[Prog Rock Man]

Sorry sokolov, but I can remember what the distortion during the opening of Massive Attack's 'Angel' and the 'miaow' sound at 42 seconds sounds like for a lot longer than 4-5 seconds.

 

[sokolov91]

Quote:

Sorry sokolov, but I can remember what the distortion during the opening of Massive Attack's 'Angel' and the 'miaow' sound at 42 seconds sounds like for a lot longer than 4-5 seconds.

Well apparently I am not expressing myself well enough, because I am not, in any way, saying that it is impossible for you to do so.
 
What I am saying, is that as far as doing an accurate A/B comparison of an audible stimuli, you would need it to be quick.
 
Yes you remember the song, and how it sounds, you might even to be able to play all of it (more or less) back in your heard. That is the result of memorizing the song. You have not done with with every piece of music to the same degree.
 
Albums I know exceedingly well I could, if I needed to, do shoddy job of playing them back entirely in my head.
 
But this is entirely beside the point. We are speaking of being able to detect differences between cables. So it would have to be an audible shift in a far of the frequency spectrum. Therefore, for people to accurate identify what actually changed the switch would have to be quick.
 
Just like for say a crossfeed implementation, you flip it on, listen for a few seconds, you flip it off, listen for a few seconds. Now, I am not listening to the emotional context of a song at this rate, because that is not my aim, my aim is to notice a difference in how the sound of the song has changed.
 
The flipping on and off of the crossfeed tells you how much of an effect it has on that particular song, where the differences lie, and whether or not it is pleasing. Doing sever quick A/B test like this you can then decide if the change is one you like for this song, or if it one you would rather not have. Does it effect, in any way the emotional context of the song? No, not at all.
 
So doing quick A/B tests in the aim of getting people to identify a change is not "The wrong way to test audio" as far as giving people the most likely way to detect a change, it is the best.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I agree with all you have said, I just did not get the 4-5 seconds part.
 
I think that it would be good, prior to any blind test for the subject to state what they are going to listen for. So I would have my various tester tracks, some where I only need a few seconds and others where I would listen to a large part of the track. I could then say for sure what if any change there was and if so how much.

 

[sokolov91]

Quote:

I agree with all you have said, I just did not get the 4-5 seconds part.
 
I think that it would be good, prior to any blind test for the subject to state what they are going to listen for. So I would have my various tester tracks, some where I only need a few seconds and others where I would listen to a large part of the track. I could then say for sure what if any change there was and if so how much.

I actually have to run right now, but I will find a link and post it for you later.
 
It is just has to do with how your various sense transmit information to your short term. If they transmitted everything, and you remembered all of it, you would have little time to be a human and have a life.
 
That is why the second you look away from something unless you actively tried to memorize it, it is lost to you in terms of picture perfect reproduction. You have a shadow of what it was, and if you weren't trying to remember it, you have just about nothing.
 
Visual stimuli is denser in terms of information though, so the brain rids itself of that stimuli almost instantaneously . Audio gets deleted after about 4-5 seconds. Otherwise everything you ever perceived would make its way into your short-term and long term.
 
When you focus to do work, or block stimuli out, they are still happening, you just do not perceive them at all, or as richly as you should. Because you have better things to think about and do.
 
This is what I mean by being deleted. I will find a link for you later.
 
Have a good evening.

 

[sokolov91]

Obviously not the best source, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoic_memory is what I was referring to
 
This study slightly contradicts what I was saying earlier, but is talking about it in a different manner, but it is also interesting.
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2667065/

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

Mike you start by talking of musical feeling, but then go on to describe actual physical (for want of a better word, something that is there, rather than felt is there) differences. I would always go for the physical otherwise could the changes not just be in your head and dependent on mood?

Let's be clear about the difference between ordinary emotion and musical feeling. Musicians don't have to "be sad" in order to compose or perform sad music. There is a distinction.
 
Musicians are good at recognizing, remembering, and comparing both kinds of effects: (1) musical feeling, and (2) details that can be described analytically like "the tempo was chosen so that the hall reverberation almost, but not quite, smears the attacks." In fact, musicians can often describe the effects that create the musical feeling in analytical terms.
 
 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

 
Quote:

Let's be clear about the difference between ordinary emotion and musical feeling. Musicians don't have to "be sad" in order to compose or perform sad music. There is a distinction.
 
Musicians are good at recognizing, remembering, and comparing both kinds of effects: (1) musical feeling, and (2) details that can be described analytically like "the tempo was chosen so that the hall reverberation almost, but not quite, smears the attacks." In fact, musicians can often describe the effects that create the musical feeling in analytical terms.
 
 

Sokolov had been discussion listening to snippets of a song. I agree that the best way to make a comparison is to listen for specific sounds and you had given an example of that to do with a trumpet. It was either yes or no as to whether you could hear it. That is the detail that can be seen as a difference as you could say to me 'listen to that trumpet' and I should be able to hear the same thing. But if you are asking me to listen for a musical feeling, I may not get it as that is subjective.
 
But, I now understand what both of you mean

 

[k00zk0]

Now I haven't read the whole thread, and I know where the creator is coming from. Digital is digital.
 
There may however be circumstances outside of what is immediately apparent. Let's say the DAC/amp etc. has it's own proper ground. The shape and type of winding/braiding on the ground of the USB cable can pick up interference or alter the signal in ways unapparent even if it has no relation to the internal electronics of the DAC, apart from the physical proximity of the rectangular plug it goes into being within the same enclosure, even unconnected. How much difference this makes you must still determine with instruments more sensitive than the ear, because NO QUESTION, 99.9% of people's decisions will be altered by the fact that one cable costs more, has a different name, or is a different color, whether they decide the more costly one is better, or worse due to their rationalization that digital is such and only need a one dollar cable, despising the fact that a money and time wasting product is even being tested in such a pointless way.
 
Then, assuming a difference is detected on a highly precise oscilloscope, we cannot say which signal leads to more or more accurate information delivered to the brain or consciousness, unless it is obvious that high frequency data is missing in one, etc. which is highly unlikely as it would be heard before measured.
 
Oh wait, double blind. Yes, all perspectives taken into account, this is the only way to know which is better. It must be done with hundreds or thousands of combinations of hardware and listeners, and averaged out to find whether one cable is better or not. Assuming a statistically significant difference is found, the experiment should be repeated with new hardware and listeners to confirm that. Assuming that is confirmed, it should be repeated to confirm that. So on and so on. The chance that each vast trial's results are coincidental decreases with number of trials, but is never confirmed. The important thing is to keep a smile on during all of this and realize that nothing is for sure, it simply approaches asymptotes of certainty. Smile.
 
Concerning rapid A/B testing, very short sounds like the sharp transient of a snare should be played one after another, with each clip literally 0.5 seconds long. What one will notice, if they are different, the sound repeats every two snare hits instead of every hit, since that is the actual repeated sample. Else the repetition is every 0.5 seconds. This should be repeated several times, each time starting with a random A or B of the setup.
 
Another problem is the hardware that will do that, or even switches which A/B the equipment. If the effect is caused by something as subtle as different shaped wiring in the USB connector, even unused to carry the signal, the A/B hardware will affect that probably greater than the difference of the cable, multiplying, adding to, completely eliminating, or even reversing the effect. So what you end up calling the superior product may be worse when used in the shorter signal chain.
 
If you can hear differences like that, the time of day (relation of sun/earth/moon/magnetic field.. I don't know), the orientation of the cable, the direction your head is pointing, millimeter repositioning and angling of the cable... may change the specific effect on it.
 
Smile

 

[Hirsch]

Quote:

Audio is different from visual stimuli. The auditory memory is at best 4-5 seconds, that is why, scientifically we would need to do the switches quickly. If they are done the other way, people complain they are too strenuous and long...
 
Of course it is not best to do snippets of a song, but a chorus, or a solo, or a specific part in the anatomy of a song would suffice.
 

Huh?
 
You receive a phone call at the end of the work day. You answer the phone (which is a highly bandwidth-limited device for voice transmission, incidentally).  A voice says "Hello".  You immediately recognize the voice of your SO, who you have not spoken to since that morning, and respond appropriately. In fact you would probably be in trouble if you didn't recognize your SO's voice. But the only cue that you have is an auditory one, and you're now recognizing a voice much longer than 4-5 seconds after you last heard it.  So, how long is auditory memory?
 
Hint: Is there more than one kind of auditory memory?

 

[aimlink]

Quote:

Huh?
 
You receive a phone call at the end of the work day. You answer the phone (which is a highly bandwidth-limited device for voice transmission, incidentally).  A voice says "Hello".  You immediately recognize the voice of your SO, who you have not spoken to since that morning, and respond appropriately. In fact you would probably be in trouble if you didn't recognize your SO's voice. But the only cue that you have is an auditory one, and you're now recognizing a voice much longer than 4-5 seconds after you last heard it.  So, how long is auditory memory?
 
Hint: Is there more than one kind of auditory memory?

Good one that.  Never thought of that, but it sure makes a lot of street sense, something we seem to lose a lot of when we get all caught up in this mental stuff.

 

[Soaa-]

There's a different mechanism in the brain that recognizes and differentiates human voices. That mechanism is able to tell who a voice belongs to even if it's really distorted. Exactly how, I don't know. It probably has to do more with intonation and articulation than the actual timbre and harmonics of the voice.

 

[sokolov91]

I was talking about pure sensory information, and not memories of that stimuli.
 
The immediate experience is always the most faithful (because it is the actual sound). Once our mind erases it, we are left with a memory of said stimuli.
 
So, to do accurate A/B it has to be quick, otherwise you are working with distorted information.
 
if you guys had taken some basic psych classes you would know what I am talking about.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

There's a different mechanism in the brain that recognizes and differentiates human voices. That mechanism is able to tell who a voice belongs to even if it's really distorted. Exactly how, I don't know. It probably has to do more with intonation and articulation than the actual timbre and harmonics of the voice.

That must apply to music as well then. If we have such short memories for music, then every time I play some music it will be like the first time again. Actually that would be excellent! Listening to Dark side of the Moon and each time I would get the same 'wow' as I did the first time.

 

[Roger Strummer]

Quote:

That must apply to music as well then. If we have such short memories for music, then every time I play some music it will be like the first time again. Actually that would be excellent! Listening to Dark side of the Moon and each time I would get the same 'wow' as I did the first time.

Actually that which you and soaa mention is due to the huge capability of the brain to adapt to very diverse circumstances. Even though you listen to voices/songs through different devices, the brain can still recognize them and it adapts very quickly to the presentation you are hearing. 
 
So in that sense one could say that auditory memory is very good (awesomely good actually). But it is counter-productive for trying to compare audio devices, since the brain adapts to and minimizes the differences between devices so to be able to recognize the sound in different circumstances, so that is aspect to which people refer to when talking about the short duration of the auditory memory.
 
In other words you can remember the most important things about the important sounds in life, but to optimize the process of recognition in different ambients/devices the brain actually minimizes the details so to be able to focus on the important stuff. It is analogue to the sample in this page, but for the auditory system instead of the eyes.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

So short listening of specific passages is preferable to long term listening due to adaptation to the sound.
 
(I also think that such adaptation is mistaken for burn in, where people advise listening to something to get used to it and so often it results in an 'improved sound'.)