[JadeEast]

 
 
Quote:

The present research has demonstrated that listeners can, with varying degrees of success, 
hear different types of smiles in the voices of strangers in the absence of visual cues. Listeners 
are very good at discriminating ‘Duchenne Smiles’ from ‘No Smiles’. They can also, to a lesser 
degree, successfully discriminate ‘Non-Duchenne Smiles’ from ‘No Smiles’, and ‘Suppressed 
Smiles’ from ‘No Smiles’. These findings support previous research findings demonstrating that 
smiles can be communicated vocally (De Gelder  & Vroomen, 2000; Tartter & Braun, 1994).  
 
Listeners do make mistakes however, and appear to relate certain acoustical 
characteristics (possibly: increased pitch, increased intensity, increased F1 and F2 dispersion, 
and decreased in F2 and F3 dispersion) with more smiley sounding voices.
 
Listeners have 
(potentially misguided) preconceptions of what smiles should sound like. This possibility raises 
serious questions about the use of actors in research. Actors too, like the listeners in the present 
study, may have prototypical ideals regarding emotional vocal expressions, and if anything these 
ideals are reinforced in society through the use of actors (on television, stage, and radio). Results 
obtained from studies utilizing actors should not, therefore, be taken as evidence of how 
vocalizations of affect are expressed in everyday usage, but more as illustrative of how vocal 
affect expression is represented by society.

Link to a paper on this subject: http://peer.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/49/91/97/PDF/PEER_stage2_10.1016%252Fj.specom.2007.10.001.pdf
 
It's seems a bit of a messy thing talking about detecting the smile from a voice. We are interpretation "machines": we are always making interpretations of the world. A machine can't - yet and possibly ever - interpret the meanings of smiles and then understand the social cues. I have no doubt that the difference between a smiling voice and non smiling voice could be correlated to a change in some aspect of the signal. There appears to be some research done with spectral analysis, but the papers lay behind paywalls.
 
Still, it's the kind of question that lay outside of the concerns of sound reproduction: the differences exists outside of any reproduction technology. You could, just walk up to someone and close your eyes and try to determine if they were smiling. No cables, no driver, no amp, no dac, no technology.
 
We can probe the voice signal with instruments, but we will not be able to grasp the smiles inside the signal: the smile is a human interpretation. We can make a correlation to some parameter of the sound, but it's not the smile itself.
 
 

 

[xnor]

Quote:

I have no doubt that the difference between a smiling voice and non smiling voice could be correlated to a change in some aspect of the signal.

In fact there has to be a change in the voice, else we wouldn't be able to 'detect' that someone is smiling while talking. There is no magical connection.

 

[BlackbeardBen]

Quote:

In fact there has to be a change in the voice, else we wouldn't be able to 'detect' that someone is smiling while talking. There is no magical connection.

Exactly.  We're chemical and electrical machines - no magic.  If there's a change in the voice, we can measure it, and given a study to correlate the change with emotional responses, etc. it can be understood.
 
Additionally, just because we haven't measured or can't yet measure something does not mean we can't or never will, respectively.
 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Exactly.  We're chemical and electrical machines - no magic.  If there's a change in the voice, we can measure it, and given a study to correlate the change with emotional responses, etc. it can be understood.
 
Additionally, just because we haven't measured or can't yet measure something does not mean we can't or never will, respectively.
 

Of course even if it was magic that doesn't mean we couldn't figure it out either.  Magic has to follow rules too.
 

 

[xnor]

Quote:

Magic has to follow rules too.

 
Hah, good one. 
 
 

 

[Heidegger]

Quote:

Think I'll rather afford myself real improvements than imaginatory ones, thank you very much.

I'm all for real improvements, but imaginary ones are real if they sound THIS good.
 

 

[Heidegger]

You're so wrong. We're not chemical and electrical machines. We're not machines at all. Try again. It's amazing to me that we would equate ourselves with the things we build (machines). We're so much more than that.
 
Quote:

Exactly.  We're chemical and electrical machines - no magic. 

 

[Yoga Flame]

 
Quote:

You're so wrong. We're not chemical and electrical machines. We're not machines at all. Try again. It's amazing to me that we would equate ourselves with the things we build (machines). We're so much more than that.
 

 
There is ongoing philosophical debate over that matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_(philosophy)
 

 

[BlackbeardBen]

 
Quote:

 
 
There is ongoing philosophical debate over that matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_(philosophy)
 

It's interesting that people philosophize over this...  I suppose for those that believe in magical hand-waving of life (vitalizm), philosophizing is necessary because seeking knowledge via science is already ruled out from the beginning.
 
So again we're back to the science vs. magic debate...  How quaint.

 

[JadeEast]

Quote:

 
So again we're back to the science vs. magic debate...  How quaint.

I see it more as running into Cartesian dualism again and again. Subject vs Object. 
 
 

 

[Willakan]

Why do these discussions always end up in philosophy? I actually find philosophy quite interesting, but in this context it's not hugely relevant - the point isn't whether or not an imaginary perceived difference is real - you've got to persuade people that it's imaginary first!

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I agree. Some evidence from the pro cable side would be nice.

 

[DaBomb77766]

What.  I just read some of the posts up in this page and what is this.  How does this have anything to do with cables?
 
That said, the distinction between what is "alive" and what is "machine" will, eventually, begin to blur.  There is nothing "special" about humans, if our technological capacity becomes great enough it would certainly be possible to manufacture "people" in a factory dedicated to such a purpose.  You could even make people who are specifically designed to listen to audio equipment critically!
 
Buuut, that is utterly irrelevant to cables, as far as I can see?  Not really sure what was going on here since I'm too lazy/tired to read a few pages back?
 
Human psychology is extremely interesting though.  I find it endlessly intriguing how people can deceive themselves into believing a falsity beyond a shadow of a doubt, to the point it is impossible to change their mind, and actually "see," "hear" and "feel" things that aren't there.  It's endlessly infuriating too though.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Some people just do not want to hear that they could well be wrong. This thread was originally posted in the What Hifi forum and was deleted in its entirety. Then I pointed out that one of the Editor's was mixing blind testing with ABX testing, so ineffect misrepresenting the results of their blind tests run with forum members and published in the magazine. (The original post in this thread has been modified to relfect that). Recently I have been posting about how cable makers were unable to show how their cables actually affect sound quality. That has been the final straw as I am now banned

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[DaBomb77766]

Quote:

Some people just do not want to hear that they could well be wrong. This thread was originally posted in the What Hifi forum and was deleted in its entirety. Then I pointed out that one of the Editor's was mixing blind testing with ABX testing, so ineffect misrepresenting the results of their blind tests run with forum members and published in the magazine. (The original post in this thread has been modified to relfect that). Recently I have been posting about how cable makers were unable to show how their cables actually affect sound quality. That has been the final straw as I am now banned

 
 
 
 
 
 

Censorship at its finest, I guess...it sucks if the ones in power are the ones with the flawed preconceptions.  Of course, their beliefs are so strong that they feel we are the ones with the preconceptions, which is interesting, sad and true, all at the same time.
 
It'd be nice if Tyll would do some technical tests involving USB and analog cables with his rather sophisticated test equipment though.  People should pester him about doing that more, maybe it'll make him more likely to do it...or it could have the opposite effect.