the ear/brain does fill in.
That is literally it’s job, how it fundamentally operates.
This is why shootouts with quick switches quickly become invalid and the only way to do a real listing test where your ear/brain does not do the fill in trick, is to long term single analysis, with maybe quick switches at times. But not the one day back and forth shoot out thing.
To be specific, for you to hear words spoken, your ear and brain, together, have a massive parallel library of words they have prepped and on the edge of being heard.
Visual systems are the same, it is the heart of the meaning in the Rorschach test, and involves a thing called pareidolia, like when you see faces on cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Your ears do the same. Your eyes have a library of learned shapes, and also a library slated toward ancient enemies and dangers, fundamental animal fear aspects of creatures and whatnot. Visualization of things that disgust us, and so on. It’s not just learned, it’s instinctive, built in as a part of the basic programming. We have contrast, then color then we learn to recognize objects, then we build up a library in our brain of objects seen prior. We overlay them on top of the new in order to identify them soonest. The same mental pre-cog ’fit on top of’ library the eye has built, has a parallel in how the ear works.
Too much constant pressure of attempting to see differences will cause the brain to loose the ability to see differentials. Ie, if we don’t move our eyes, our vision will literally ’grey out’, as non moving objects will cease to be recognized. When it moves around too much, even if it is almost identical each time, can result in overload and a confusion shut down. Ie, try watching a film where the camera moves around too much. You can take it for a while ..but a few things settle in, one, nausea, and then 2, inability to visualize.
Our ear has similar but different aspects of these uncontrollable basic or instinctive level fundamentals in design and operation.
When you hear the beginnings of the word, your brain fills in the rest and moves on quickly to the next word, and listens to the beginning of it, and fill it in and moves on to the next, and so on.
When we hear a cymbal crash, we only really hear the start of it and we fill in the rest. Unless we are careful to hear it like a new language and not do the fill in thing, even though the given sound is exactly as before, closer than any language accent differences could ever be. Essentially, we have to defeat our language hearing and interpretation centers... in order to hear the differences between two amplifier’s reproduction of the same cymbal sound. We are not wired to do that, we are wired to use the mechanism, in all things aural.
There’s still more aspects of emotions and instinct that I’m not covering, like desiring to repeat due to emotional satisfaction (listening to old music we like), aspects of love, lust, satiation from eating, and so on. All tied in to visuals and hearing.
This is how we manage to get to the act of ’real time hearing’. Otherwise we’re slower than the speaker, when it comes to recognizing what they are saying. This effect of true ’new information’ post processing is noticeable when learning to hear through a thick accent or learning a new language. You have to wait to process, you can literally feel your mind thinking and processing and then the interpretation of the accent finally comes out of your brain/ear, and arrives as a thought of what they said. Seriously, try it and pay attention.
So yes, short a and b listening tests, over time... will ERASE differences as the ear is doing it’s standard fill in tricks in all the subtleties and micro subtleties.
The pros, or people more learned at this, can learn to shut down the precog aspect of human hearing but it will eventually overcome and confuse them too, if the listening A/B tests are too frequent and close together.
audiophiles who can easily hear and consistently hear differences and micro difference are probably a combination of more learned hearing, more capable hearing and also have learned to defeat the pre-cog mechanism that is in-built.
So, in essence, it has always been that A/B tests, their very MEANING was at fault right from the first conception.
Thus, the staunch advocate of A/B testing and the idea that the audiophile differences are all bull, is the thing that is at fault.
The no difference crowd was wrong as their testing regimen was faulted.
Not logically faulted but faulted by the very mechanism of being a human...
So, no, there’s no such thing as a simple A/B test. Human issues and human body design make it a invalid test for almost any participant you can encounter, even the most well trained ones. And the validity of the test quickly reaches zero as the test goes on.
Short shoot outs, ok. Long term, more than a few tries, forget it. We tire quickly and the differences get swamped by the very act of being a human.
the differences are valid, but not observable by humans in long term a/b testing, where everything mushes together, an effect of the very mechanism of human hearing itself..
Thus the barb and spear by which the ’no difference crowd’ attacks, is an invalid regimen. Their crown, their pinnacle in examples (exhibit a) in the ridiculousness of the audiophile world, is entirely invalid. By all knowledge of the human brain and ear system, it’s an invalid exhibit and example.
That is literally it’s job, how it fundamentally operates.
This is why shootouts with quick switches quickly become invalid and the only way to do a real listing test where your ear/brain does not do the fill in trick, is to long term single analysis, with maybe quick switches at times. But not the one day back and forth shoot out thing.
To be specific, for you to hear words spoken, your ear and brain, together, have a massive parallel library of words they have prepped and on the edge of being heard.
Visual systems are the same, it is the heart of the meaning in the Rorschach test, and involves a thing called pareidolia, like when you see faces on cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Your ears do the same. Your eyes have a library of learned shapes, and also a library slated toward ancient enemies and dangers, fundamental animal fear aspects of creatures and whatnot. Visualization of things that disgust us, and so on. It’s not just learned, it’s instinctive, built in as a part of the basic programming. We have contrast, then color then we learn to recognize objects, then we build up a library in our brain of objects seen prior. We overlay them on top of the new in order to identify them soonest. The same mental pre-cog ’fit on top of’ library the eye has built, has a parallel in how the ear works.
Too much constant pressure of attempting to see differences will cause the brain to loose the ability to see differentials. Ie, if we don’t move our eyes, our vision will literally ’grey out’, as non moving objects will cease to be recognized. When it moves around too much, even if it is almost identical each time, can result in overload and a confusion shut down. Ie, try watching a film where the camera moves around too much. You can take it for a while ..but a few things settle in, one, nausea, and then 2, inability to visualize.
Our ear has similar but different aspects of these uncontrollable basic or instinctive level fundamentals in design and operation.
When you hear the beginnings of the word, your brain fills in the rest and moves on quickly to the next word, and listens to the beginning of it, and fill it in and moves on to the next, and so on.
When we hear a cymbal crash, we only really hear the start of it and we fill in the rest. Unless we are careful to hear it like a new language and not do the fill in thing, even though the given sound is exactly as before, closer than any language accent differences could ever be. Essentially, we have to defeat our language hearing and interpretation centers... in order to hear the differences between two amplifier’s reproduction of the same cymbal sound. We are not wired to do that, we are wired to use the mechanism, in all things aural.
There’s still more aspects of emotions and instinct that I’m not covering, like desiring to repeat due to emotional satisfaction (listening to old music we like), aspects of love, lust, satiation from eating, and so on. All tied in to visuals and hearing.
This is how we manage to get to the act of ’real time hearing’. Otherwise we’re slower than the speaker, when it comes to recognizing what they are saying. This effect of true ’new information’ post processing is noticeable when learning to hear through a thick accent or learning a new language. You have to wait to process, you can literally feel your mind thinking and processing and then the interpretation of the accent finally comes out of your brain/ear, and arrives as a thought of what they said. Seriously, try it and pay attention.
So yes, short a and b listening tests, over time... will ERASE differences as the ear is doing it’s standard fill in tricks in all the subtleties and micro subtleties.
The pros, or people more learned at this, can learn to shut down the precog aspect of human hearing but it will eventually overcome and confuse them too, if the listening A/B tests are too frequent and close together.
audiophiles who can easily hear and consistently hear differences and micro difference are probably a combination of more learned hearing, more capable hearing and also have learned to defeat the pre-cog mechanism that is in-built.
So, in essence, it has always been that A/B tests, their very MEANING was at fault right from the first conception.
Thus, the staunch advocate of A/B testing and the idea that the audiophile differences are all bull, is the thing that is at fault.
The no difference crowd was wrong as their testing regimen was faulted.
Not logically faulted but faulted by the very mechanism of being a human...
So, no, there’s no such thing as a simple A/B test. Human issues and human body design make it a invalid test for almost any participant you can encounter, even the most well trained ones. And the validity of the test quickly reaches zero as the test goes on.
Short shoot outs, ok. Long term, more than a few tries, forget it. We tire quickly and the differences get swamped by the very act of being a human.
the differences are valid, but not observable by humans in long term a/b testing, where everything mushes together, an effect of the very mechanism of human hearing itself..
Thus the barb and spear by which the ’no difference crowd’ attacks, is an invalid regimen. Their crown, their pinnacle in examples (exhibit a) in the ridiculousness of the audiophile world, is entirely invalid. By all knowledge of the human brain and ear system, it’s an invalid exhibit and example.