Pass.
Listen with your skin.
So today it was a little too warm upstairs where my main system is.
I took off my shirt. That’s better. Hey…wait a minute does the music sound a tiny bit different? Better even?
Well it seems the answer could be YES.
There’s been scientific testing of the skin’s contribution to hearing. Not sure if it applies to listening to music, but it’s worth us subjectively testing it.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/skin-hearing-airflow-puff-sound-perception/
I can see it now. We’ll be able to recognize each other at the next
big audio fair. We’ll be the guys wearing a bathing suit and flip flops.
31 responses Add your response
😊 «It is better without skin»--A revived audiophile 😵
Thanks for the article.... My system is optimally set ... I listen music but as a hobby i begun reading about sound... Not only acoustic as when i tuned my room for a year non stop... No room anymore i use headphone ... Optimized headphone... I am done and did not search for upgrade even if they are possible for sure...
My new passion is thinking about sound and our perception of sound... For example : most people think that sound is waves... This is false... i will not enter into details here... It is an example of what we can learn and the way it change our relation to sound and sound experience.. We hear with our body , then i am not surprized ... my favorite citation to date :
“He who understands nothing but chemistry Lichtenberg is one of the most surprizing genius and a super gifted writer... And a scientific genius... and a dwarf... |
Now imagine this : “ With over a million essential moving parts, the
Do you think with those deluded "objectivist" for example who tought that few electrical measures on some component specs will make us able to predict how we perceive some musical sound qualities ? 😊
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This one made us think ... What is the acoustic of a piano ?
“. . . it is not surprising that it was possible to |
The largest organ in your body is your skin and it happens to cover your ears all the way down to the eardrums. I can see how reverting to using your organs as originally intended can be a very positive attribute with better results than how you've been listening fully clothed. It's way too easy and tempting to pooh-pooh such a thought without thinking it through. It's the nature of our times. Think of how much better you feel walking barefoot on some cool patch of grass, stopping to scrunch your toes into it. Same thing. Nothing new age or hippy-dippy about it. All the best, |
i ask myself this question: How the way we think about our hearing and the way we think about "what is a sound" affect our way to interpret music and speech... i just stumble on many books about sounds and hearing ... I take also an appointed meeting with the ophtalmologist in august , because i cannot read as easily as before on my reading tablet or on the computer ... i think i need new glass..😊
I discussed here with an objectivist for a week and the number of articles i read for this on my illuminated regular computer kill my eyesight...😊 The objectivist revenge so to speak... i like to go somewhere on bike each day , stop and read a book in nature... One of the big book i stumble to, among others, is not easy to read on a small reading apparatus.. "Reason and Resonance A History of Modern Aurality" by Veit Erlmann
«Better to be blind than deaf, we can see with our ears not the reverse»-- Batman diary 🦇 |
Proverbs 23 ; "Dont speak to fools..." It is one of the most cited proverbs by the way... I read the bible when i was young...My parents were almost illiterate, i bought all books in the house... I begin with a dictionary and goes on with the Bible... I read it all but some chapters were boring for a children...
The Bible contain my favorite story : Joseph and his brothers... I never read the Thomas Mann trilogy inspired by the story of Joseph... I must do it before dying i guess... Soon... But the Babel tower is deep stuff... Almost news actuality these days... Anyway without the Bible reading all the culture is blind and deaf... My citation is not litteral, i needed it for my post...😊 If you read the interesting scientific american article you will know why...
Are you a Bible fundamentalist?😎 Only one would ask such a question ?
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There is a context for my half joking sentence... Have you read the scientific american article ? Then i wrote a joke inspired by a bible WELL KNOWN proverb to make a metaphor for the way the skin react to air vibration and to speech... Speaking to fools or speaking to the wind are metaphorical synonym here for everyone who understand these expressions , in clear they have the same meaning... Then your demand for "rectification" or accusation about making things up , is a bit exagerated ... No ? 😊 Then the one who try to make thing up here is you right now with my innocuous post ... It is called a "tempest in a cup of water"... Is it in the Bible? I dont think so... But it is a long time for my old memory... 😊 But in a quantum cup of "water" there is always some big tempest, and the "void" is windy so to speak... I now suggest to be relax and going back to sound and hearing...
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We can hear with our skin in some way... This is not so surprizing... but i am very impressed by Alain Connes thinking about primes numbers and music... It is too complex to speak about it here... but please go to this short youtube piece... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBArTv71Edk This is a translation of the primes in music , by a recipe Connes explain in some conference, i dont remember which one... The amazing fact, is that the most complex object in the universe is the prime distribution... Here an image of the first part of this "object":
Now think about that, each notes represent a circle in this INFINITE field without repetition... I think in his core mathematic is music ... |
I’ve long claimed that live music is a full body experience, while most reproduced is more heard than felt. Part of that is a matter of SPL, another is that very few hi-fi systems reproduce the bottom octave (20-40Hz) at all, let alone at the SPL produced by PA systems. But it’s still more than THAT. At live shows I hear the enormous sound of the venue (one reason I would love to own an Eminent Technology TRW-17 Rotary woofer, for frequencies 20Hz and below. Not that most recordings contain any information that low in frequency), and feel the buildings’ structure vibrating under my boots (Tony Lamas ;-). Reproduced music is mostly an intellectual experience, at its’ best becoming an emotional one. But still not a physical one. There’s a big difference between watching a movie and being in one. But since most recordings are made in small rooms (studios, some of which are surprisingly small), comparing recorded sound to live is like apples to oranges: they are completely different entities. The most we can hope to achieve is for reproduced voices to sound as they do in life, and the same for instruments. |
Anything that affects perceptions account for what we hear, smell, touch, and feel. Mental, physical, and spiritual conditions inclusive. Not the “Zen” type myself but my skin had been acting up as of late. With multiple upgrades, tweaks, and reconfigurations, I’d been getting frequent goosebumps listening to my systems. I still don’t get how one’s skin can hear, but perhaps is our overall perceptions that we’re all referring to. |
Perception is not sensation... In perception which is a subjective but nonetheless real experience, not an hallucination or the so called "illusions" or placebos, which are all DIFFERENT phenomena, in perception synesthesia and conceptual schematisation plays a great role... For example to give you an idea of this deep and complex subject, a synesthete who associate sounds and colors will do so in a completely subjective and idiosyncratic way ; none other synesthetes may exhibit exactly the same association, but the specific association will endure in time and be stable for this individual then for him "objectively" real... And for an observer this synesthesia will appear then under test of the subject as real and has nothing to do with hallucinations , placebo or illusions...
The synesthesia which is a communication, resonance,interference or translation between the senses, can be UNDER the conscious level and stay there ; or being over the conscious level and stay there... There is level of synesthesia and many forms... It is evident for me for example that music told a story in geometrical patterns, sometimes very vivid, like cinema... A Bruckner symphonies may be a movie... In my case, i am not a full blown conscious synesthetes, the phenomenon manifest in relaxation state when i am very deeply concentrate on the sounds, not at the unconscious nor at the conscious, but at the subconscious level , then acessible to my attention... for me music is fractals dynamics... i remember even the first day i was struck by this without even knowing what it is... i was 13 years old and the music teacher put Bach , who i never listened to before, i was instanteneously put in a trance, i did not have any concept nor a name for this experience , i was in awe without even knowing WHY ... Bach became my long life best composer over anything else.. His geometrical dynamic is perfect this is why and for me it contains cosmos secret language ...I did not know that at 13 years old, but this motivate my interest in mathematics as meaning of the higher kind.. Here, in the links above , you can have an idea of this experience but in my case they are not simple geometrical shape associated with tones but dynamical fractals histories patterns interpenetrating... Each Composer had his own style.. My experience is more geometrical than colored... The colors are only "abstract" labels put on a dynamical geometrical history ...But in the case of Scriabin my experience is almost in colors, i cannot describe it it was so powerful , i remember my first scriabin listening...Scriabin anyway was a synesthete... With Bach it is my favorite composer for the same reason.. Not surprising that one of the most influential book in my life, i bought it almost first before the english translation , fractals objects by Benoit Mandelbrot... I immediately understood the book because of this intuition/imagination about music and form in my sub conscious listening experience...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5wMjuo_i8 Here a conscious synestete , a violonist, explain his color and sound synethesia : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrBAysVef0&t=46s
Now what this means for audio, cables, amplifiers, speakers/room, etc; this means that each of us can tap internal tool of perception and we can learn to listen to phenomena that will refine our perceptions , and that will help us to tune our system in a way , no materialist conditioned by scientism can understood as "real"... Training our ears with acoustic experiments will means compute room dimension as any acoustician can do and put in place acoustic devices in this room accordingly to these objective measures... But it will also means tune the time factors between waves and the ratio of reflective and diffusive and absorbing waves to increase your own "subjective/objective" subconscious or conscious or unconscious synesthete experience...And also please and learn about your own ears/brain specific filters and systems... Then you learn basic acoustic, you learn how to focus your attention , and your learn how to increase from the unconscious or from the subconscious the synestesia real experience to the conscious level...it is what we call LEARNING HOW TO HEAR AND TO LISTEN... Add to this the music experience as a language... You then can understood why hearing is not as naive people think about only a matter of objective acuity expressed in Decibels and Hertz resolution levels as "objectivist" claim , it is not false, but it is not even wrong...These decibels and Hertz levels controls aure useful on psycho-physics experiments yes, this does not means that they tell us all the tales to tell about hearing and sounds qualities, which are now as you can guess , nor objective nor subjective, but tune for our own individuality as our personal tools and esthetical roads.. Here it is not necessary to joke about "tin foil hat" or "drugs", it will only show your own ignorance for all to be seen ... Stay modest... keep your sarcasm... 😊 And "objectivist" conditioned by tools scientism , not science, can pass their turn and MEDITATE and STUDY... After all science does not exist in the singular but in the plural forms , and we understood something when we are able to relate it to other fields too.. As Lichtenberg said and Paul Feyerabend after him : “He who understands nothing but chemistry
We dont know what is a sound by the way.... Saying that it is ONLY and MERELY waves , is not even wrong... It is a misrepresentation of the complete more complex truth... i will spoke about it later... This describe well my experience of music : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6jlhqNxRYk
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I won’t get into the skin changing what we hear, but different people experience music through the body more than others. I personally do NOT want my body below my neck excited by bass or horns or anything else I play. It bothers me greatly, while others need to feel it in their gut. They need a (word carefully chosen) visceral experience. There’s certainly a great deal of validity to including how you want to feel (not emotionally) when you listen to music, I just really hope you’ll all keep your shirts on in the store. |
Great post! thanks and i concur with eric_squires..
Music is NOT a mere immersion of the body in a wall of sound , naked...Even if the hearing experience implied all the body... For example i felt deep bass extension with my body listening headphone and i felt the organ bass note with my stomach and feet by bone resonance... ( bass regime of the K340 is the only natural bass , not boomy i ever listened to anyway, so much i love deep bass i hate boomy completely ) it was in some concert immersion of the body mainly , which concert crowded i never goes in my hippie era...I hate crowd... And for me three person is the limit of a crowd... 😊 Music is a perceptive complex phenomenon, not a mere intense direct, one way, sensation, then music implicate a balanced communication between body-mind and soul... But dont get me wrong, music is a viscereal experience for me , but implicating three elements not one : body-mind-soul... As it is certainly the case with eric_squires if i read between the line...😊
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If we simplify to the maximum... one piece of the argument is the body, another piece of the argument is the mind-soul... Only one hand cannot clap , it takes two hands to make sound... Any argument has two sides also at least... It is in fact multidimensional... our attention is not... And we dont understand quantum mechanics for the same reason we do not understand sound-hearing and even the Bible...😊 There is at least two levels of experience and meanings and of symbolic forms here... There is physical MEASURABLE phenomenon in the horizontal dimension, but there is also a vertical non measurable level , the natural qualitative experienced phenomenon.. Physical measured VIRTUAL objects are not = to ACTUAL natural phenomenon...Natural phenomenon are not reducible to their physical measurable dimensions... History of science is to be understood as a spiralling move around this problem... It was not the case in the Platonic inspired unity of experience of Aristotelean times... It became conscious after nominalism in the 12th century, as a division more from the Galileean-Cartesian era... There is no nominalism at the focus center in the unitive Logos greek era...( anglo-saxon nominalism oppose logos phenomenological experience in german influenced cultures for example ) This is why sciences exist in the plural specialized diversities of all fields, under some necessary philosophical reflection, and cannot replace it; sciences did not exist at all as the totalitarian singular unidirectional mode of knowing where scientism-techno idolatry and blinders, or bad vulgarisation , want to established it for corporate and political interests...Or if we simplify for the express needs condition the crowd minds and cobntrol them as we have seen not long ago for those who use long term memory ....😁
«Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking. »Lichtenberg
«A leg of mutton is better than nothing, Lichtenberg, the greatest humpback scientist of all times with Steinmetz perhaps ... 😁 |
very informative indeed... blind listening music with a balloon : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNrcb-9Gi8c&t=12s This example show us WHY measured by tools objects are NOT perceived natural phenomenon... They are related but not reducible to one another... Sound are not mere quantitative waves in a medium but also qualitatively perceived information and desired symbolic phenomenon originating from sound sources event properties put in vibration mode... ...
« We must listen to the idea» -- Deaf audiophile in the video 🧐
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I had the honor of meeting Bob at the PAF 2022 show. I did not know of him prior to our meeting. We were exhibiting there. While playing music for a room full of people I noticed someone waiting for a front row seat. He was caring a large bag. Once he was seated he pulled a large balloon looking object out from the bag. I had no idea that the gentleman was deaf. I thought he was conducting some sort of an experiment. After he listened (with the balloon) for a while, he put the balloon back in the bag and then approached me. He explained that he is deaf and enjoys music through the use of the balloon. It acts like a mechanical amplifier for his fingertips. He complemented me on our system and then described its attributes perfectly. From his description you would not know that he heard the system through touch. We spoke for a little while. What an amazing experience. Not only was his ability to enjoy music inspiring but also how adaptive and resilient people can be. I always believed that we experience sound (music) with our entire body not just our ears. Not just low frequencies but full spectrum. For me, life experiences lead me to that conclusion. |
Thanks you deeply for giving us this part of your life,,, Inspiring indeed!
i just want to add this article from stereophile : https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-video-tribute-art-dudley
And a commentary submitted by " theanimal" under the article :
«The physical exists as a platform from which we may commune with the spiritual, so that we may experience “the sound of God talking.” Does God’s voice have second-order harmonics? Or is it clinical, incisive, perfect? Does our hermeneutic allow room for both to be true, perhaps for different people simultaneously, or even for our own experience at different times, according to our emotional needs? It’s this duality — yin and yang, liberal and conservative, man and woman — which builds unity out of tension that makes us whole. »
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Just after Woodstock I was at another massive rock concert in the Poconos. They had these gigantic horn speakers and I recall seeing some guy he must have been tripping his patoot off standing in front of if not just inside the speaker as Grand Funk Railroad was blasting out a set and that dude was "shaking all over". Hearing loss is quite common roughly 15% of the population over age 20. Quick Statistics About Hearing | NIDCD (nih.gov) So it would seem to me before spending big Denero on upgrading your system shouldn’t you get a hearing test first? If you have a loss in a specific frequency or across the board of your frequency range how might that effect your decision making relative to upgrading your sound? Here is an interesting article. You experienced folks might already be Intune with this information. Hearing Loss, Music, and Brain Health - Hear Better Through Music (hearingtracker.com)
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