Sound Science Corner Pub

[theveterans]

I guess you don't see the disconnect here.

I don't think in absolutes so I don't see the disconnect honestly. Perception bias is a natural thing. I don't need to force myself to gaslight myself that there's no difference in sound when literally I hear the difference repeatedly and without a doubt (sighted or blind)

 

[BS5711]

........................ when literally I hear the difference repeatedly and without a doubt.

Edit - did you genuinely mean blind tested, if so that is a different matter but I have not seen you claim that previously.



Bias can do exactly that.

So what it amounts to is the standard audiophile response is you know what you hear, without a doubt despite that neuroscientific brain scans suggest that may not actually be the case ?

I guess you don't want to acknowledge something that might unravel your entire belief system in this hobby.

 

[theveterans]

Edit - did you genuinely mean blind tested, if so that is a different matter but I have not seen you claim that previously.



Bias can do exactly that.

So what it amounts to is the standard audiophile response is you know what you hear, without a doubt despite that neuroscientific brain scans suggest that may not actually be the case ?

I guess you don't want to acknowledge something that might unravel your entire belief system in this hobby.

Tubes I did (4 tubes at that). That was easy to tell them apart since distortion makes them sound quite different from another. DACs, power cords, ethernet, headphones, I listen and swap and listen back and the difference is pretty easy to tell sighted

Like I wrote long time ago, I need my sight to listen to the more subtle ones and I need to form memory in order to reliably form a repeated comparison between components

 

[BS5711]

Tubes I did (4 tubes at that). That was easy to tell them apart since distortion makes them sound quite different from another. DACs, power cords, ethernet, headphones, I listen and swap and listen back and the difference is pretty easy to tell sighted

Like I wrote long time ago, I need my sight to listen to the more subtle ones and I need to form memory in order to reliably form a repeated comparison between components

Audible differences with tube gear would be understandable.

Needing to see gear to hear it properly is nonsense.

Those type of ideas are your attempt to rationalise why you can't hear the same differences in blind testing as sighted listening and an unwillingness to accept that what you perceive and what you genuinely hear may in fact not be the same thing.

That is just the standard audiophile fall back position, you may as well have just stopped at a simple "I KNOW WHAT I HEAR" and left it at that.

 

[theveterans]

Those type of ideas are your attempt to rationalise why you can't hear the same differences in blind testing as sighted listening and an unwillingness to accept that what you perceive and what you genuinely hear may in fact not be the same thing.

That's why I don't gaslight myself that my perception is wrong and no difference is the genuine thing. It's not human-like to me (my opinion of course) because perception bias is a natural thing that occurs

 

[BS5711]

That's why I don't gaslight myself that my perception is wrong and no difference is the genuine thing. It's not human-like to me (my opinion of course) because perception bias is a natural thing that occurs

So you knowingly allow bias to influence your subjective perception then tell others of the objective improvement things in your system make when you know that in a blind comparison you couldn't tell the difference ?

When questioned the response is essentially you can't help it others can't hear the same thing or that the other guys system is not resolving enough to hear the changes.

That is my frustration with Head Fi, it happens all the time and I think it is utterly disingenuous.

Acknowledging that we are human and accepting that our perception is sometimes inaccurate isn't "gaslighting" yourself, it is just being honest and self aware.

Like I said above, you are happy to grab any argument that rationalises (to you) why you don't hear blind what you hear sighted rather than acknowledge your human limitations and accept that, as given in that neurological study, what we perceive might be deeply contaminated by our subjective beliefs. I guess that science is wrong as well.

I am involuntarily shaking my head as I type because your position is so far from what makes proper common sense to me it floors me.

Thanks for the chat but I am done, clearly you are happy to do the standard audiophile subjectivity thing despite liking to hang out in the sound science forums.

 

[bigshot]

I’m not saying people are stupid, but some of their arguments certainly are and they’ve been propagated into multiple threads to derail things. If I was an admin, I’d be inviting certain posters to refrain from posting more that five or six times a day.

 

[theveterans]

Like I said above, you are happy to grab any argument that rationalises (to you) why you don't hear blind what you hear sighted rather than acknowledge your human limitations and accept that, as given in that neurological study, what we perceive might be deeply contaminated by our subjective beliefs. I guess that science is wrong as well.

There’s no perfect human so yes I acknowledge my limitations and that’s what it means to be humble as human. I completely understand “what I perceive might be deeply contaminated by my subjective beliefs” that’s why I do not lean towards components/gears that I perceive to sound bad regardless of measurements because there’s no correlation between my perception and measurements, i.e. my perception can distinguish between 2 DACs that are 118 dB SINAD with ease or without any strain or needing concentration (e.g. Holo Audio May KTE against Mola Mola Tambaqui) by listening sighted like 99.99% of critical listeners out there

 

[BS5711]

There’s no perfect human so yes I acknowledge my limitations and that’s what it means to be humble as human

.................... my perception can distinguish between 2 DACs that are 118 dB SINAD with ease or without any strain or needing concentration ......... by listening sighted like 99.99% of critical listeners out there

Again the disconnect.

Bias can explain the scenario in the above quote, bias that you acknowledge but then proceed to ignore. Perhaps you acknowledge it but don't understand the power of it because you brush aside the results of blind controlled testing as fundamentally in error not in fact demonstrative of the power of bias.

You THINK you can tell them apart easily because that is what you perceive but have no desire to actually test if what you perceive and what you hear are the same thing, I guess because you KNOW you can so there is no desire to confirm that because you see the methodology to do so to be flawed.

Maybe there is a difference that you easily hear, if so why, is one designed to have a "sound" and perhaps actually does a technically inferior job despite that it is expensive gear, or maybe you can't hear a genuine difference at all you only THINK you do due to bias of some sort.

What 99.99% of people do isn't really a judge of what is correct, only what is common.

What is a critical listener ? Allowing bias to influence perception doesn't sound very critical to me.

What happens if the outcome of controlled listening isn't wrong and your theory about why you might fail a blind test is incorrect ?

On what basis do you decide such testing is wrong and you are right that you need to SEE the gear to HEAR it properly ?

Based on what you have said over the last little while it seems that the above two sentences are central to your argument that you know what you hear and you trust your ears and that what they tell you is real. You are placing a lot of importance on your own theory about hearing, perception, bias and the test method, do you have appropriate knowledge to make that assessment or is it simply your logic because it ties your experiences together nicely without unravelling your belief system in audio ?

I was happy to find that controlled listening was different to sighted casual comparison because I felt I learnt something. I guess you believe I came to the incorrect conclusion ? Oddly when I blind compare and add an intentional small difference like a subtle volume difference or a bit of gentle EQ those things are still present in a blind comparison, it isn't like known subtle but tangible differences disappear when I can't see the device I am listening to at that time.

 

[bigshot]

This is boring. It starts out wrong and ends up wrong. Big surprise.

 

[Davesrose]

Seems people are arguing cross channels. When it comes to perception of audio, some are trying to limit it just to hearing....when the experience of listening also involves your whole brain's experience at that moment. When it comes to being able to hear differences in DACs....how are you conducting a test? I've had a lot of issues with an audiophile claim that one DAC chip is "warmer sounding" than another chip. But I've heard "bright" chips that sounded warmer than "warm" chips due to differences really being the analog stage of the DAC separate. I have to be in a mood when I want to listen to my analog, full of distortion, vinyl records in stereo. But they do subjectively sound great. And it's a completely different "experience" than what I enjoy by watching a live concert on blu-ray with my home theater setup and in surround sound.

 

[castleofargh]

Like I wrote long time ago, I need my sight to listen to the more subtle ones and I need to form memory in order to reliably form a repeated comparison between components

Funny, I need to close my eyes to be able to properly concentrate on sound. It made many people laugh at me at small audio meets, as you can imagine. The guy who advocates blind testing is closing his eyes to listen to some gear in public, hilarious. But I have to, otherwise, I'm pretty much the kind of guy who stops listening to what you're saying because something moving in the background just caught my attention.

 

[Davesrose]

Funny, I need to close my eyes to be able to properly concentrate on sound. It made many people laugh at me at small audio meets, as you can imagine. The guy who advocates blind testing is closing his eyes to listen to some gear in public, hilarious. But I have to, otherwise, I'm pretty much the kind of guy who stops listening to what you're saying because something moving in the background just caught my attention.

Back when I first joined this forum, I would attend meet-ups. While it was fun to listen to other rigs, I also found it really hard to just isolate on the music (because also audiophiles like open headphones so you hear the background talking). Also, I knew it was quite different than if I was at home in my living room only focused on listening to an album on my setup (vs also if I'm listening to stereo music for background noise while working). Now also being a fan of live video concerts, I'm not going to dismiss the subjective enjoyments of including both your auditory and visual stimuli in a music setting (maybe even visceral if we get into subwoofer/kicker).

 

[castleofargh]

Back when I first joined this forum, I would attend meet-ups. While it was fun to listen to other rigs, I also found it really hard to just isolate on the music (because also audiophiles like open headphones so you hear the background talking). Also, I knew it was quite different than if I was at home in my living room only focused on listening to an album on my setup (vs also if I'm listening to stereo music for background noise while working). Now also being a fan of live video concerts, I'm not going to dismiss the subjective enjoyments of including both your auditory and visual stimuli in a music setting.

Of course. The majority of 3D audio stuff I have are concerts for the same reason. And I finally got into streaming for TV series because of the multichannel audio they have(although with my year 2000 internet speed, I didn't even try the premium stuff).
At the same time, I only have maybe a dozen of multichannel audio albums. Because the sound alone doesn't bring the same magic for me(honestly I tend to prefer those that keep the sound in front and only add a tiny bit of reverb around me, all the demo type arrangements bore me after 3 listening. So I'm fine or even often prefer stereo for the huge majority of albums. If only because that's how I got to know the albums. That seems to be quite a big deal for my brain, what I know first feels more "natural". Same issue I have with classical music, I spent who knows how many hours trying to find the sometimes very mediocre albums I used to play as a kid/teen, because to me, that's how those pieces are supposed to sound.
I often wonder how much of that made people stick to tube amps or vinyls? Because to them, that's how their old favorite music should sound.

Now when I say stereo, it's still through the A16, so it's a speaker sound type of experience, not regular headphone stereo that I care for less and less each year. And it worries me because once the A16 dies, IDK if I'll find a proper replacement that's affordable, or if I'll finally manage to live in a place where I can use speakers. Unlikely, as I'm considering moving for work to a place close to Monaco where the rent is even more absurd than where I am right now. I might find something with the dimensions of a medium size fridge for 800€(I'm only half joking). I'm trying to push that onto my boss in a new contract, asking for too much money for what I'm worth, so I can afford to rent a fridge with a balcony.

 

[Davesrose]

Of course. The majority of 3D audio stuff I have are concerts for the same reason. And I finally got into streaming for TV series because of the multichannel audio they have(although with my year 2000 internet speed, I didn't even try the premium stuff).
At the same time, I only have maybe a dozen of multichannel audio albums. Because the sound alone doesn't bring the same magic for me(honestly I tend to prefer those that keep the sound in front and only add a tiny bit of reverb around me, all the demo type arrangements bore me after 3 listening. So I'm fine or even often prefer stereo for the huge majority of albums. If only because that's how I got to know the albums. That seems to be quite a big deal for my brain, what I know first feels more "natural". Same issue I have with classical music, I spent who knows how many hours trying to find the sometimes very mediocre albums I used to play as a kid/teen, because to me, that's how those pieces are supposed to sound.
I often wonder how much of that made people stick to tube amps or vinyls? Because to them, that's how their old favorite music should sound.

Now when I say stereo, it's still through the A16, so it's a speaker sound type of experience, not regular headphone stereo that I care for less and less each year. And it worries me because once the A16 dies, IDK if I'll find a proper replacement that's affordable, or if I'll finally manage to live in a place where I can use speakers. Unlikely, as I'm considering moving for work to a place close to Monaco where the rent is even more absurd than where I am right now. I might find something with the dimensions of a medium size fridge for 800€(I'm only half joking). I'm trying to push that onto my boss in a new contract, asking for too much money for what I'm worth, so I can afford to rent a fridge with a balcony.

Looks like we're just at different experiences. I know the A16 is supposed to be king for 3D audio with headphone experience. Back when I was trying to get a good surround sound experience with headphones, it wound up being in college when I got a Sennheiser HD-580 that also included their pro-logic surround processor. It's only calibration was manually dialing things like "parametric" until it sounded good. But dang it, when I listened to The Matrix on it with the headphones, I could hear Neo swish kicking his legs behind me. I got into head-fi for just listening to music and then continued to speakers for movies. After I got a HD plasma TV, eventually got into blu-ray and HDMI 7.1 speaker system (and I can now have a cinema experience without alarming neighbors). What was funny was the girl I was dating at the time first said "wow, your speakers are big and ugly". But after she watched a movie on it-"wow, this sounds better than a movie theater". While I'm sure the A16 is still one of the best things for 3D audio with headphones, there's also an experience of watching live concert blu-rays with a group with surround sound speakers. For example, I gave an extra surround receiver to a friend, along with a pair of bookshelf speakers. He had a gathering at the time of me gifting this stuff. It was hard to run calibration tones with running kids....but after I got past that, I put on the first Eric Clapton's Crossroad's blu-ray. The segment with Midnight in Harlem (Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi) really highlights the range of vocals with surround and bass with subwoofer. Because I now also watch all my video content with my now current 3D audio speaker setup, spatial audio for headphones still don't interest me. Honestly, currently the main regular headphones I listen to every day is running with open air earbuds in that I'm not looking for great audio quality.