bigshot
Headphoneus Supremus
The one that always gets me is “organic.”
Fertilizer is organic.
The one that always gets me is “organic.”
“Organic” as a term does have a legitimate meaning, as in: Organic as opposed to synthetic, IE. Real acoustic instruments rather than synthesised instruments/sounds. This difference was particularly obvious in the 1980’s and ‘90s, both in terms of deliberately obvious synth sounds and of “sampled”/synthesised acoustic instruments, most commonly electronic drums, pianos, strings and horns. Not only has the quality of samples improved dramatically but control of them in modern DAWs has too. The constant variation in timing, tuning/intonation and attack, hold and decay envelopes characteristic of real musicians playing acoustic instruments was at one time near nonexistent with sampled/synthesised instruments and is now very sophisticated. In many cases today, it’s pretty much impossible to differentiate the real from the sampled instruments and even the deliberately electronic sounding synth sounds typical of some genres (EDM most obviously) can be made to appear less computerised/mechanical if desired. So “organic” as a term is less useful/valid than it was 30 or so years ago but is still used occasionally.The one that always gets me is “organic.” The number of times I’ve read someone describing their HP’s sound as, organic, is astounding. What that means is beyond me.
I read that a couple of times and couldn’t figure out what you’re asking.
Biases are systematic, that is their definition. But that’s about the notion of ”mental shortcut”. The consequences in experience or decision making could just show a statistical tendency toward something. And it would be incorrect to assume that we’re only facing one bias in our sighted, variable free-for-all, experience we call listening.
- There appear to exist people who for very similarly measuring gear hear drastically different sonic properties.
- There are also people who even under sighted conditions don't hear such differences at all.
- The personnel in (2) may also be subject to expectation bias about the lack of audibility, but some individuals among the personnel in (1) claim to have originally been skeptics before they had an experience that changed their minds.
- Considering (1), (2), and (3), are there any formal studies on the extent to which individuals are more or less affected by sighted bias in their perception of music?
- Regarding (4), I speculate that the susceptibility may arise from the repeated confirmation bias of hearing differences during the period prior to their being told that no differences are supposed to be heard.
As a superman, I can think of the blind dude who can ”see” shapes with the reflections from clicking his tongue. That’s a brain thing, he doesn't have special hearing.Re. perception of sound, I would find it interesting to see research done (if it hasn't been done already) that focuses not an an average group of people, but intentionally limits the subjects to a group of neurodivergent people (with respect to hearing). E.g. people with APD (auditory processing disorder) struggle to isolate speech from a noisy background, but what if other neurological disorders actually improved certain aspects of perceptibility?
E.g., how would established research results re. limits of perceptible levels of of distortion, frequency range etc. hold up if the test subjects were exclusively made up of people with e.g. synesthesia? Getting a large enough group of test subjects would be problematic. But it would be interesting to see what such research could tell us about the physical limits of human hearing versus those potentially resulting from neurological processing limits in the (normal) brain.
It is highly likely that the results would point to the established limits on hearing being mostly a physical one, resulting from the physical and biological construction of the human hearing such as the inner ear/cochlea/Reissner's & basilar membranes, organ of corti etc. But on the other hand, would it not be equally interesting if it turned out that some neurodivergent people (again e.g. synesthetes) could indeed consistently perceive differences that conventional science has shown us to be imperceptible by listeners with normal hearing and perception?
They've just introduced those caps on the Alpro soy milk cartons here. They are a friggin' pain the butt.![]()
For countries that don’t have those tethered caps yet, it’s great, you will love it![]()