The invention of measurements and perception

Listening to music a "hobby"? Not for me; it’s at least as important as breathing, eating, or any other activity necessary to sustain life.

kosst_amojan

@geoffkait

You’re the guy who’s always trying to inject quantum mechanics into everything. And then you pin it all on me or other people to make ridiculous strawmen to crucify. Are you the guy for whom your last quote was written? I honestly can’t figure out what side of things you’re on.

>>>>>Huh? What are you ranting about? I bring up quantum mechanics when it’s appropriate, like in this discussion. Consciousness and quantum mechanics and perception all go hand in hand in hand 🤝, as I’ve described. It has nothing to do with you. Don’t be such a drama queen. 💃

There is no definite line separating quantum mechanics and classical physics any more.

“The fault is not in the stars but in ourselves.”

 kosst_amojan" You’re the guy who’s always trying to inject quantum mechanics into everything. And then you pin it all on me or other people to make ridiculous strawmen to crucify"

This contributor to our forum is misinformed, confused, or disoriented, and deliberately interrupting, disrupting, or derailing the discussion through the use of personal attacks, ad hominem argumentation, or outright vituperative personal insult.

Hear is an example of kosst's essential, fundamental, religious belief, that establishes him as a Great Visionary and the sole, single, solitary expert here who shall not be questioned, challenged or doubted in even the smallest, slightest, tiny way:

"In the strictest scientific sense, there is no such thing as music, or sound, or color, or hot or cold".

utter nonsense!

HEA goes past what can be measured. HEA audio brands that have spent decades earning my respect is where I began the listening tests, I don't bother with the specs; that's for mid -fi.

orpheus10 likes HEA.

"In the strictest scientific sense, there is no such thing as music, or sound, or color, or hot or cold".

utter nonsense!

Oops!

Just the opposite. I'll explain by giving the one correct answer to a well-known riddle: when a tree falls in a forest, if there is no one there to hear it then does it make a sound?

The answer is no.

The tree falling vibrates the air. It does not make a sound. For there to be sound requires an organism with hearing. No organism, no sound. Nor heat, nor cold. Nor hardness nor softness. Its not nonsense. Its the truest most sensible thing in this whole thread.

Lot of nice posts here.
Measurements are needed for development, quality control etc. It would be impossible to design and produce equipment based only on auditory results.
Math is philosophy which is applied in measurements. Measurements quantify a set of known errors. Noise is assumed to be random. Depth of human perception have not as far as know been quantified. Thus measurements will tell what is wrong with equipment, not what is right, but is a good starting point. 
Digital music formats introduced a new set of errors old systems were not adapted to.
Test signals are usually simple to make the math easy. That obviously does not paint a complete picture. How do you extract deviations in stochastic signals where complex intermods will happen?
Pseudo random noise with a swept -130dB notch source signal measured with a corresponding analyzer rejecting everything but the swept notch?
(I thought about that back in the early 70's but had no way to design and build it.)
How much, or more importantly exactly what, is tolerable to a critical ear?
Why not introduce quantifiable errors abd and guage their perceptability?

@millercarbon: no?

A forest is typically filled with life forms both large and small. Even bacteria respond to vibrations. Just because a human isn’t around doesn’t mean it’s not heard. I’d place my money on sound.

This anthropocentric view of what consitutes and supposedly defines reality is the crux of the problem.

Do you also believe that H. sapiens has a monopoly on music making and listening too?

In space no one can eat ice cream. 🤡

So that’s why they always flew the shuttle in orbit with the doors wide open, better sonics in micro g.

stevecham, What I believe in is a thing called reading comprehension. The ability to read and comprehend the meaning in the writing. Comprehend means understand. Like, understand that "organism" does not necessarily mean "human" maybe it actually means, you know, "organism". 

Capiche?

kosst

I *think* I generally understand the point you are trying to make, but I think you are rightly being taken to task because you are making a bit of a mess of it, but making mostly assertions, not arguments, and with some sloppiness involved in the assertions.

So....

"In the strictest scientific sense, there is no such thing as music, or sound, or color, or hot or cold, or pain or pleasure. "

This is off on the wrong foot, or at least it’s unclear. It could mean "according to our strictest science, these things don’t exist."

That would be wrong for the reasons people have pointed out. Science is about the quantifiable and testable, and things like color, sound, music, human perception, human reactions to those etc, can be and have been quantified. Comprehensively? Not at this point. But if we are talking about the strictest science we would by definition be pointing to the quantifiable/quantified aspects.

OR...you could have meant: "these things don’t exist in a way that can be quantified, scientifically."
Which I think seems to be what you wanted to say? In which case it might have been more accurate to state "philosophically, there is no such thing as music...."


But in either case, the claim is dubious, as science does study these things.

They’re abstractions produced by the brain to allow consciousness to interpret them.

Really? How do you know that? Can you provide scientific evidence for the claim? If so, it seems we ARE in the realm of that which can be vetted with science.

If it’s instead a philosophical claim, I’m say we are still waiting for the argument to support it.

There can be made correlations between quantifiable phenomenon, but there’s no direct causal link between the phenomenon and the abstraction of conscious experience.

What’s your actual argument for this claim? Because it doesn’t seem acceptable prima facie.
Why not? Because it at least suggests you are helping yourself to special pleading in how, just in the case of consciousness, you are demanding more than correlation.

There is an important lesson about drawing inferences in the old phrase "correlation does not imply causation," but it’s not the whole story.

After all, what are our inferences of causation drawn from, if not from reliable instances of correlation? (And prediction). We didn’t even need a chemical theory of combustion to have drawn the reasonable conclusion that fire causes our skin to burn if we hold our finger in the fire. When something is reliably correlated we infer cause. And in science, one seeks to control variables in an attempt to discern which "A" is RELIABLY correlated with phenomenon "B."

So, applied to human perception: we can find through testing for an individual, or group of subjects, that "light frequency spectrum or wavelengths spanning X" is reliably correlated with their perception of "Yellow." Hence we can posit it as a *cause* in the chain of causation resulting in the subjective perception of "yellow." And it’s a direct cause insofar as you can turn on and off the perception of "yellow" by presenting and removing that wavelength to the eyes of the subjects.This is evidence for a "causal" phenomenon in the same way we have evidence for any other causal phenomenon. So I think you need more justification for your claim that causation can not be inferred.

Likewise, the quantifiable conscious experience doesn’t directly correlate with the quantified physical phenomenon, only indirectly. The indirect nature of correlation leaves two questions to be asked. What is the nature of the correlation? And, what is the quantifiable value of the conscious experience. Those two questions need some sort of answer before the question of quantifiable measurement can take on any sort of meaning.

Again, this seems to contain some self contradiction. You seem to be saying on one hand "we don’t have scientific reasons to believe in the said causation," and yet you keep asserting claims about the nature of the physical world and our perception. Where are you getting this knowledge, if not from quantified science? And even in your last sentences you start saying the nature of the interaction of the quantifiable and the perception is unknown...and yet you started off confidently making claims about this: that we know that the things as we perceive them don’t really exist, and that we make abstractions.

So I do find that, at least as you’ve stated them, your claims seem to need better arguments.

Cheers.

@millercardon:  

Yeah, capiche. Since when aren't there organisms in a forest? Get real.

Humans have known about the octave at least since Sumerian times, i.e., that its sound is pleasing and harmonious. Chimps and some other animals enjoy it, as well. Perception first discovered the octave - perhaps even before there were homo sapiens - and Sumerians were sufficiently captivated to write about it beginning around 3,000 BCE.

Starting around 4,700 years later, the calculus was invented, the existence of sound waves was discovered, and devices to measure frequency were invented. Science was astonished to discover that the octave is a doubling of the frequency of a sound wave, and that the octave is the first harmonic in a series of overtones. The octave has been called "the basic miracle of music."

So, that is the short history of the octave, which was perceived to be harmonious, and has been used to tune instruments in most musical systems, long before it was measured. See this for more:

http://proaudioencyclopedia.com/the-history-of-audio-and-sound-measurement/

Temperature is +2 Fahrenheit but it feels like -30 with the wind chill factor. So, here's an example of measurement v perception. But who decides about the perception?   

@erik_squires

After reading through this thread, my experience is that for measurements and math to fully and completely able to describe and define something in a predictable and repeatable way requires that the "problem" be properly understood and specified up front.
As an example...and acoustic guitar played in your back yard and a well made recording of that acoustic guitar as pointed out by geoffkait, with a mathematically perfect reproduction should be able to be played back through a perfect reproduction system in your living room and have the sound be indistinguishable from the original.
Obviously, at least so far, we have not been able to identify all of the parameters that define and contribute to sound as we hear it in a way that we know everything to measure and then devise a way to measure it.
If we assume that in the future, such measurements and reproduction capability exists...it will have to take into account many things such as individual hearing differences, different rooms, different perceptions of what things sound like....and it will somehow have to account for the fact that we usually see what is producing the sound...as well as feel it...and both of these senses will influence what we think we are hearing.
Measurements may be the ultimate objective...but for now, no substitute for hearing in your room through your system with your music.

Perception is just another high falutin’ word that’s supposed to mean something more that what it means. Perception of sound and hearing are the same thing. Anything that influences your perception will influence the sound you hear. There’s no difference. It’s not neuroscience or rocket science. 🚀

Erik, when I was in "mid-fi" Harmon and Bose were my favorites, but after I got into "hi-end", everything changed; meaning more objective than subjective, and I don't regret it.

I know you remember "graphic equalizers"; they were the thing in my Harmon, Bose days, but I discovered I was rearranging the music; did I want to hear the band, or be a part of the band?

Now I'm 180 degrees from what I was; I only want neutral components that will faithfully reproduce the music. What's most important is the truth of the equipment that reproduces the music; my pleasure must be derived from the music as it is, not as I want it to be.

"High falutin", reminds me of my days watchin festus haggen and jethro bodine.  Sure miss Miss Jane.

@jetter 
Whee doggie!
When TV series had great music themes.
B

They didn't just have themes, they had opening songs which described the plot to the newly watching.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship ...


source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/gilligansislandlyrics.html



A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/mredlyrics.html

If you only follow measurements, like the folks at ASR, then this is where it will lead you:

Apple usb DAC dongle($9) rates better

than ...
emotiva xmc1 $2,500
Anthem mrx 1120 $3,500
Monoprice monolith htp1 $4,000
Nad m17 $6,600
Lyngdorf tda1 3400 $6,500
Marantz  av805 $4,500
Totaldac d1 six $14,000
Ps audio perfectwave dac $ 6,000

Obviously what they are measuring does not measure up ;-).