[gregorio]

[1] So, for example, a particular sound may be more or less "audible" depending on whether our brain finds it "interesting" or not.
[2] When you walk down the sidewalk, you most certainly don't see every speck of gravel on the walk.... but every one is visible IF YOU CHOOSE TO LOOK AT IT.
[3] The bottom line is that lossy CODECS do omit content...
[4] And, since they do so based on masking theory, WHICH IS NOT 100% UNDERSTOOD, there remains the possibility that they will inadvertently cause an audible error.
[5] This makes using a lossy CODEC "more risky than using a lossless format" (because, with a lossless format, since nothing is omitted, there is zero chance of omitting anything important).
[6] And, personally, when asked whether I'd like "the real thing" or "a copy that's so good you're sure I won't notice the difference" - I'm not going to consider the copy unless there is a compelling reason.
[7] And, with storage space and bandwidth so cheap these days, I don't see a compelling reason to choose the option that's merely "probably audibly just as good".
I'd absolutely rather have ALL THE SIGNAL than just some of it.
[7a] Why should I have to worry if the part I have is good enough ...

1. You accuse others of "cherry picking" and then do exactly that yourself. Your statement is true but EQUALLY true is the statement that; a particular sound will always be inaudible regardless of how "interesting" the brain would find it.

2. Clearly that statement is FALSE! Are you really saying that "IF YOU CHOOSE TO LOOK AT IT" you could see every spec of gravel? You "walk down the sidewalk" with a microscope bolted to your skull do you? If not, then no matter what "you choose to look at", you're NEVER going to see ANY of the microscopic specs of gravel.

3. No, that is NOT "the bottom line" because ALL recording and reproduction technology "omits content", including; Microphones, lossless codecs, speakers/HPs, amps and of course content is deliberately omitted as part of the recording and mixing processes, by the engineers and producers. The "bottom line" is therefore NOT that content is omitted, because it's ALWAYS omitted, it's what audible difference that omission makes.

4. There is always the "possibility" of pretty much anything. It's "possible" that every sub-atomic particle in your body could relocate simultaneously and that you could vanish and reappear somewhere else in the universe. However, it's an incredibly slim possibility and has never reliably been observed to occur. Have you ever observed it? Have you ever encountered an audible error with a modern high bitrate lossy codec used on commercial audio content? How realistic a "possibility" are we talking about?

5. Firstly, your reasoning is based on a fallacy, because content is omitted in every recording, including those in a lossless format. Secondly, "more risky" in theory or in practice? For it to be more risky in practise, you would have to show that there are at least some practical examples, because with no examples the probability is zero and therefore there is not "more risk".

6. This too is a nonsense statement/analogy. You cannot have "the real thing", you can ONLY have a copy! I take it you are not suggesting that Emotiva DACs are packed with hundreds of tiny musicians? In which case, your choice is NOT between "the real thing" and a copy, it's between one copy and another copy, so if you are "not going to consider the copy", what is it that you're actually trying to reproduce?

7. This isn't the "What KeithEmo sees as a compelling reason" forum, we therefore have to consider what probability of "audibly just as good" we're actually talking about. Do you have any examples of music recordings (with a high bitrate modern codec) not being "audibly just as good"? If not, then you have no evidence or logical rationale for anything other than a 100% probability that it will be "audibly just as good"!
7a. Unless you've got some examples/evidence, then you have no logical reason to worry. Of course, it's up to you if you want to "worry" based on some illogical reason or no reason at all but this is the sound science forum not the "what KeithEmo illogically worries about" forum!

A large percentage of audiophile marketing is based on generating a fear of some "possibility", a possibility which is so remote as to never actually be encountered by consumers and/or which is in fact inaudible anyway. So I understand your position; why you have to generate fear, conflate a "possibility" with a probability and cast doubt on "inaudibility". However, this is the sound science forum and despite being reminded of this fact numerous times, still you insultingly treat it as your marketing forum! What you don't appear to realise is that not only do you pervert this forum with your misrepresentations/obfuscations but you also harm your brand/marketing when your misrepresentations/obfuscations are exposed, so why do you carry on doing it?

G

 

[Phronesis]

Could we please keep testing debates in the testing thread, and focus this thread on perception?

 

[gregorio]

Could we please keep testing debates in the testing thread, and focus this thread on perception?

There are some aspects of perception that have been very well tested. Where there is significant science relating to perception should we ignore it? Is this thread not in the sound science forum?

G

 

[StandsOnFeet]

Actually, most of the debate here involves perception: what might be perceptible on Keith's part, and what actually is perceptible on Gregorio's part.

Keith seems perfectly happy to add his walls of text to any thread. I can't see much reason for it. None of his arguments make a lot of sense, and I'm often confused about exactly what point he's trying to make, other than riling up the forum and getting Gregorio's goat. Gregorio won't ever change Keith's mind. Keith hasn't budged in his beliefs, whatever they are, in at least two years, nor has he improved his style of debate in that time. It remains full of false analogies and half a dozen other logical fallacies. Gregorio's refutations remain, for the most part, patient and civil--far more civil than I could remain with that much provocation.

That said, Keith is actually a useful foil: his posts trigger the posting of a lot of information that is valuable to those of us who have a scientific bent and have been misled by audio companies and their shills in the audiophile press. Finding Sound Science was a revelation to me, and the refutations of the silly stuff posted by folks like Keith have taught me a lot.

@KeithEmo: Gregorio is right: your posts are doing your company no good. From visiting Emotiva's website, I'd say they are probably producing decent products at a decent price, but reading your posts detracts greatly from that perception. Do your superiors know what you're doing?

 

[Phronesis]

There are some aspects of perception that have been very well tested. Where there is significant science relating to perception should we ignore it? Is this thread not in the sound science forum?

G

I agree that perception ties into most of the topics, but I suggest that we keep this thread focused on how we perceive sound and music, rather than questions about the role perception plays in testing for audible differences, since we already have a thread for the latter.

This thread is intended to be mainly about what our brains do with the sound reaching our ears, rather than whether differences in file sizes and gear are audible. In other words, the thread is more about psychology than physical stuff.

 

[KeithEmo]

Quite so... and that brings up an interesting question...

We already know that "outside factors" affect our perception of various things.....
For example, when we dye a perfectly prepared piece of steak bright green, being able to see the color affects how the taste is perceived by most people.
(People universally agree that "the green steak tastes worse" - a perceived difference that disappears once they can no longer see it.)

It seems like it might be interesting to perform a rather extensive survey to see how various people's PERCEPTION of what they hear is affected by TERMS like "lossy compression".
The subject about whether actual differences between lossless and lossy compression, or between CD quality and high-resolution files, are audible has already been beaten to death - or to a standstill - elsewhere...

But has anyone tested the opposite?
And, more specifically, tested how that perception affects different USER demographics.

Here's what I think might be interesting....

(This is similar to tests that have been performed with various products - including wine.)
Make up sets of IDENTICAL high quality test files.... but randomly LABEL THEM as being "high-resolution", "CD quality", or "lossy".
Then ask a large sample of test subjects, separated into various groups, to compare them, or to rank them in order of quality.

It would be interesting to find out, once and for all, how significantly the perception of what the label says they're hearing affects what people think they hear.
More specifically, it would be interesting to see how the effect differs between different demographic groups.
(For example, we might expect "audiophiles" to perceive an imagined difference... but we might expect a much lesser effect on "average listeners".)

Such a result would provide evidence, or lack thereof, about how easily audiophiles are deceived (or deceive themselves) into hearing differences that don't really exist.

And here's a link to probably the most famous recent experiment about how what people expect affects what they perceive (where people seemingly failed to notice something rather significant that they weren't expecting):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...5889e061e5f_story.html?utm_term=.3e476dcb265f

I agree that perception ties into most of the topics, but I suggest that we keep this thread focused on how we perceive sound and music, rather than questions about the role perception plays in testing for audible differences, since we already have a thread for the latter.

This thread is intended to be mainly about what our brains do with the sound reaching our ears, rather than whether differences in file sizes and gear are audible. In other words, the thread is more about psychology than physical stuff.

 

[Phronesis]

Quite so... and that brings up an interesting question...

We already know that "outside factors" affect our perception of various things.....
For example, when we dye a perfectly prepared piece of steak bright green, being able to see the color affects how the taste is perceived by most people.
(People universally agree that "the green steak tastes worse" - a perceived difference that disappears once they can no longer see it.)

It seems like it might be interesting to perform a rather extensive survey to see how various people's PERCEPTION of what they hear is affected by TERMS like "lossy compression".
The subject about whether actual differences between lossless and lossy compression, or between CD quality and high-resolution files, are audible has already been beaten to death - or to a standstill - elsewhere...

But has anyone tested the opposite?
And, more specifically, tested how that perception affects different USER demographics.

Here's what I think might be interesting....

(This is similar to tests that have been performed with various products - including wine.)
Make up sets of IDENTICAL high quality test files.... but randomly LABEL THEM as being "high-resolution", "CD quality", or "lossy".
Then ask a large sample of test subjects, separated into various groups, to compare them, or to rank them in order of quality.

It would be interesting to find out, once and for all, how significantly the perception of what the label says they're hearing affects what people think they hear.
More specifically, it would be interesting to see how the effect differs between different demographic groups.
(For example, we might expect "audiophiles" to perceive an imagined difference... but we might expect a much lesser effect on "average listeners".)

Such a result would provide evidence, or lack thereof, about how easily audiophiles are deceived (or deceive themselves) into hearing differences that don't really exist.

And here's a link to probably the most famous recent experiment about how what people expect affects what they perceive (where people seemingly failed to notice something rather significant that they weren't expecting):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...5889e061e5f_story.html?utm_term=.3e476dcb265f

Agreed, those would be interesting experiments.

I do predict that the label "lossy" would make people perceive the sound quality as being worse, and more so with picky/obsessive audiophile sort of people. If "lossy" files were instead called "optimized" files, people might even perceive them as sounding better than lossless (placebo effect)!

Your green steak example is funny because one of my favorite cookies at the local bakery has a red blob on top which reminds me of a cherry. It tastes like cherry to me too. One day, they ran out of those cookies so my wife got what is supposedly the same cookie except that the blob is green. I was really disappointed that I didn't get my red blob cookies, but my wife assured me that they're exactly the same taste, only the food coloring was different. I tried the green ones and couldn't convince myself that they were the same or as good as the red ones. A blind test would have been interesting, but the cookies are too good (and expensive) to waste on testing, so I just continue to get the red ones (we don't get them often, they need to be an occasional treat, lest they lose their power!).

 

[castleofargh]

off topic:

@KeithEmo: Gregorio is right: your posts are doing your company no good. From visiting Emotiva's website, I'd say they are probably producing decent products at a decent price, but reading your posts detracts greatly from that perception. Do your superiors know what you're doing?

Keith is just Keith. he came as any other forum member and never claimed to talk for Emotiva. he's got that information about working for Emotiva under his name for the sake of transparency. nothing more. and TBH this increases the burden on a member as a random unaffiliated poster is allowed to say a lot of stuff that a member of trade cannot.
so unless he explicitly brings up his company and what they do or believe, I think it would be fair not to make amalgams. just like when I post something stupid, I'm not talking in the name of Sound Science. pretty much the same issue of having a special tag below our nicknames. ^_^

 

[bfreedma]

off topic:

Keith is just Keith. he came as any other forum member and never claimed to talk for Emotiva. he's got that information about working for Emotiva under his name for the sake of transparency. nothing more. and TBH this increases the burden on a member as a random unaffiliated poster is allowed to say a lot of stuff that a member of trade cannot.
so unless he explicitly brings up his company and what they do or believe, I think it would be fair not to make amalgams. just like when I post something stupid, I'm not talking in the name of Sound Science. pretty much the same issue of having a special tag below our nicknames. ^_^

I’d be more likely to consider a member’s views as separate from his/her company of employment if the member’s ID didn’t contain the company’s name.
To make the comparison to your situation more analogous, you would have to change your ID to castleofarghhead-fi

 

[StandsOnFeet]

Keith is just Keith. he came as any other forum member and never claimed to talk for Emotiva. he's got that information about working for Emotiva under his name for the sake of transparency. nothing more. and TBH this increases the burden on a member as a random unaffiliated poster is allowed to say a lot of stuff that a member of trade cannot.
so unless he explicitly brings up his company and what they do or believe, I think it would be fair not to make amalgams. just like when I post something stupid, I'm not talking in the name of Sound Science. pretty much the same issue of having a special tag below our nicknames. ^_^

Fair enough. It was a cheap shot, and I apologise.