wrong, or doesn't show everything. often both are right and wrong at some levels as most subjects aren't just black or white, and we end up with the mess you have been observing.
of course once you have actively rejected most of the tests that could prove you wrong, and you're left only with your subjective sighted experience, you're unstoppable!
 
 
 
 
the sub section of sound science is massively focused on scientific methods and blind tests(or would like to be

) as the closest way to represent reality. and we try to share a reality based on things measurable and repeatable, to make sure we're all talking about the same world, instead of one individual interpretation of the world. pretty much everywhere else on headfi, it's mostly the opposite, to the point where rules forbid to talk about blind tests and placebo. so the messy topics happen in here instead, where everybody can say almost anything(preferably fighting ideas and not people, but it's not always that easy to separate both). and then we get a reputation of looking for trouble. when we're only looking for truth(or something not too far from it).
in the end most topics are just one huge debate over what really exists, variations on the theme of the allegory of the cave.
 
 
about psycho acoustic, I would say some branch of psychology studies that, sound engineers must know some of it too, but in practice those who really seem to get it are the marketing people.

 

[mmerrill99]

Science actually says I can hear real differences between the sounds despite hearing the exact same thing?! This seems to be pretty unreasonable for first glance to me.

Indeed and for many audiophiles it seems not only unreasonable but so completely unbelievable as to be beyond even the slightest consideration. The fact that there is a considerable difference between reality and what we perceive as reality is not seriously contested (except by extreme audiophiles), in fact music composers have known and exploited this fact for over 400 years. Modern science tells us that the human brain receives roughly ten times the amount of sensory data than it can process, the brain effectively discards 90% of that data and what is left is our perception! From a scientific standpoint, it's not a question of whether there are any differences between reality and perception but of how come our perception achieves any accuracy at all when 90% of the information is discarded. This is the field of psycho-acoustics and currently, some aspects of psycho-acoustics are very well understood, while others are very poorly understood. Indeed, some of the tasks which are so trivially easy for us that we take them completely for granted, turn out to be so complex that science is yet to progress beyond several different competing theories to explain how the human brain accomplishes them.

To appreciate that a concatenation of data occurs, that perception is an artificial construct generated by throwing away most of the sensory data and combining everything that's left (not just the aural data) into a single and potentially highly flawed perception of reality is well known and trivially easy to demonstrate:


 

EDIT: Sad to have to say but I concur with the opinions of others expressed here regarding mmerrill99.

the McGurk effect is indeed an interesting insight into one aspect of auditory perception (psych-acoustics) but not, I fear, the aspect that was meant here.

So here we have an example of an auditory perception where, even though we know the same air vibrations are reaching our ears, we perceive it differently depending on how we see it is mouthed. Now what are we to derive from this? 99% of so-called objectivists look at this from the perspective that it proves how "biased" our hearing can be & how we can perceive something which isn't "actually" there. So the only way of "actually" hearing what's real is by not looking.

So this brings up so many issues which I'm sure will be similarly "objected" to as per the core vocal group that seem to have an issue with my postings. Oh, BTW, the chief objector to me Ralph.. has just posted an admission on the other thread that his whole argument me was off-topic - see here So after arguing with me for 13 pages that digital audio is immune to noise he states "The high end audio world's fascination with and fixation on USB, a connection type that was designed to transmit data and not audio, when USB has been shown be to problematic has always puzzled me."

So back to the issues raised by the McGurk effect:
- it brings into sharp focus what perception is - it's an interpretation of a limited set of signals from the physical world. Is it accurate - no! Is it accurate enough to ensure our survival as a species - yes! It works in an interpretive way that has served us well.

- In the McGurk effect do I always hear Ba when it is mouthed that way & Fa when mouthed differently even though I know that Ba is what the actual sound is? Yes. So my knowing the real sound does not change my perception. Why? Because perception is a processing tool that happens in the brain & not a microphone stuck on each side of our head.
- so this is what objectivists call a placebo & placebos are very real - they are not delusions - they are exactly the way our perception works - every time I look I hear what is mouthed, can't be helped & no amount of people insisting that I'm deluding myself will change the way I hear it.

- So what are people saying here about our perception? Are they looking to trade it in for a better model? Won't happen - it is what it is & we have to live with it, faults & all.

- it's akin to thinking we are rational beings who come to decisions via analysis & logic - wrong - we mostly have already subconsciously decided & we then rationalise all sorts of very plausible sounding reasons for that decision. It's the nature of our fundamental characteristics.

 

[mmerrill99]

the main problem in all this comes down to trying to answer the question: "how do we measure a thought?" and of course with basic old school tests we can't always do it. maybe soon we'll have tools for that, we can already recognize patterns to the point of doing a few actions by thought, or to have a computer guess correctly what image we're thinking about(withing a given list). so some day we can expect to put all those lame arguments to rest. but right now, it's a giant mess. ^_^
because music is heard by people, listening to music is always in the end a subjective experience, so you can pretty much believe and say anything, you can always hide behind the out of jail free card with "I'm a subjectivist" written on it. sometimes it's a valid reason, often it's just a shameless abuse of an idea, to avoid facing the fact that we were wrong.

the fact is that our thoughts and all our senses are linked at all times, we get plenty of thoughts and information from all that, then we don't really have the ability to record it all, so our brain uses tricks to record more like ideas of what happened than what really happened. and if possible, using previous ideas of what previously happened, because that way we only have to recall a memory instead of having to create a complete new one. so idea of idea of what looks like what happened once before). and depending on your mood, the same music could sound different. listening to ABBA while a cow is cut in 2, will not be memorized the same way as the song being played when in bed with your lover.  or like the examples offered before(tap water), if you are told that something is different, you will usually notice a difference even where there wasn't one.  brains are playful spongy things. believing in something is enough to alter our impression of it.

Well yes & no - there is actually a good reason why when you are told something is different that you may ACTUALLY hear it is different & it's all about attention. Research has shown that attention actually has changes the hearing mechanism so that it provides better SNR - so it's not delusion, it's real - it's the way our perception works! JJ Johnston will even tell you this.

another way to get fooled is that vision takes priority over sound. if you can go left or right, see a tiger running toward you on the left, and hear a tiger on the right but see nothing, where are you going to escape? to the right. it's a very natural behavior and just like the McGurk effect, it shows how what we see does change what we hear, with priority to vision to decide what is real to us. most audiophiles can't even consider the idea, and those who do often believe they have enough experience in audio not to be influenced which is ludicrous and can be proved to be false any day of the week. still you even have renowned people making reviews with that very idea as basis for their job. so of course they are somehow wrong almost all the time. and can find differences in anything they please even when putting crystals on top of a cable. see different, think different, "OMG it's different!!" ... or not.

It's not just "subjectivists" that hear the McGurk effect is it? So it really doesn't matter if you do a blind test with the McGurk effect - once you start to watch it again, you will experience exactly the same effect. What difference does the blind test make to our perception, in this instance?

when you make the list of all the possibilities to be fooled, you usually end up not trusting yourself very much, and trusting sighted evaluation of audio stuff even less. that's simply doing the obvious rational choice, but somehow in audio, that's called being an objectivist and counts as a clear minority.
anyway, because those people still wish to get answers, they decide to rely on tests and measurements as often as they can to confirm their subjective experiences, instead of relying only on sighted evaluations from themselves or other people.

As I said above what difference does knowing that Ba is the sound in the McGurk effect - we still perceisve it as Fa when mouthed as such. Are you suggesting that we need to travel the world unsighted for a more realistic perception of that world?

and that's exactly where you start to fight over everything without even caring about the subject itself. because all topics end up being a guy who trusts a test or a measurement, vs a guy saying that said test/measurement isn't enough, is wrong, or doesn't show everything. often both are right and wrong at some levels as most subjects aren't just black or white, and we end up with the mess you have been observing.
of course once you have actively rejected most of the tests that could prove you wrong, and you're left only with your subjective sighted experience, you're unstoppable!

Well it all boils down to what this hobby is about - it's about connecting with & enjoying a musical presentation. Most enjoy this better when the "illusion" produced by our audio playback systems seems more realistic. How do we judge this "illusion" - using our auditory perception with all it's faults.

the sub section of sound science is massively focused on scientific methods and blind tests(or would like to be :angry_face: ) as the closest way to represent reality. and we try to share a reality based on things measurable and repeatable, to make sure we're all talking about the same world, instead of one individual interpretation of the world. pretty much everywhere else on headfi, it's mostly the opposite, to the point where rules forbid to talk about blind tests and placebo. so the messy topics happen in here instead, where everybody can say almost anything(preferably fighting ideas and not people, but it's not always that easy to separate both). and then we get a reputation of looking for trouble. when we're only looking for truth(or something not too far from it).
in the end most topics are just one huge debate over what really exists, variations on the theme of the allegory of the cave.


about psycho acoustic, I would say some branch of psychology studies that, sound engineers must know some of it too, but in practice those who really seem to get it are the marketing people.

Yes, "truth" entails trying to understand all aspects of the subject matter, & that includes psycho-acoustics. Limiting this "truth" to only certain aspects would be considered disingenuous.

 

[ralphp@optonline]

So this brings up so many issues which I'm sure will be similarly "objected" to as per the core vocal group that seem to have an issue with my postings. Oh, BTW, the chief objector to me Ralph.. has just posted an admission on the other thread that his whole argument me was off-topic - see here So after arguing with me for 13 pages that digital audio is immune to noise he states "The high end audio world's fascination with and fixation on USB, a connection type that was designed to transmit data and not audio, when USB has been shown be to problematic has always puzzled me."

Just to set the record straight I told you that do not use USB DACs on a regular basis back in posts #86 & 88 of that thread. I also clearly state that I never heard any noise or jitter (which would have been a surprise since the human ear cannot hear jitter - look it up) from USB DACs. That is not the same as stating the simple fact that the main propose of the USB protocol was as a means to transmit digital data. It was not developed to transmit a digital audio signal although it certainly can and does.
 
Now that you have been thoroughly out voted (for lack of better term) on this thread and on the USB cable thread mentioned above, instead of being gracious and accepting your fate, you continue your lines of attack and try to restart the argument. An argument which will once again run it's course and circle back to the same conclusion.
 
Sighted listening tests are flawed. Measurements are also flawed, or rather measurements can used in ways which make them appear flawed. For example the outputs from two different audio systems can be measured with one system's measurements showing that the system can clearly reproduce signals above 25K Hz while the other system only reproduces signals up to 24K Hz and therefore the measurements "show" that first system is "better" than the second. Nonsense since humans can't hear anything above about 20K Hz. Another example is jitter, which is easy to measure but impossible to hear. The same for measured noise at -100db - easy to measure and impossible to hear. Remember that old adage: Liars can figure but figures don't lie.
 
The thing is that the flaws in sighted listening tests are many orders of magnitude greater than the flaws in measurements and of those in double blind listening tests.
 
And all of the above would make for a pleasant discussion on the merits of measurements and listening tests but for one factor that can never be ignored when discussing anything to do with audio, and high end audio in particular, namely MONEY. When MONEY is involved, and money is very much involved in all these discussions, the truth always takes a back seat. People lie, cheat, steal and kill for money and nothing you can do or say will ever change this annoying fact.

 

[mmerrill99]

So this brings up so many issues which I'm sure will be similarly "objected" to as per the core vocal group that seem to have an issue with my postings. Oh, BTW, the chief objector to me Ralph.. has just posted an admission on the other thread that his whole argument me was off-topic - see here So after arguing with me for 13 pages that digital audio is immune to noise he states "The high end audio world's fascination with and fixation on USB, a connection type that was designed to transmit data and not audio, when USB has been shown be to problematic has always puzzled me."

Just to set the record straight I told you that do not use USB DACs on a regular basis back in posts #86 & 88 of that thread. I also clearly state that I never heard any noise or jitter (which would have been a surprise since the human ear cannot hear jitter - look it up) from USB DACs. That is not the same as stating the simple fact that the main propose of the USB protocol was as a means to transmit digital data. It was not developed to transmit a digital audio signal although it certainly can and does.

So despite your unfamiliarity with USB audio & your self-declared inability to understand the technology, you continued to argue with me for 10 pages or so about the technical information & measurements that I posted. OK

Now that you have been thoroughly out voted (for lack of better term) on this thread and on the USB cable thread mentioned above, instead of being gracious and accepting your fate, you continue your lines of attack and try to restart the argument. An argument which will once again run it's course and circle back to the same conclusion.

I know I'm not liked for holding a mirror up to the members of this forum - that's plain to see. It's plain to see that no alternative viewpoint with a wider technical perspective is appreciated here. It's also fairly plain to see that many of the core vocal group are lacking in technical knowledge - is this really the "sound science" section or is it some other section that has the wrong name over the door?

Sighted listening tests are flawed. Measurements are also flawed, or rather measurements can used in ways which make them appear flawed. For example the outputs from two different audio systems can be measured with one system's measurements showing that the system can clearly reproduce signals above 25K Hz while the other system only reproduces signals up to 24K Hz and therefore the measurements "show" that first system is "better" than the second. Nonsense since humans can't hear anything above about 20K Hz. Another example is jitter, which is easy to measure but impossible to hear. The same for measured noise at -100db - easy to measure and impossible to hear. Remember that old adage: Liars can figure but figures don't lie.

I really don't know what this latest rant is about

The thing is that the flaws in sighted listening tests are many orders of magnitude greater than the flaws in measurements and of those in double blind listening tests.

And all of the above would make for a pleasant discussion on the merits of measurements and listening tests but for one factor that can never be ignored when discussing anything to do with audio, and high end audio in particular, namely MONEY. When MONEY is involved, and money is very much involved in all these discussions, the truth always takes a back seat. People lie, cheat, steal and kill for money and nothing you can do or say will ever change this annoying fact.

Why don't you look for the section of the forum called "the science of marketing" as that is all you ever really talk about & it would be more suited to your apparent expertise than the technical based section such as this?

 

[ralphp@optonline]

So despite your unfamiliarity with USB audio & your self-declared inability to understand the technology, you continued to argue with me for 10 pages or so about the technical information & measurements that I posted. OK
I know I'm not liked for holding a mirror up to the members of this forum - that's plain to see. It's plain to see that no alternative viewpoint with a wider technical perspective is appreciated here. It's also fairly plain to see that many of the core vocal group are lacking in technical knowledge - is this really the "sound science" section or is it some other section that has the wrong name over the door?
I really don't know what this latest rant is about
Why don't you look for the section of the forum called "the science of marketing" as that is all you ever really talk about & it would be more suited to your apparent expertise than the technical based section such as this?

Here is my carefully considered and worded response:
 

 
Thank you Billy!

 

[castleofargh]

...

attention is of course making a difference and telling people where to look can help them see a specific thing, but it's also how illusionists make a living by diverting attention so that people won't notice stuff they otherwise might notice. suggestion can go both ways, and if it's enough to alter our perception of reality, then it's something we have to be careful about.
 
about mcgurk, a blind test would remove the visual cues, thus letting you hear the actual sound. so if we're asking "what sound is this?" the blind test gives the right answer. the sighted one the wrong answer. and that's what most blind tests attempt to do. I don't get your point.
 
now in general:
-real stuff yet subjective stuff:
 below a given temperature I'll be cold, another guy might be fine. when both at one place, we could make 2 different feedbacks saying for one that the place is cold, for the other that it's fine. that would help nobody! (if you see an analogy with audio feedbacks you tell me ^_^)
instead we can just give the measured temperature, and people with their own experiences and own thermometers will know if it's too cold for them or not. that's the use of removing biases and subjective experiences, we can share information that can actually be useful to everybody else. now as long as I'm alone I only need to care about what I feel. it's obvious. but sharing those stuff as if they were the one and only reality, that's ignorance and misinformation.  I'm almost always cold, and most people would actually be fine when I'm not, so me sharing my experience of being cold, while real for me, is giving a false idea to other people. if I really shared to help others, I wouldn't do that, I would give the temperature, and maybe try to check that my thermometer isn't too far off so others can benefit from my intel. I'm still cold but I accept that my reality doesn't have to be everyone else's.
 
-made up stuff we believe are real:
when I was young, if my mother didn't see me eating she decided to make me a massive diner the next day that would be too much for 5 people. because in her head if she didn't see me eat, I didn't eat(luv u mum). that's the kind of reality most audiophiles are talking about on forums. they decide that I didn't eat and tell everybody about it. I ate!!!!! stop it!!!! ^_^
it's not reality, you can decide that it is in your own head, but it isn't. if I believe that other people are aliens and start shooting them, are they really aliens? should the police "respect" me because I really believe in this? embracing biases, preconceptions and made up illusions, that's ok in my head, but a serious problem as soon as I start pushing my vision onto others as if it was reality for them too.
that's what an objectivist tries to do, find out what is the unbiased reality, so that when sharing information, a little less BS will be told. if I didn't care at all about other people, well I wouldn't spend time on a forum...

 

[mmerrill99]

...

attention is of course making a difference and telling people where to look can help them see a specific thing, but it's also how illusionists make a living by diverting attention so that people won't notice stuff they otherwise might notice. suggestion can go both ways, and if it's enough to alter our perception of reality, then it's something we have to be careful about.

First of all you missed what I said - attention actually changes the psychophysics of hearing i.e it actually changes the parameters of how hearing works - it increases the SNR.

I can't see how your example of an illusionist has anything to do with the point I made i.e that if we are directed to a audible difference we may well hear it whereas we didn't before - it's not a delusion, it's real & something we missed before - it's known as inattentional deafness. Auditory perception only has a finite capacity - it doesn't hear everything at every instant in time - we focus on certain aspects f the sound at any point in time & can shift between these aspects thus giving the impression that we hear everything but we don't

Try this headphone binaural test https://youtu.be/zGKADgFCoeU Don't read the text or cheat just follow the onscreen instructions

about mcgurk, a blind test would remove the visual cues, thus letting you hear the actual sound. so if we're asking "what sound is this?" the blind test gives the right answer. the sighted one the wrong answer. and that's what most blind tests attempt to do. I don't get your point.

My point is what does it matter - we can't change how we perceive it, can we? So even after doing a blind test, &/or being told that the sound is always Ba we still hear Fa - it makes absolutely no difference to what we hear. So what do you think is the advantage of knowing this? Does it change the way we perceive it? If we are told that our TV is actually flashing at 25 frames per second, does it change our perception of it? (Interestingly, early film was tolerated with variable frame rates but when sound film was introduced a 24fps rate had to be used as variances in frequency were not tolerable)

Actually, the mcGurk effect illustrates one of the ways our auditory perception works - via top-down processing - where the auditory signals are compared against previously stored auditory models of the world & determinations made about what is being heard. It involves the use of contextual information in pattern recognition & is also known as prediction-driven processing. In this form of processing there is feedback from the higher processing levels along the auditory pathway to lower levels - it's not a one way data flow from ears to auditory cortex.

Psychologist Richard Gregory argued that perception is a constructive process which relies on top-down processing. For Gregory (1970) perception is a hypothesis.

For Gregory, perception involves making inferences about what we see and trying to make a best guess. Prior knowledge and past experience, he argued, are crucial in perception.

When we look at something, we develop a perceptual hypothesis, which is based on prior knowledge. The hypotheses we develop are nearly always correct. However, on rare occasions, perceptual hypotheses can be disconfirmed by the data we perceive.

A lot of focus has traditionally been given to bottom-up processing or data-driven processing where the data only goes in one direction - from the stimulus received by the ears up to the auditory cortex & what we perceive we hear is only due to these stimula

So maybe the focus of this science section & objectivists in general, is bottom-up processing whereas both bottom-up & top-down processing are involved in auditory processing

 

[VNandor]

I'm just wondering if you hear a difference between two things when listening sighted but hear the exact same thing when listening... blindly how that is going to happen. The one you thought to be the better one starts to sound worse or the one you thought to be worse starts to sound better? If reality is the first case then buying expensive stuff and staring them while listening does actually make sense doesn't it? BTW those questions are purely philosophical I don't expect a scientific definitve answer for it I just try to provoke a bit. (And if there were an answer I wouldn't understand the hows and whys anyways.)

 

[serman005]

Reminds me of the quantum physics experiment where the act of looking at  the elements actually influences the outcome of the experiment.

 

[krismusic]

Placebo and expectation bias have caught me out so many times. Probably foolish to think that everything can be tested and measured though.