Sound Science Corner Pub

[Wyville]

I guess I am much the same way depending on whatever mad theories are being hawked in sound science. If it's the same old nonsense sneakily dressed up as something else, I tend to get a little irritated....and that happens all the time.
The dialogue turns to a hault or merely to the twilight zone every time people with actual knowledge and experience ask for proof of whatever claim happens to be on the menu.
I sincerely hope all the lurkers by now have seen this pop up again and again...and simultaneously ask themselves why it does happen.
To me, even as a complete noob, this speaks volumes about the level of hoops and weird cosmic analogies some people are willing to jump through in order to come out on the other side with their egos intact.

All of the above happens and will continue to happen regardless of what way a possible expansion of this forum will take. People will get their panties in a twist, that much is for certain.
So errm...remember NOT to wear pants the next time you engage in yet another heated discussion over face-phi?

For me it has much less to do with theories or specific arguments one way or another, but the general atmosphere here in this forum. The atmosphere here is really quite rigid. When I browse around I do not get the feeling it is okay here to explore. Even in these posts I write now I take exceptional care to formulate what I say in a certain way because I do not feel I can speak freely, despite my knowledge and expertise.

 

[taffy2207]

Meh. If you're formulating what you say in a certain way because you don't think you can't speak freely, you aren't being true to yourself. Being true to yourself is much more important than 'going along to get along' IMHO.

Just one mans opinion, of course.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

I think I know what you mean but then again how many folks on here bother to read the info about sound science before they venture further?
If people make scientifically unsupported claims they will naturally be met with a lot of questions. That is the nature behind this branch of head-fi.
Then again if one neglects from making such claims and maybe transforms them into something like a question on why x sounds nothing like y yet apparently science says otherwise, then things would be much easier.
It's also perfectly possible to shoot the breeze in here. Folks are friendly and always ready to offer up help with whatever hifi troubles of the day...and they tend to know what they're talking about too because many of them make a living out of the science behind audio...and they love music. Recs are plentiful!

 

[Wyville]

Meh. If you're formulating what you say in a certain way because you don't think you can't speak freely, you aren't being true to yourself. Being true to yourself is much more important than 'going along to get along' IMHO.

Just one mans opinion, of course.

It has more to do with experience. I know what I could stir up and I simply don't want to get into such arguments anymore because it is not constructive. I write these posts more to see if maybe there are one or two people around who genuinely understand what science (at an academic level) is and who are interested in exploring the biology and psychology of music. It probably won't work, but my whole reason for coming to head-fi was to explore music, sound quality, signatures and our neurological and psychological response to that.

 

[bigshot]

or dealing more with things such as the biology and psychology of music (something I am interested in).

We have a music thread where you can discuss that. Just post examples of what you're talking about so people know the context.

But you do have to realize that Head-Fi is primarily a gear forum. If you want to get deeper into theory about the psychology of music, I'm sure there are music and psychology forums that would have plenty of participants to interact with who know more than us. We're primarily hifi nuts and sound engineers here.

The big problem we have here is people who speak without listening. It's as if they are sharing their inner monologues in the forum, but the purpose isn't for communicating with others, it's for ass pats and validation. You can't express a worthwhile idea without being open to have it challenged. Answering challenges is what sharpens ideas, and admitting when a challenge is correct allows you to move on and come up with better ideas. You can't react to challenge by shutting down and ignoring it or getting angry. Discourse shouldn't be a monologue. The same points keep getting raised over and over because certain people are failing to address them over and over.

 

[Wyville]

We have a music thread where you can discuss that. Just post examples of what you're talking about so people know the context.

But you do have to realize that Head-Fi is primarily a gear forum. If you want to get deeper into theory about the psychology of music, I'm sure there are music and psychology forums that would have plenty of participants to interact with who know more than us. We're primarily hifi nuts and sound engineers here.

Yeah, I think that was probably a miscalculation on my part, but also inherent to the challenge of what I am trying to explore. I don't think many music and psychology forums will know what to do with an audiophile.

The big problem we have here is people who speak without listening. It's as if they are sharing their inner monologues in the forum, but the purpose isn't for communicating with others, it's for ass pats and validation. You can't express a worthwhile idea without being open to have it challenged. Answering challenges is what sharpens ideas, and admitting when a challenge is correct allows you to move on and come up with better ideas. You can't react to challenge by shutting down and ignoring it or getting angry. Discourse shouldn't be a monologue. The same points keep getting raised over and over because certain people are failing to address them over and over.

That is definitely part of the problem I have, the unidirectional flow of information without any actual engagement. Too many arguments from authority and too few who dare to interrogate their own convictions. I don't want to deal with that sort of stuff anymore.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

Now for something completely different..or maybe not.
Personally I find it very interesting to engage in talks of how the human mind and music intertwine - how we perceive things in manners we some times think of as being unorthodox.
Time and again I have experienced weird almost otherworldly encounters with music - in my younger days occasionally fuelled by mindbending elixirs and whatnot..but it gave me perspectives. Wild ones extrapolating just how strange and wholly bizarre our listening aparatus can get.
Yet by the very same token this all taught me about how little it takes for the mind to 'transform/alter/minusculely change' music you know like the back of your hand, just because you 'had lunch/lost your brother/stubbed your toe/ate a chili/are tired/got married in a rush/are sad/didn't sleep well/forgot your middlename/etc etc'. (Chilis though always seem to increase soundstage)
The music thread is probably the best location for such banter. Hah!

 

[taffy2207]

Just throwing it out there. Psychology and Biology are Sciences too. The forum is called Sound Science not Sound Physics.

 

[bigshot]

That is definitely part of the problem I have, the unidirectional flow of information without any actual engagement. Too many arguments from authority and too few who dare to interrogate their own convictions. I don't want to deal with that sort of stuff anymore.

This isn't directly related to the subject of Sound Science, but it applies to what is going on here lately... and it involves psychology.

I work in animation and I see uber fans online who post long analysis posts about minor story points or character personality traits or nitpicks listing tiny technical errors. They gossip endlessly, speculate without actually knowing what they are talking about, and spend incredible amounts of time on these "in depth" posts about nothing. People in the industry see them and just roll their eyes, because these armchair experts don't know the first thing about how cartoons are designed or built. Most of them are geeks who live in their mom's basement, don't have a job, are socially awkward, and who are too old to be the target audience for the show anyway. But for some reason, they think the show was made specifically for them and they feel entitled to make demands about ways the show could cater to them better and spread bizarre gossip about the people who make the shows.

This type of personality has caused animation groups and forums to split into two camps... professionals and uber-geeks. It's kind of sad because the geeks are really enthusiastic about the shows and want to know details about them, but they can't seem to avoid making loud insulting comments or gushing irrational praise that turns the pros off. I myself started as a fan before I broke into the business. But I hung out with professionals and made an effort to listen to them. I didn't go up to an old time animator and say, "Bambi sucks." or "Your drawings are sloppy." or "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Mr Cartoon Voice Actor, do my outgoing answering machine message for me!" I listened to what they had to say, I tried to understand it, and if I didn't understand I politely asked for clarification. This got me into inner circles that may not have physical walls built around them, but they still keep certain people out. The input from the old timers was invested in me, and pretty soon I became a professional too. Now I'm the old timer in my business, and kids are coming to me for advice and to learn from me. Some of them go straight for the geek hubris/obliviousness, and others show me they are listening and are worth investing into the way the old guys invested into me. The cycle continues.

The internet provides incredible opportunities for people to learn from professionals. Back in the early 80s, I had to be in Hollywood to learn from the people I learned from. I would look them up in the phone book and ask politely if I could meet them for coffee and ask them a few questions about their work. But now the experts and old time pros are all on Facebook and email and anyone in the world can have access to them. The internet sure is an incredible resource. But certain types of people use it wrong. They blather on and on about things they don't know much about and try to manufacture and maintain an image of themselves that isn't who they really are. That seems like a lot of work to me, and I know where people like that end up... on the outside looking in.

I don't think many music and psychology forums will know what to do with an audiophile.

And I don't think many audiophiles would like to hear honestly about their own psychology! That is a dangerous subject around here. I can't get too close to "diagnosing" people. I have to address that subject obliquely.

 

[Wyville]

Now for something completely different..or maybe not.
Personally I find it very interesting to engage in talks of how the human mind and music intertwine - how we perceive things in manners we some times think of as being unorthodox.
Time and again I have experienced weird almost otherworldly encounters with music - in my younger days occasionally fuelled by mindbending elixirs and whatnot..but it gave me perspectives. Wild ones extrapolating just how strange and wholly bizarre our listening aparatus can get.
Yet by the very same token this all taught me about how little it takes for the mind to 'transform/alter/minusculely change' music you know like the back of your hand, just because you 'had lunch/lost your brother/stubbed your toe/ate a chili/are tired/got married in a rush/are sad/didn't sleep well/forgot your middlename/etc etc'. (Chilis though always seem to increase soundstage)
The music thread is probably the best location for such banter. Hah!

I don't have a lot of time right now (nearly time to make dinner), but it is a fascinating topic I really love; the relationship between music and essentially our neurophysiology. Music is something extremely primitive, predating human speech and I am convinced this is the reason why music can have such a profound effect on us, if it happens to resonate (eg. the right music with the right mood). Also the medical/therapeutic benefits of music have in my opinion tremendous potential that we have not even scratched the surface of. That is what I do with myself. Use music to elevate specific biochemicals in my brain to help me manage my ADHD without having to rely on medication. Not quite as effective as high intensity training, but music does other things as well. I suspect it can as it were "harmonise" neurological firing patterns that normally in my head are quite chaotic (ADHD) but become more organised if music resonates well. Or indeed provide a fixed distraction for one part of my brain, while with the other part I focus on my work. Fascinating stuff!

 

[castleofargh]

No worries Steve. I often think about what fun it’d be to actually spread out these discussions in the open forum...but each and every time I remember my own feelings back when I still was in the ‘mo money mo sq’ camp..aaaand well yeah I had a hard time dealing with all of this - first and foremost because of all the dough I’d thrown after magic boxes.

Oh well to sidetrack things a bit: I was recently part of a little reviewing tour of a Slovenian made headphone called the Ollo S4. This can significantly changed the way I look at headphones in that it is THE first one I’ve ever tried with a flat response - as in pancake flat. I expected to fall asleep but was instead taken aback by the cornucopia of detail. Absolutely amazing!
As I’ve mentioned time and again in this forum, I am not scientifically inclined to wrap my brainskills around audio and indeed what makes it work...but I do pick up things from time to time and this Ollo can really showed me what the masking effect is all about. So many supposedly flat studio cans I’ve tried in the past have had spikes in either the mids or treble, some times both, and they don’t render detail at this level to my ears.

So long story short: seeing as I am down to only 7 headphones I thought it was about time to get another one. The Ollo is a tad pricey right now simply because Christmas is around the bend (and I just received a major bill!), so I ended up ordering the KRK KNS 6400 which too sports a similar flat panckae response...at a far cheaper pricetag...aaand it’s closed.
But yeah I am looking forward to hearing it and finding out whether or not my little theory proves to be right.

you have to be careful about the concept of flat on a headphone. part of the signature has to do with your own head, and that probably changes your neutral by quite a few dB here and there compared to another listener(plus the placement on the head and all that).
but otherwise you're right about masking and the fact that you're likely to perceive the most out of music when you get a well balanced FR. it's a fairly well accepted idea for speakers, and despite headphones adding different issues, I believe the concept remains true.

 

[bigshot]

Also with headphones flat is a relative term above 10kHz.

 

[taffy2207]

Unless they get squished, of course I sat on my headphones 3 days ago

 

[castleofargh]

In all sincerity. I would actually like to see it the other way around, that the Sound Science forum becomes accessible to the wider head-fi community and that people with different viewpoints could come here for a respectful discussion. I would genuinely love for a part of head-fi to be truly about the science of sound, be it on a technological level for those who prefer that or dealing more with things such as the biology and psychology of music (something I am interested in). I just don't see that happening over here, so I keep most of my thoughts to myself because there is no one really to engage with.

it's difficult for everybody. someone who's known to own TOTL gears and the latest stuff, will inevitably get used to have everybody rely on him to know everything about gears. because we all crave information on new and cool toys. that does give the owners a big head, no matter how humble and honest they try to be. so now you have that person used to talking to people who trust everything he says about gears, coming here in Sound Science... a place where without some supporting evidence, his claims are instantly turned down(no matter if correct or not). it's going to be really hard for that person to stay gracious and handle this with calm and method. he's not used to this environment and general notion of accountability. in most audio forums, when 2 people claim stupid opposite stuff, they end it with "agree to disagree" and they'll keep saying the same stuff in another page the next day like nothing happened.

now for the people who are in here expecting strict reasoning and fact based interpretations which are the foundations of any scientific approach. they are almost constantly talking to newcomers who post an argument that could be summarized as "my subjective impression is this, therefore this device does this objective stuff". and of course for people who are overly conscious about the difference between subjective reality and objective reality, most of those arguments have for us the legitimacy of the stuff you read from the flat earther websites. in my case, I would love this section to be what you describe, and my quasi-modo hat also makes me work toward getting a nicer environment. but at the same time, I spend a lot of time reading posts and thinking "how do I begin to explain how wrong this is when the guy obviously misunderstands the most basic concept about this world? and that despite objective and subjective being terms thrown at everything all day long in the hobby". depending on how the person will react to the warnings or doubts about his claims, it's going to be hard for some of the people in here not to think the guy is a troll or a complete moron, and get respectively angry replies, or replies along the lines of "you know nothing Jon Snow".
and that happens on a daily basis, because audiophiles are way too happy to go from "my experience is what matters to me"(perfectly rational approach, I follow it everyday), to "my experience is what matters", and then to "my experience is reality". the result of that fallacy is a diarrhea of objective empty claims pretending to justify random feelings and ideas. and that makes a lot of people in here very mad because they happen to care dearly for truth and reason.

how do you mix those people together without expecting a clash and some hurt ego doing most of the talking? I honestly don't know. it's like 2 distant civilizations meeting and taking most of what is normal for one side, as an open aggression for the other.
- yes if people in here could totally stop getting mad when reading nonsense, and turning a topic into a personal assault on the person who knows so little he doesn't even see what's wrong with his actions. if they could all stay cool, fully respectful pedagogues the battle would most likely stop. but what are the odds of everybody in here becoming a skilled pedagogue instead of just your average audiophile? I for one know very well how much I suck at keeping my calm and placing myself at the level of my interlocutor. it's a skill and not everybody has it.
- and yes if people posting in this section could be kind enough not to make claims they cannot support, and mistake subjective stuff with objective reality, we'd have very little to get mad about and that too would most likely be the end of personal attacks and feelings of aggression. but what are the odds of that happening in an audio forum? I'd expect 0% as a fairly accurate value.

so it's easy to blame the side we're not on and wait for them to fix the problem. but it's never going to happen. on the other hand, we all can try a little harder to solve our side of the problem instead of always raging about how it's the other's fault. personal attacks are never constructive, so let's try proof reading our posts and getting rid of that before sending it. empty claims are nothing burgers that prove nothing but will anger many people, be it for what is claimed or for the way it toys with facts and logic. so let's also try to proof read our posts and when things are unclear, try to reword them so they look more like opinions or hypotheses which they probably are. and if the claim seems legit, then go google some paper or some other demonstration to support the claim so it's no longer some BS empty claim.
it's a collegial effort, and probably the only chance for this section to become what it should always have been. the other option could be getting specific posting rules, which will most likely never happen for various very legitimate reasons. so I'm inclined to ask everybody to work on my first solution where everybody starts making the section a better place simply by paying more attention to what he's posting in it. I could keep my time moderating more strictly, but that would ultimately lead to several people banned and no real improvement on the quality of the content in the forum. part of how and why I ended up modo of this section is because I didn't believe that bans for personal attacks were helping the section in any way. we just kept losing those with knowledge along with the arrogant little poops, so I'm really not in a hurry to resort to doing it. you guys make the content of this section, the secret to improving that content is in you all(this is so cheesy I just imagined myself in a Santa costume).

 

[bigshot]

There is one human trait that causes a lot of problems... the need to direct the line of inquiry. When someone states a very unusual conclusion without explaining how they arrived at it, people here will naturally ask for the facts. The person will describe how they arrived at their conclusion, and we will bring up issues they might not have considered and addressed. Instead of seeing that as help to reach a more accurate conclusion, they see it as a personal attack. In extreme cases, they will outright prevaricate, as in the cases recently where two people claimed to have done blind comparison tests, when it was clear they hadn't.

People are too invested in their own conclusions. That would be fine if they didn't insist on presenting them to other people. It's fine to believe whatever you want. But if you are going to offer people advice or criticize people for having a different conclusion, you better be prepared to be questioned and defend your opinion with supporting arguments. All opinions are NOT created equal.

Out in the merry fanciful land of audiophile where dreams are reality and there's a stiff price tag on happiness, all opinions are equal. No one has to back up what they believe with facts. In here, we are pragmatic old goats who keep asking the questions some people don't want to be asked. It isn't our fault we aren't popular with salesmen and their marks. We just don't let them direct the line of inquiry.