Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

 I never said that Amir mesures set is unable to catch errors in the material design of the gear... YES AMIR CAN DO IT... And we all must thank him for it...

You read me as it suit you it seems.. 😊

I said that Amir cannot claim that his set of measures are able to PREDICT all the musical REAL impressions any human listenings can pick... Calling them "illusions" because his measures are supposed to taught us everything about our  qualitative listenings ,  it is wrong... Fourier linear tools  are not enough to understand and predict what is real or not and MEANINFUL FOR US  in our perceptions of any sound event ... I only state what hearing science verify by experiment... And Van Maanen say the same as me... I am a nobody... Van Maanen is a top physicist and a designer...

 A weel designed piece of gear does not means that it will suit all needs and be perfect...Nobody can give with a limited set of measures  and predict all qualities related to all future  design... Nobody can claim that human hearings is always illusory when we analyse musical quality of musicians or of a piece of gear... We need measures and human qualitative evaluation... because saying that gear design measures qualities are necessary for musical perceived quality is right but it is not ENOUGH for predicting it in all cases and for all needs ... Design is also a creative enterprise not fixed once for all... Hearing theory evolve...  

It's all just a bunch of words unless you can concisely state what is wrong with the stereo equipment being developed and how Amir's tests do not catch these perceived errors.

😊 It is not false but it is not completely true..

One of my profs once said , "The problem with philosophers is they are enamoured with thinking but have no interest in knowing.'.  He went on to discuss how many philosophers love to discuss a problem philosophically but don't like to be encumbered by the often very real and very hard facts and limits associated with the problem. 

Because  knowledge is a bigger concept and a larger one    than the concept of science ... it is the reason why scientific revolutions are possible... And anyway science cannot pick values for us or dictate which value we will pick first... Knowledge is free in a way science is not, this is the reason why all great scientists claim that we need philosophy IN and FOR  science thinking .  

Some larger knowledge correct a scientific paradigm...And science is a larger notion than just  technology... It is the reason why we cannot reduce our experience of hearing to our actual Fourier technology , we need a more complex context to understand hearing than just the Fourier context...This is what Van Maanen and Magnasco and Oppenheim called  with Gibson : the ecological theory of hearing..

A very precise technological measurements sets by Magnasco and Oppenheim make them thing about hearing science... They philosiphically concluded that we need a new paradigm in hearing theory to complement the Fourier paradigm.. It6 is called a scientific revolution in hearing science...

You see, it is not a secondary unimportant measure about a common place fact; human hearings is limited ... As said Amir, to keep afloat his pretense about  his sets of measures and his claim that all sensible musical qualities dont exist or derived from his meassured set, nothing else..

I can only speak for myself but the problem at hand for most here on this thread I think is how to best choose what to buy. Measurements are very useful for that. Explaining why human hearing is so complex is totally useless towards that end. It is useful to understand how human hearing works to help better understand why we hear what we do. But these are two totally different use cases. What is of value always depends on context. So there really should be no debate. Two totally different sets of information used for two different but related purposes. Best to understand it all but no point in arguing one versus the other. One topic at a time please!

Perhaps i did not wrote very well and not long enough posts... 😊

Here is a simple question for you @mahgister . Answer it in a paragraph. If all the tests that Amir does measure how accurately a signal passes through a system using a defined metric, and he uses the same metric for all equipment, and that metric provides an accurate, repeatable, and valid data point about the integrity of the signal, and Amir is only using that metric as a relative comparison while at times relating it roughly to experimentally established limits of hearing using the same metric, how is that wrong?   

Do you remember that i thanks Amir for his service about measures ?

From post one till today...

All the measures set used by Amir to  VERIFY the design integrity of gear pieces is not only welcome but must be THANKS A LOT...

Once this is said, infering from these set of measures that all that can be said about gear is in this set of measures is FALSE...

For two reasons: Amir dont measure aqll there is to be measured to begin with..

And Nevermind the measures, they are all interpreted in a Fourier context , and human hearing dont work captive of this context... We need to listen ...Even Amir say he need to listen and he did ..

Where is the point of disaccord ?

Simple, we can pedict by measures if a piece of gear is designed as it must be  by we cannot infer from this  and predict the "musical qualities" of the gear..

Amir say no, all these musical qualities are in the meassured set i used.. I disagree because not only he does not measure everything, but everything cannot be predicted by a set of Fourier linear  measures  Ecological theory confirmed by Magnasco and Oppenheim experiment say audible qualities exist  and are not reducible to our tools... They must be perceived by our ears because they are meaningful for our ears FIRST not to our tools.. But Van Maanen say  we must design better circuits answering more to our ears needs than to our fourier linear tools only...

@mapman ,

For the truth to lie in the middle they would need to be answering the same question 😀.  Quite obviously they are not.

One of my profs once said , "The problem with philosophers is they are enamoured with thinking but have no interest in knowing.'.  He went on to discuss how many philosophers love to discuss a problem philosophically but don't like to be encumbered by the often very real and very hard facts and limits associated with the problem. 

I am not in anger at all...

I discussed about a very precise point...

Subjectivist negating the value of measures are wrong, objectivists claiming measures of gear can replace listenings are wrong...

They are wrong BECAUSE they focus on gear, not on the psycho-acoustic context , correlating measures and listenings..

Amir defend the idea that audibkle qualities are ell reducible to his set of measures..

I oppose it on the basis that his limited sets of measures applied to gear specs, which cannot regulate all there is to say about human listenings, because hearing theory cannot be based ONLY on Fourier linear tools... the qualitative informative perception of some sound sources event as three sopranos singing together, can be accurately described by a musician in a way unexplanable by time independant set of linear measures..

Magnasco and Oppenheim then concluded that human hearings is not only a brain computing activities based on Fourier analysis but ALSO an ecological event, a real perceptive event of a discontinuous set of qualities that cannot be reduced to Fourier modeling... This is the crux of the debate...

No need to be angry with facts... Correct me if i am wrong... But i am passionnate speaker in a debate and i answer an argument by another one..

If someone read this experiment to be only just about measuring hearing limits, then this person dont understand what is at stake : the fundamental of hearing theory... because these hearings limits are out of the Fourier domain, and called HYPERACUITY , a perceptual power linked to a real set of qualitative events in the real worl...This is called ecological theory of hearing ... This theory complement the Fourier theory of hearing by what it lack in it : qualities in the natural world, what Gibson called AFFORDANCES...

what did you want ?

Who must move on, me or Amir ?... We discuss IMPORTANT things together ... Hearing theory and audio interpreted facts are related..

Those who are not interested by these matter can move on... Me i wait for arguments...

There is more important matter in the world for sure: war, medical crisis, economical crisis... But discussing tthese subjects here will become more IRRATIONAL, because they are more complex that just the hearing Fourier based theory and ecological hearin theory and their relation for assessing audio qualities.. After all it is an audio site...

The war between subjectivists and objectivist is meaningless division about the evaluation of the gear piece...

I try to solve the problem by STATING it more clearly where measures encounter perceived sound qualities : psycho-acoustic and hearing theory context... ..

Posting the same things over and over ad-nauseum is not facts. Answering my question about what Amir's tests do that is wrong, why it is wrong, and very important how wrong it is would be a fact. My comment about the testing bandwidth used for audio and the testing frequencies and times for the hearing test has factual underpinning.  

That human hearing must respond to a threat quickly but audio tests equipment can take it's jolly old time doing analysis is also a fact.

I guessed that Radar probably uses non-linear processing. Look at that it does.

Here is a simple question for you @mahgister . Answer it in a paragraph. If all the tests that Amir does measure how accurately a signal passes through a system using a defined metric, and he uses the same metric for all equipment, and that metric provides an accurate, repeatable, and valid data point about the integrity of the signal, and Amir is only using that metric as a relative comparison while at times relating it roughly to experimentally established limits of hearing using the same metric, how is that wrong?   

Here is another question for you. Armed with your knowledge of how human hearing using non linear processing (experiment done at low frequency), exactly what is wrong with the stereo equipment that is being developing and importantly how wrong is it?

It's all just a bunch of words unless you can concisely state what is wrong with the stereo equipment being developed and how Amir's tests do not catch these perceived errors.

I stay out of arguments where two sides take absolute counter stances and are unwilling to address the ultimate truth that the correct answer usually lies somewhere in between. The only way to find it is to take all factors into consideration.

It’s very sad to me that we live in such a politically polarized environment these days that people are conditioned to focus on grievances rather than solutions.

It does not bode well for the future.

How about everyone just say they are sorry If you want to solve the question of is a better than b get together in a room armed with ALL the relevant data and put a and b to the ultimate listening test and talk it out about what you hear and why.

Metrics alone are very often abused rather than used properly. It takes some know how to get things right. Not an easy task. But if the data is correct two people should be able to get in a room and help validate it.

The things is all people can do on a forum is talk and share information . You can’t hear a dam thing! Certainly not on the ultimate hifi. So there are limits. Take what others have to offer with civility, not anger. Repeating something over and over hoping the other guy finally gets it is not a good strategy. If it’s not working just say your piece and move on. None of this stuff is really all that important anyhoo in the grand scheme of things.

Just saying….

Very comical that people believe i want to win a debate...

Nobody can win a rational debate...

Facts speaks by themselves...

I posted many articles anybody can read...

instead of acting as if we were two empty heads quarrelling in a brawling match because you dont understand what is at stake in this debate... STUDY AND THINK by yourself ... Dont insult those who discuss in these debate but explain to us with arguments WHY you favor the perspective of Amir or the other, the perspective of Magnasco and Oppenheim and of Van Maanen and of those who defend an ecological analysis of perception and not only a Fourier frequencies based perspective...

Qualities exist objectively as AFFORDANCES   and are not mere  ghosts born from the brain computer...

This is how j.j. Gibson became one of the most influential psychologist of the last century for the visual perception analysis...  The same perspective is needed in hearing analysis to complement Fourier analysis..

Upper right under your name, click follow and unfollow

I made the mistake of posting to this thread early on, so now I am curious if any of you know how to unfollow a thread on Audiogon, because I would like to unfollow this one.

I am listening to and enjoying, speakers, an intergraded amp, a phono pre and a music streamer, and Amir felt compelled to hack the head off the pink panther. It's profitable to be controversial. 

When the ears/brain detect a meaningful REAL information qualities about two nuanced singing sopranos voices, no tool can qualifies these voices "harmonious" or not so harmonious blending... A tool can detect information, not qualify it as meaningful by itself...A musician can OBJECTIVELY qualify the blending of two feminine voices nuances and not only that he can detect their blending in time 13 times more precisely than Fourier analysis can predict.. Why ? because the ears /brain of the musician is trained to recognize the MUSICAL QUALITIES as an OBJECTIVE reality that can be TAUGHT...

NO need for a blind test...Now tell to this musician , that he cannot trust his ears to pick an amplifier but ONLY the measured verified specs , not  even with all possible measures, but only with  the limited set of linear  Measures proposed by Amir, and say to this musician that to choose an amplifier , nothing else will warrant musicality than these limited set of measures... He will laugh... 😊For sure as he said Amir listen too...But biased by his numbers he listen as if they were predictive of musicality... They cannot.. And he want to blind test anyone saying that his set of measures is not all there is to say about the gear not only about his material design but about his sound qualities... He goes too far with his claim...

The limited set of measures proposed by Amir are useful to verify the company specs claims... NOTHING ELSE... Musical quality must be perceived and cannot be predicted and interpreted by tools without ears, sometimes musical quality correlated with some measures, sometimes not... Design is not only an industrial process it is also a guided by the ears craftmanship and by psycho-acoustic principles and laws of hearings and the law of hearings are not Fourier frequencies based but based on an ecological theory as Gibson did for visual theory  ...Fourier is good but not enough...

Why ? Because any prediction must be based on an interpretation space... The Fourier interpretation space as tool cannot predict which is out of his linear window frame of interpretation, but pertain to the time dependant real world event of natural sounds and which qualities the ears perceive non linearly... QUALITIES as objective phenomena... Music is the main example... Measuring the linearity of a well working circuit did not predict musicality as qualities perceived non linearly by ears...

Ha! I commend you & your efforts ... stamina.

: )

So our hearing has non-linear processing. So what.

you are determined to dominate this thread

@mahgister ,

I will be honest with you. I find your attitude appalling. Your anger because Amir (and others) refuse to bend to your way of thinking, that you are not presenting in a coherent manner, is off-putting and if there was a mute button I would have long ago used it. You are not trying to communicate or discuss, you are trying to impose.

So our hearing has non-linear processing. So what. No one appears to dispute that. It appears to be quite common where our senses are concerned. Seems pretty common in industry too.

You are screaming at Amir, but I have you provided a concrete example of how what he is doing is wrong or will lead to improper conclusions? Not screaming at him this is wrong, but exactly what is wrong, why it is wrong, and very important, how wrong he is. Is he off by 5%? 10? 75%? You are very confident what he is doing is wrong, so you should be able to confidently tell him, how inaccurate the work he is doing is. To put it colloquially, put your money where your mouth is.

I went back and read those papers and some of the links I searched. Do you know what frequencies they were measuring and what times they were using? I assumed based on your dissertation that the times would be very small, and the frequencies high. The frequencies were small, 100’s of Hz, and the times were large, many milliseconds. I don’t know all the math, but if we are testing to 20KHz, I don’t think timing of milliseconds is going to be an issue even if there are small technical problems.

I said I was done with this and I should be, but you are determined to dominate this thread.

 

amir_asr

409 posts

 

Well, in that case, may your future be full of noise and distortion.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z10zK0utr60

That’s fine Amir, compared to a superior human being like you, almost of god-like proportions, I am just a monkey. Nothing more nothing less to expect from a professional audio forum writer like you.

Meanwhile, let’s just carry on with our things: I will continue to listen to noise and distortions, while you continue to listen to your graphs.

@amir_asr 

So sorry, I just realised I had forgotten to tell you the results of the actual test. The test subjects ranged between 39 to 65 – a 63 year old was one of the four who identified resolution for all six tracks correctly, another was 59, an the last two were 42 and 45 respectively. The 45 year old was a woman. Three of them identified just two tracks correctly, two of them were women aged 40 and 46, and the ones who got between three and four tracks right were all men. None of them were professionally trained listeners, and most of the men were into hifi audio. None of the women were. There didn’t seem to be any correlation between age, accuracy, or experience, leading me to believe that one may hear frequencies well, but not be able to listen accurately. The number of accurate listeners seemed strangely high, but the sampling was too small to draw any conclusions from that.

Oh, I was the 59 year old.

Two things appeared to be absolutely clear – first, that inherent listening ability is very different from individual to individual, and second, it was a surprise that so many were accurate, despite the average quality of equipment used.

No equipment to debunk, no measurements, no claims of golden ears, just plain simple listening ability that day. Two of the audiophiles were a touch peeved : )

In friendship - kevin

Yeah … stunning indeed. Whoever takes you seriously with your findings is in a stunning need for help 🤦‍♂️

Well, in that case, may your future be full of noise and distortion.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z10zK0utr60

amir_asr

407 posts

07-07-2023 at 02:31am 

@kevn 

Thank you for your quick response, amir. I hope you won’t mind if I can clarify an issue (I realise how many queries you are attempting to answer at the same time, so I fully understand if you missed this) - 

My question was if you could advise if the test was a good way to gauge listening ability, but your reply involved "Methods for the subjective assessment of small impairments in audio systems", training and learning.

My question did not have anything to do with a method, or training, or audio systems, just whether the test, even if intended to have participants give a ‘no, there is no difference’ answer; only if you could advise if it was a good starting point to gauge ‘listening ability’.

You have me at a disadvantage as I thought I clearly answered your question.  Once again, no, it is not a proper test so doesn't make for a good starting point or any starting point for that matter.

It reminds me of buying a Japanese learning CDs years ago at an airport.  It claimed full immersion and quick learning.  I start the lesson and first thing it wants to teach is the words for Horse and Jockey!  I am pretty sure that should not be the starting point to learn any new language unless you are into horses.  :)

But tell me what you concluded about the results of the tests you ran.  Who had good listening ability and why?

@amir_asr 

Thanks for taking time to reply : ) - may I assume that my having you at a disadvantage is your acknowledgement you had not directly responded to my original question? It is important only because your latest reply is again about learning when my question is about inherent ability :) – this is a factor of vital importance as we will come to later in my reply here, in answer to your question.

Your comment, that the instructional CD and its first two words of translated instruction (‘horse’ and ‘jockey) did not make a conducive start to learning any language unless one had an interest in horses, caught my attention.

It is known with the pedagogy of language learning, that understanding the general or foundational rules of syntax and phonetics is far more complex than a beginning with specific but simple words that name the world around us….well, like horses and jockeys! Nouns are, in fact, the way children and full adults begin to have interest to learn and understand a new language in every society and culture. It begins as distinct sounds and inflections of those sounds. I would argue, in fact, that the CD attempted to immediately immerse you in the start it promised, in learning Japanese, and that the bias you had of what learning a language should be about, coloured what the CD offered. 

That aside, would you agree that your bias towards ‘learning’ has coloured your two responses thus far? That is, in relation to my question which is about inherent ability. This is an important factor in light of the bigger discussion of the thread, everything of which really boils down to just one thing – if differences in sound quality can actually be heard between equally measuring equipment. And all that boils down to just one other single thing - that is, if listening ability can be better evaluated.

Learning how to listen and inherent listening ability are two quite different things, something which the listening test I posted shows.

The categorical mistake of equating listening tests of equipment with listening tests for human hearing aside, formal blind listening tests in fact carry more than one uncontrolled variable, contrary to accepted belief. These unknowns are 1) the hearing/listening abilities of the listener, and 2) the potential (if unmeasureable) differences in equipment under test­­. You see, we cannot use as a control the very unknown that we are attempting to determine, just because we believe accurate measurements of that same equipment make it a ‘control’. The ones who believe that differences exist think that their unqualified listening abilities are the control, and the ones who don’t believe differences exist, think that their measured equipment is the control, when the equipment itself is that which is being blind tested. With the test I posted, the resolutions of the test tracks are controlled, as with the playback device and earphones the test is conducted on. The only variable is the listener.

Formal blind listening tests are designed to fail both parties, because they do not qualify as tests (having more than one variable), let alone being that which tests for listening ability. It is a categorical mistake to substitute one for the other.

There are other listening tests many others refer to, having to do with frequency range done under very controlled circumstances in a clinic. These, unfortunately, chop sounds up into bits and pieces and are not listening tests, let alone tests for listening to music which is above all, about time; those are hearing tests, a completely different qualification of what an educated and deeply trained listener is about.

While we may each have a very strong belief in how we rate as listeners, we may not actually know in relation to others, or a standard for comparison, where we each actually stand. And, as you have rightfully pointed out numerous times in this thread, our unqualified hearing cannot be relied on – this accessible test allows each of us to quickly know if we can trust our listening ability, or if it needs practice and development, by way of track resolutions we cannot contest, and our own ears as the only variable.

There is more I have to add, but I leave it here for now, in anticipation of your response. Thanks again.

In friendship – kevin

This paper as you say never negate the benefit of linear measuring methods in GEAR DESIGN , it demonstrated that linear Fourier frequency based methods cannot explain hearing

No it didn't.  It only says simultaneous detection of timing and frequency is better than Fourier Uncertainty limit.  It says nothing about either one being used by itself.  

Magnasco and Oppenheim said this :

«The significant increase in timing acuity unaccompanied by a
drop in the total acuity for a pulse with considerably larger
variances in timing and frequency indicates that either the
precision of human time-frequency perception operates in a realm distant from the true uncertainty bound, or such a bound does not exist for the auditory system»...

See? It says it right there.  They are only talking about time *and* frequency ("time-frequency") detection together and its level of uncertainty.  Nothing about either analysis by itself having an issue.

By the way when we speak of measures in science, ESTIMATION of measures results must be BOUNDED in a set... This set SIZE is ascribed by the theory , here Fourier theory... Magnasco and Oppenheim state that the results of their experiments exceed more than 10 times the uncertainty limit of the Fourier principle... 

Nope.  The research has nothing to do with Fourier *theory*.  It only has to do with time and frequency detection thresholds.  This is reflected in the title of the paper: "Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle"

See the word Uncertainty?  It doesn't say theory.  It talks only about a relationship between time and frequency in our perception.  Any other interpretation is wrong and outside of the scope of the paper.

Fwiw I use name brand speaker wires with batteries on them and gotta say it’s one tweak I never have heard a difference with. But it’s OK, In my defense, I bought them used for a reasonable price versus the competition. They work fine and sound good because my system ain’t bad otherwise so no need to measure…they get the job done. Glad I didn’t pay top dollar new though. I might have felt a little silly then.

Interesting thread. One guy producing actual data and others countering with words. Not a fair fight it would seem. The audiophiles may need to up their game, but at least it’s a home game here for them so that helps.  😉

@mahgister ,

I will be honest with you. I find your attitude appalling.  Your anger because Amir (and others) refuse to bend to your way of thinking, that you are not presenting in a coherent manner, is off-putting and if there was a mute button I would have long ago used it.  You are not trying to communicate or discuss, you are trying to impose.

So our hearing has non-linear processing. So what. No one appears to dispute that. It appears to be quite common where our senses are concerned. Seems pretty common in industry too.

You are screaming at Amir, but I have you provided a concrete example of how what he is doing is wrong or will lead to improper conclusions?  Not screaming at him this is wrong, but exactly what is wrong, why it is wrong, and very important, how wrong he is. Is he off by 5%? 10? 75%?   You are very confident what he is doing is wrong, so you should be able to confidently tell him, how inaccurate the work he is doing is.  To put it colloquially, put your money where your mouth is.

I went back and read those papers and some of the links I searched. Do you know what frequencies they were measuring and what times they were using? I assumed based on your dissertation that the times would be very small, and the frequencies high. The frequencies were small, 100's of Hz, and the times were large, many milliseconds. I don't know all the math, but if we are testing to 20KHz, I don't think timing of milliseconds is going to be an issue even if there are small technical problems.

I said I was done with this and I should be, but you are determined to dominate this thread.

Stunning, right?  Isn't trivial and simple to conclude that TotalDAC is poorly designed and can't rival this $80 dongle?

Yeah … stunning indeed. Whoever takes you seriously with your findings is in a stunning need for help 🤦‍♂️

Magnasco and Oppenheim said this :

«The significant increase in timing acuity unaccompanied by a
drop in the total acuity for a pulse with considerably larger
variances in timing and frequency indicates that either the
precision of human time-frequency perception operates in a realm
distant from the true uncertainty bound, or such a bound does not
exist for the auditory system»...

«Such results add to the growing body of
evidence that human auditory processing is adapted for natural
sounds. Not only then is auditory processing inherently nonlinear,
these nonlinearities are seemingly used to improve perceptual acuity to sounds that correspond to the physics of natural sound
production.»... «Lastly, our
observations about time-reversal symmetry breaking and the
temporal precision of the auditory system suggest further research
into this ecologically-relevant domain.»

Reducing this as you did to a mere underestimating time and frequency relation in a linear model is FALSE...

By the way when we speak of measures in science, ESTIMATION of measures results must be BOUNDED in a set... This set SIZE is ascribed by the theory , here Fourier theory... Magnasco and Oppenheim state that the results of their experiments exceed more than 10 times the uncertainty limit of the Fourier principle... What this means ? The results of the experiment does not suggest a mere error of estimation INSIDE the bounded set PRESCRIBED by the linear Fourier theory... but the experiments suggested an information extracted by the ears/brain so high OUT OF the accepted set of possible values prescribed by the mathematical Fourier theory... The conclusion of the article is then we need an ecological based hearing theory and further experiments in this direction...

The qualities we hear are not MERE ILLUSIONS.. They correspond to LEARNED and taught by evolution real informative events related to sound sources and sound production in evolutive history...

Sorry for your complete miunderstanding.. ..

No discussion is possible without GOOD FAITH...

And Van Maanen is not a mere seller...Anybody reading his articles and biography cannot buy that... You are a seller ...

The test simply states that our prediction of simultaneous detection of frequency and its timing is too conservative.

Is this conclusion from one of Magnasco and Openheim sound as a mere underestimation about bound relations between frequencies and time ?

«Early last century a number of auditory phenomena,
such as residue pitch and missing fundamentals, started
to indicate that the traditional view of the hearing process
as a form of spectral analysis had to be revised. In 1951,
Licklider [25] set the foundation for the temporal theories
of pitch perception, in which the detailed pattern of action
potentials in the auditory nerve is used [26,27], as opposed
to spectral or place theories, in which the overall amplitude
of the activity pattern is evaluated without detailed
access to phase information. The ground-breaking work
of Ronken [21] and Moore [22] found violations of
uncertainty-like products and argued for them to be evi-
dence in favor of temporal models. However, this line of
work was hampered fourfold, by lack of the formal
foundation in time-frequency distributions we have today,
by concentrating on frequency discrimination alone, by
technical difficulties in the generation of the stimuli,
and not the least by lack of understanding of cochlear
dynamics, since the active cochlear processes had not yet
been discovered. Perhaps because of these reasons this
ground-breaking work did not percolate into the commun-
ity at large, and as a result most sound analysis and
processing tools today continue to use models based on
spectral theories. We believe it is time to revisit this
issue.
We have conducted the first direct psychoacoustical test
of the Fourier uncertainty principle in human hearing, by
measuring simultaneous temporal and frequency discrimi-
nation. Our data indicate that human subjects often beat the
bound prescribed by the uncertainty theorem, by factors in
excess of 10. This is sometimes accomplished by an
increase in frequency acuity, but by and large it is temporal
acuity that is increased and largely responsible for these
gains. Our data further indicate subject acuity is just as
good for a notelike amplitude envelope as for the Gaussian,
even though theoretically the uncertainty product is
increased for such waveforms. Our study directly rules
out many of the simpler models of early auditory process-
ing, often used as input to the higher-order stages in models
of higher auditory function. Of the plethora of time-
frequency distributions and auditory processing models
that have been studied, only a few stand a chance of both
matching the performance of human subjects and be
plausibly implementable in the neural hardware of the
auditory
system
(e.g.,
Refs.
[6,7,12,27]),
with the reassignment method having the best comparative tempo-
ral acuity. Elucidation of which mechanism underlies our
subjects’ auditory hyperacuity is likely to have wide-
ranging applications, both in fields where matching human
performance is an issue, such as speech recognition, as
well as those more removed, such as radar, sonar, and radio »

is this experiment after of a long history of past experiments in the same direction looked like as Amir falsely claim as just a mere underestimation of some linear factors bounds in Fourier models between frequency and time  or more as a revolution in hearing theory out of Fourier models based theory ?

Only gullible unable to read people will go with Amir interpretation here...

I never contested the usefulness of your measures..

I contested what you implicitly suggested that your measures set are ENOUGH to spoke about All aspects of  design qualities...Debunking gear claims from the market is not the same as EVALUATING gear on musical aspects of their design ...

You know full well this fact because your crusade seems to be debunking not only audiophiles deluded by cables but human hearing itself... The measures we used must always be interpreted not only in a material design context but also for their MEANINGS in relation to human hearings as taught by psycho-acoustic..

Minimizing the real lesson of Magnasco and Oppenhein experiments as a mere underestimation about frequency and time reveal your agenda... I know that you are very intelligent then distorting this experiment results to make a point reveal a very SUBJECTIVE back tought that has nothing to do with science...

The results of this experiment is not about an error of estimation about frequencies and time it is about the necessary transformation of hearing theory out of the Fourier frequencies modelling based theory because it is UNEXPLANABLE in a linear and time independant  Fourier context .. Any other conclusion reveal bad faith...Sorry to say so... You never adress directly this article in the first two days of our discussion , now you spoke of it  MINIMIZING and distorting his meaning and results... Why ?

Anybody able to read a text can verify that what i said is true...

...

I don’t know why this keeps getting repeated. No attempt is made to measure everything about a piece of audio gear. We measure just enough to find out how well engineered the audio device is.

You get it in the reverse direction...

The Oppenmheim Magnasco experiments is ONLY ONE of a set that investigate the limits of any Fourier modelling of human hearings in the lasy 60 years ..

This paper never pretended nor justify the rejection of linear measure in the design process.. This paper as you say never negate the benefit of linear measuring methods in GEAR DESIGN , it demonstrated that linear Fourier frequency based methods cannot explain hearing  ... And you are wrong in minimizing toward a caricature the results : they does not only say that our estimation of frequency and its timing is too conservative, this is  a MARKETING DISTORTING EUPHEMISM you use sorry to minimize the real impact of the discovery...  we do not read the same paper, the paper say that this  relation BETWEEN FREQUENCIES AND TIME IS NON LINEAR AND NOT EXPLANABLE BY FOURIER MODELLING AT ALL...The fundamental teachings then  was that no Fourier modelling can explain human hearings and the linear Fourier context where your measure set applies for gear specs cannot REPLACE  human listening even as said Van Maanen  demonstrated in  gear design , especially if gear design must be based on psycho-acoustic...

And if you read Van Maanen as someone who sold gear your are not of good faith sorry,  because he spoke as a scientist... it is evident when we read his papers... you accuse him of what you do ; selling your measures method and minimizing an important discovery about human hearings and his potential impact on design ...

 Anybody reading the articles i posted can verify... Only gullible people will not see how you just distorted the experiments results and interpretation .. Sorry... I learned how to read...

First, I had already read and knew about the Oppenheim and Magnasco paper.  It made the rounds when it first came out.  Many jump to conclusion thinking that paper gives the subjectivist ticket to ignore measurements.  Reality was, as I have explained repeatedly, it has no relationship to measurements let alone going that far.  The test simply states that our prediction of simultaneous detection of frequency and its timing is too conservative.  That for special type of signal at least, our higher order brain function is able to tease out more performance.

I had not seen the Van Maanen paper before but once you mentioned I did.  What is in there is mostly marketing of high-end audio with some contrived simulations that have little relevance to the point you or he are trying to make.

@mahgister 

Because Amir when he gives us his gear measuments reviews , so useful it can be, and they are, implicitly state that all of what we can say about "audible qualities" of the gear is once for all contained in the limited set of measures he use critically ...

I don't know why this keeps getting repeated.  No attempt is made to measure everything about a piece of audio gear.  We measure just enough to find out how well engineered the audio device is.  Anything more is redundant and bad use of resources.  To wit, if you go to your doctor and complain about soar throat, he doesn't send you to get an X-ray of your feet!  Sure, you could claim that your feet have something to do with your soar throat but he is not going to accept that.

By the same token, if I throw a simple sine wave at an amplifier and it generates a lot more distortion that a high-fidelity piece of gear is supposed to produce, the it doesn't matter what claims the company makes otherwise.  We already have proof that it is poorly engineered.  Take this $13,000 TotalDAC DAC review: 

Look at the copious amount of noise and distortion to the right of our single 1 kHz tone.  I don't care what paper you have read.  No high fidelity DAC should produce this much garbage.  Or this ultrasonic spray and imaging components:

You can't save this DAC by claiming this device has memory and time dependency.  A simple sine wave should go in and come out clean.  If it cant do that, how is it going to do it with music that has thousands of them?  I just tested a tiny dongle DAC for $80:

Here is its dashboard:

Its distortion spikes are 15 dB better than best case human threshold!  This is what it does when you give it 32 tones to output:

Stunning, right?  Isn't trivial and simple to conclude that TotalDAC is poorly designed and can't rival this $80 dongle?

Which paper you have quoted says that we should ignore the noise & distortion in TotalDAC and call it great?  Why do we need to worry about time*frequency metric?

You see what is going on here?  It doesn't take much to show whether any effort was put in to make a device be truly hi-fi.  Folks were told to trust the marketing material and testimonials from Joe youtuber/reviewer that performed totally improper listening tests with his eyes.  That shouldn't be the way we evaluate audio hardware.

@curtdr 

Thanks a lot.  I agree that the band leaders are beyond convincing.  I am pleasantly surprised though how many people have changed their views on such tweaks.  That did not come because we just said they are useless but because comprehensive set of tests were performed across so many of them, and explanation given as to why that people started to see the logic in it and shifted their views.  

To be sure, it seemed hopeless for years and decades.  Arguing with words wasn't enough.

It is incredible that almost nobody from ASR can read the articles i put and understand them...Why ? 

First, I had already read and knew about the Oppenheim and Magnasco paper.  It made the rounds when it first came out.  Many jump to conclusion thinking that paper gives the subjectivist ticket to ignore measurements.  Reality was, as I have explained repeatedly, it has no relationship to measurements let alone going that far.  The test simply states that our prediction of simultaneous detection of frequency and its timing is too conservative.  That for special type of signal at least, our higher order brain function is able to tease out more performance.

I had not seen the Van Maanen paper before but once you mentioned I did.  What is in there is mostly marketing of high-end audio with some contrived simulations that have little relevance to the point you or he are trying to make.

@amir_asr   Hey sir, I'm with you.  

But as you well know, you'll never convince some people that an inexpensive wire can possibly sound as good as an expensive one.  I'm convinced, but many won't be, can't be. (Speakers, however, are more personal, though measurements even with those can be a guide through the marketing haze.)

It's easy to delude ourselves, especially with money invested.  More tweaks, more money, etc., had better add up to "better sound -- I can hear the difference" or it's wasted and most people don't want to admit they've been duped by marketing or are fooling themselves.

No one is against blind test... but blind test is not a cure... Nor replace any training...  By the  way i use some form of blind test in my room tuning  even sometimes  by accident...

And we must distinguish between unconscious biases and consciously acquired biases as an acoustician and a musician training for years... I am not against Amir measures as informative...

I am against ideological uninformed stance about human hearings for the benefit of a very limited set of measures which can detect if a design is faulty at best not inform us about his ultimate sound quality ...

I dissociate useful Amir information from his limited understanding of human hearings because he sell his tools and methods and for doing so say that all people trusting their ears are deluded...

For example i trained myself tuning my room... it was not perfect, but i learned basic facts... And there is no comparison at all between before and after my one year full time acoustic experiments... is this perfect as a job ? not at all... but it cost me nothing and i learned about all acoustic concepts by EXPERIMENTING... i know what means this acoustic ratio for example not by theory or by an equation not even by a mere computing ( ASW/LV) but by specific practice in a small room with his acoustic content ... Not by reading an equation... in the process i learned how to trust my hearings even if it is an inmperfect tool and a biased one... Who dare to mock me because it was imperfect ?

What is the best ? Training our ears and learning how to listen...or buying and learning nothing ?

You speak about ears cup of headphone ...

After loosing my acoustic room i was sad... I embarked in a 6 months of listenings experiments on my hybrid AKG K340 headphone.. The main problem was the complex ear cup control... This headphone is one of the most complex design and one of the best... i opened it and put mechanichal control for vibrations, erase the protective plastic grid that was there not for the S.Q. but for protection , i experimented with the right volume for the dual chamber of the shell with the thickness of the pads, i equalized them a bit with a large band equalization , i discovered the right amplifier for it ... And wow! my sadness disapeared after this 6 months... This headphone is speaker like and project according to the recording process a soundfield out of the head and i could no more detect any defect as in my first day listening.. Not bad for a used 100 bucks headphone... All my other 9 headphones even modified sound artificial and headphone like...

Without my trust in my ears whay did i could have done ? NOTHING ... I would have criticized the headphone design as some reviewers did without bothering themselves to understand the design to begin with and serve it well ... i even read the Dr. Gorike patent... 😊

i trust my ears not because it is perfect but because i work with it...I used measures when i need them... i dont trust measures as truth about hearings sorry...

Many people cannot understand that the human ears USE frequencies SELECTIVELY and filters them to perceive OBJECTIVE QUALITIES, speech, music, natural sounds , and these qualities INFORM US A LOT about our surroundings they are evolutive affordance for our survival but the human hearings is not frequencies based in a linear way , it is timing based in a time dependant way... What we hears from an audio system is complex and cannot be replaced by limited linear measures set...

Thanks for your respectful answer ...

@mahgister Fair enough. Having also worked on studies of human subjects in later careers in technology, I can assure you that subject reports are clouded by an enormous range of biases, expectations, timing effects, etc. Amir goes into the problem of performing even simple tests to distinguish systems and how challenging it is, so I have strong doubts about the subjectivist-style claims and how intellectually honest those folks are!

I just don’t see any downside to leaning heavily into objective tests. I’ve only seen poorly-designed tests (often headphone tests are impacted by problems with the ear cups, for instance) that were problematic.

Anyway, I learned some new stuff today! Always a good day...

@mahgister Fair enough. Having also worked on studies of human subjects in later careers in technology, I can assure you that subject reports are clouded by an enormous range of biases, expectations, timing effects, etc. Amir goes into the problem of performing even simple tests to distinguish systems and how challenging it is, so I have strong doubts about the subjectivist-style claims and how intellectually honest those folks are!

I just don't see any downside to leaning heavily into objective tests. I've only seen poorly-designed tests (often headphone tests are impacted by problems with the ear cups, for instance) that were problematic.

Anyway, I learned some new stuff today! Always a good day...

I forgot to say that you missed a point about Van Maanen...

A key point he mentions is that sinusoidal signal sweeps don’t fully characterize the frequency response of, say, an amplifier, because of some theoretical requirements.

He said as a physicist that a sinusoidal continuous signal dont act on the circuits of amplifier as a Sudden variable  dynamic burst of music , then as you said the frequency response of a circuit cannot be predicted adequately under this kind of linear continuous signals... He then designed his circuits in a way for them to be able to reacted and be more linearly predictable under REAL MUSICAL BURST...

Correct me if i am wrong... it is what i remember...

Amir is a great messenger of science! Thank you very much Amir!

Thanks for you interest...

For sure you know better than me to analyse what he want to do...

bUt human hearings is sensible to some harmonics positively and not to some others so much positively  for example...  The tonal perception is heavily influenced by harmonics , Van Maanen explain in his paper how the fact that human hearing is time dependant help him to design in a better set of trade-off his own circuits..

I read it because of these application from the Oppenheim and Magnasco experiments revealing after 60 years of investigation that human herings cannot be reduced to spectral analysis alone  nor to any linear Fourier inspired theory ... van Maanen used that in his design trade off and you are best equipped than me to understand HOW PRECISELY he did it...

i used his articles as contradiction of the claim by Amir that linear measures of gear are enough... Amplifier must stay in linear control but the direction toward a better sound is possible only if we understood the non linear way hearing perceive sounds..

Reducing noise and and controlling distortion not only reducing them is always a goal ...  But it is half of the task ... The other half of the  task is designing  circuits more susceptible to please and inform the human hearings who do not work as a Fourier engine at all... The Fourier engine must serve hearings not reduce hearings to its mere linear workings in a time independant way... Ears perceived real physical invariants in the real world and analyse them non linearly in a time dependant way, no fourier approach can explain it ..¯ Van Maanen is conscious of that and use it as inspiration for his  complex design... Why did he call his design "TIME COHERENCY " ? you know enough about electronics to connect the dots better than me here  ... 😊

One thing is sure Van Maanen nor Magnasco and Oppenheim will mock people trusting their hearing acquired biases and training as deluded... They are in science first  not first  in marketing of gear or marketing of tools...

Thanks very much for your interests ...

@mahgister Actually, I just read a bunch of van Mannen for fun. Luckily I have both a BSEE and MSEE in information theory and signal analysis, thus feel somewhat competent to comment a bit (though I prefer a much more reserved approach to science and engineering). A key point he mentions is that sinusoidal signal sweeps don’t fully characterize the frequency response of, say, an amplifier, because of some theoretical requirements. Linearity is one of those requirements and there are all kinds of nonlinear things going on in real systems. Indeed, the effects of nonlinear transfer functions can be quite interesting and require very interesting mathematical tools. But, really, it’s what we call distortion.

So, if an amplifier designer is trying to create a great amplifier, what should she do? She could test using sinusoids and try to reduce distortion and noise in her design or she could do....what...exactly? van Mannen has concerns about feedback topologies as well, but still, other than trading-off options, she still will want to test using the best tools she has in an effort to reduce noise and distortion.

@mahgister Actually, I just read a bunch of van Mannen for fun. Luckily I have both a BSEE and MSEE in information theory and signal analysis, thus feel somewhat competent to comment a bit (though I prefer a much more reserved approach to science and engineering). A key point he mentions is that sinusoidal signal sweeps don't fully characterize the frequency response of, say, an amplifier, because of some theoretical requirements. Linearity is one of those requirements and there are all kinds of nonlinear things going on in real systems. Indeed, the effects of nonlinear transfer functions can be quite interesting and require very interesting mathematical tools. But, really, it's what we call distortion.

So, if an amplifier designer is trying to create a great amplifier, what should she do? She could test using sinusoids and try to reduce distortion and noise in her design or she could do....what...exactly? van Mannen has concerns about feedback topologies as well, but still, other than trading-off options, she still will want to test using the best tools she has in an effort to reduce noise and distortion.

I am not against "transparent" design...But mass market minimal design standards cannot be high end craftmanship...

But i cannot accept that some use these set of measures to disparage human hearings are passively subject of illusions, some will reduced all human hearing abilities as illusions of only subjective nature with no objective informative content useful for new design , not only to create "colorful" tubes amp but better gear in the larger sense by using human ears as a guide... This stance about linear measure of circuits with no need of the designer ears guiding rudder contradict basic psycho-acoustics... We analyse sound non linearly and we live in a time dependant dimension for this analysis and frequecies dont tell all the story... This means something for design theory...

I cannot repeat what Van Maanen taught , i am not competent and it will be too long..

There is materials physical and sensible invariants , information , behind sound experience not just abstract waves analysed for frequencies spectrum , and amplitude phase and duration and distortion, and not just subjective delusions, these physical invariants go deeper in hearing theory than just frequency based circuits analysis and told us something about human hyperacuity as Magnasco and Oppenheim called it... These materials invariant of qualitative information content are not measured by the tools Amir used, they exist for the ears who perceived them in his time dependant domain and extract from them in a non linear way much qualitative information ...

Thanks for your kind balanced answer...

Read this if you want to guess what these qualities perceived by human hearings are...I read the author thesis..,

Listening and hearing are not DECEPTIVE activity as claim those who want complete faith in their very limited set of measures as the ABSOLUTE METER for "musicality " in gear design...I dont go with ideology sorry... Not in audio not in any subject...I think alone with books and scientists not sellers ...Psycho-acoustic use measures to elucidate hearings very deep matter not to reduce it to mere subjective illusions for the benefit of some limited set of gear measures sold as TRUTH..

In a word there is a deep relation between sound perception and the production of sound by the body, negating this powerful informative feed back circle and claiming that a short set of linear measures can settle audio gear quality forever without any need to listenings , because it is merely delusions, this is not science, this is ideology, and had nothing to do with psycho-acoustic... Amir Measure are useful... Nobody oppose that.. But selling them as the last words with no need for qualitative listenings is going too much farther... Audiophiles are no more deluded than people of ASR with their toy tools.. And blind test do not replace listening training with acoustic and musician training or the trained ears of a designer ...

Classyfying all people in audiophiles subjectivists  all  in error  and ASR objectivist as living is truth , is marketing fetichism not psycho-acoustic... 

...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267327268_The_Body-Image_Theory_of_Sound_An_Ecological_Approach_to_Speech_and_Music

@mahgister Well, I just skimmed that response a bit but, yes, it certainly is possible to build audio reproduction systems that have colored sound that some people might prefer (tube and vinyl aficionados rejoice!), but in reality these were always stopgaps towards perfect fidelity due to the limitations of the devices. But some folks prefer them, so be it.

But with the advent of better technologies and the theories that guide their use, we can build remarkably transparent systems for low cost these days, so the limitations of those other approaches become more obvious. There is some research that shows that hypersonic sounds (>20kHz) might cause some brain activity changes, but it’s unclear whether that is definitive for providing perceptually-relevant high-frequency components that would enhance our temporal experience of music, etc.

If you want to know what people want from speakers, you just need to study them and come up with a crowd-sourced preference curve, for instance. And lo, we have one.

But in any case, I remain perplexed what you hope to gain by pushing this line? If you have a desire to research how to color sounds to enhance audio enjoyment, please do the work. I will be interested (if it’s well-written and coherent). Nothing you mention has any bearing on testing whether audio devices are high quality from the standard of low noise and distortion. It is orthogonal to those goals.

@othercrazycanuck  So I understand your prior post, you say you did listen to gear before you bought it, presumably you liked what you heard, then you bought it. After some amount of time, you began to dislike what you bought, is this the case?

Seems like you may have also been swayed by the reviews and recommendations as well. You want us to believe that what you heard initially that pleased you, somehow changed after you took the piece home. This you attribute to your brain being fooled initially by..what?? 

I do know of many folk in this hobby, who actually are never satisfied with what they acquire to reproduce their music...they keep the piece for a short time, and then sell it on- always on the 'upgrade' trail. Not only is this a vey costly endeavor, but also I believe one that is sure to deliver long term dissatisfaction with the hobby. 

Personally, I buy gear that works for my ear, and IF something comes along in the future that is 'very significantly' better to my ears, I will entertain the upgrade, but I am not churning and burning gear...like many.

@mahgister Well, I just skimmed that response a bit but, yes, it certainly is possible to build audio reproduction systems that have colored sound that some people might prefer (tube and vinyl aficionados rejoice!), but in reality these were always stopgaps towards perfect fidelity due to the limitations of the devices. But some folks prefer them, so be it.

But with the advent of better technologies and the theories that guide their use, we can build remarkably transparent systems for low cost these days, so the limitations of those other approaches become more obvious. There is some research that shows that hypersonic sounds (>20kHz) might cause some brain activity changes, but it's unclear whether that is definitive for providing perceptually-relevant high-frequency components that would enhance our temporal experience of music, etc.

If you want to know what people want from speakers, you just need to study them and come up with a crowd-sourced preference curve, for instance. And lo, we have one.

But in any case, I remain perplexed what you hope to gain by pushing this line? If you have a desire to research how to color sounds to enhance audio enjoyment, please do the work. I will be interested (if it's well-written and coherent). Nothing you mention has any bearing on testing whether audio devices are high quality from the standard of low noise and distortion. It is orthogonal to those goals.

It is incredible that almost nobody from ASR can read the articles i put and understand them...Why ? Because the idea that qualities perceived by human hearings can help designing better audio will destruct the techno babble ideology of reducing any sound qualities perceived by a trained ears to some imagined ghosts...

I don't claim to be from anywhere, but I can tell you lump me in as I showed that two of your claims were flawed. Sometimes we are the only people that are right. Sometimes we are the one that is wrong. If you assume you are the former, then you will always be the latter.

Psycho-acoustic science and basic facts DECONSTRUCT not only audiophile subjectivist focus on gear but also deconstruct and demolish objectivist techno babble...

But it seems that people cannot think out of binary opposition...

The basic facts about hearings cannot be reduced to mere "illusions" without any bearing on qualitative design, no more than measures in the large sense of the world can be dismissed by subjectivist...

Listenings is not an illusory experience which must be dismissed by blind test...It is an ability that must be trained in acoustic environment ...

Measures are revelatory and necessary for design and pleasure BUT THEY MUST BE interpreted in the rightfull hearing theory context..

By the way faith in some restricted set of measures interpreted in the Fourier context is only that : technological misplaced faith... But there is difference between technology driven by the right hearing theory and technology even negating hearing perceptive abilities asking to be trained and used in design itself... This is the Van Maanen main point...

Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture.

@mahgister I just noticed this thread from my weekly Audiogon roundup. I am actually familiar with Gibson and his ecological approach from grad work in cognitive science. I took a moment to check out some of the papers related to your unnecessarily long and murky posts here, as well.

I don’t think ecological perception critiques about spectral analysis are relevant to musical reproduction devices. They certainly are interesting in terms of explaining human listening experiences where expectations and environmental affordances certainly play a part in how the brain perceives the sounds emanating from a device. But if the goal is just to successfully reproduce audio with minimum noise and distortion, and with maximum fidelity to the original recording, I see nothing to suggest that following the guidance of sampling theory will not result in exactly the kinds of "transparent" or "uncolored" devices that are available today. Gibson then gets to critique how the human hears/understands the purity of the emerging sounds, and reconciles them with all the affordances of space, room, materials, mood, and much else.

There are edge cases where general psycho-acoustics can be influential, like using compression techniques that de-emphasize parts of the spectrum. We would prefer to de-emphasize only where the results have low impact on human listening, for instance. Phantom center images, Dolby Atmos, etc. certainly are another area where there are great research opportunities, too, for the ecological perception-focused researcher.

In any case, I have learned a great deal on ASR and recommend it highly. It provides an excellent counterpoint to vague assertions and hush-voiced listening reviews. Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture. We see that playing out here!

@markwd

In any case, I have learned a great deal on ASR and recommend it highly. It provides an excellent counterpoint to vague assertions and hush-voiced listening reviews. Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture. We see that playing out here!

And not just here.

There’s unlikely to be a single person connected with audio playback who has not by now heard of ASR.

Both Amir and ASR get regularly namechecked by virtually every other YouTube channel these days.

Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture.

Yes, education and enlightenment is a key role of all online exchanges.

It’s far too easy for any newcomer to get bamboozled by all the misdirection of clever terminology and paraphernalia involved in this hobby of ours.

That old Not the 9 O’ Clock News sketch with Griff Rhys Jones and Rowan Atkinson tormenting the hapless Mel Smith on his first visit to a HiFi shop isn’t entirely irrelevant today.

https://youtu.be/DvswW6M7bMo

@mahgister I just noticed this thread from my weekly Audiogon roundup. I am actually familiar with Gibson and his ecological approach from grad work in cognitive science. I took a moment to check out some of the papers related to your unnecessarily long and murky posts here, as well.

I don't think ecological perception critiques about spectral analysis are relevant to musical reproduction devices. They certainly are interesting in terms of explaining human listening experiences where expectations and environmental affordances certainly play a part in how the brain perceives the sounds emanating from a device. But if the goal is just to successfully reproduce audio with minimum noise and distortion, and with maximum fidelity to the original recording, I see nothing to suggest that following the guidance of sampling theory will not result in exactly the kinds of "transparent" or "uncolored" devices that are available today. Gibson then gets to critique how the human hears/understands the purity of the emerging sounds, and reconciles them with all the affordances of space, room, materials, mood, and much else.

There are edge cases where general psycho-acoustics can be influential, like using compression techniques that de-emphasize parts of the spectrum. We would prefer to de-emphasize only where the results have low impact on human listening, for instance. Phantom center images, Dolby Atmos, etc. certainly are another area where there are great research opportunities, too, for the ecological perception-focused researcher.

In any case, I have learned a great deal on ASR and recommend it highly. It provides an excellent counterpoint to vague assertions and hush-voiced listening reviews. Most interesting for me, however, is the internet culture role of how it is deconstructing the faith aspects of the audiophile subculture. We see that playing out here!

alanhuth

07-07-2023 at 09:41pm 

Yes, he did change my mind, about power cables.  He proved, using signal subtraction, that the signals generated by devices from different power cords are identical.  Any difference you heard is confirmation bias, as the signals feeding the amplifier are IDENTICAL

I’m disappointed nobody responded to this observation.  Do you guys agree that Amir is right about power cables?

He didn't change my mind about power cables. I already knew enough electronics engineering to know that if safe and sensibly designed, they can't affect properly designed audio kit performance.

What @amir_asr has also shown (if you read further than the headlines) is that even he sometimes hears a difference when he changes things, but that the perception is unreliable and an effect of perceptual heuristics.

Yes, he did change my mind, about power cables.  He proved, using signal subtraction, that the signals generated by devices from different power cords are identical.  Any difference you heard is confirmation bias, as the signals feeding the amplifier are IDENTICAL

I’m disappointed nobody responded to this observation.  Do you guys agree that Amir is right about power cables?  

Theories have never proven or disproven anything. It’s INVARIABLY testing and experimentation that proves or disproves theories/hypotheses.

That’s right. Your theory is that this and that makes a difference in sound. We put the very same person in a listening test, while keeping their lying eyes out of the equation and all of a sudden that difference disappears like fart in the wind. What then happens is that you deny the results of these experiments. You much rather not know it seems. But again, people are realizing the gig is up here and adopting a much more rational method to judging audio gear. They are saving huge amount of money and getting much more performant systems to boot.

    IF you’re interested in the possibility of improving your system’s presentation, have a shred of confidence in your capacity for perceiving reality and trust your own senses: actually TRY whatever whets your aural appetite, FOR YOURSELF.     

Trust your senses, plural, and you will definitely fall in the ditch of wasting money and effort instead of sitting back and enjoying music. 

What you should do is do what you preach: trust your ear and only your ear.  If any other senses are involved, then you are not assessing the sound of something.  Learn how to do a proper listening test that has only one variable (what is being tested) and do it to rule out chance (i.e. repeat a dozen times) and by all means you can trust your ears.  

Yes, there is a bit of work involved in that.  But I assure you it is less than attempting to convince people to abandon common sense and audio science/engineering. 

If you can't be bothered at all, then there are people like me who do the legwork for you and present you very useful information to base your audio purchases on. Huge number of your fellow audiophiles are doing exactly that and are better for it.  Think hard as to what they know that you don't.  Surely they know your method.