jkenny
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About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 24, 2019 3:54:45 GMT 10
P.S. The poster in another forum who appears to be trying to create a Guinness Book of Records for the highest number of posts in the shortest possible time, suggested the same about complex waveforms after our post on this subject. Please PM me the link to the posts in another forum you mentioned Ah, I see it on AS The position that all the deniers adopt is that a complex waveform will mask issues compared to a pure tone It is very simplistic thinking & fails to understand (not that they've tried to read anything about it) that auditory perception works to a large extent, by pattern identification/matching & thus pure tones ignore this aspect of auditory perception - only complex waveforms have such pattern & even more importantly patterns inherent in music is important at a higher level of perception. Research has already been done that indicates summarised statistical analysis (or ensemble encoding) of sound waves is one of the techniques used by auditory perception. Ensemble encoding is also used in visual perception - see here for one of the papers www.elisepiazza.com/papers/Piazza%20et%20al%20(2013).pdf
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sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
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Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
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Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Oct 24, 2019 7:36:26 GMT 10
Hi John Very interesting. It may help to explain how I manage to hear things that with my damaged hearing that I should no longer be able to do.
Regards Alex
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jkenny
Full Member
Posts: 83
About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 24, 2019 8:43:14 GMT 10
Hi John Very interesting. It may help to explain how I manage to hear things that with my damaged hearing that I should no longer be able to do. Regards Alex Yea, the focus on how high a frequency you can hear & the usual demeaning of older members in this regard by some forum warriors again just shows a complete lack of any knowledge about (or interest in understanding) the salient issues in auditory perception. When one understands that it is predominantly processing in the brain that is at the core of the perception, these sort of comments/criticisms can be mostly dismissed. Of course there are also changes in the brain processing that occur as we age & these can effect our auditory perception. It may be that this statistical aspect of auditory perception is of more importance when we are judging the 'naturalness' of our playback system? We are assimilating a 'feel' or 'gist' about the sound of our playback system over time which is stored in memory & it is this 'gist' that is compared when a new device is incorporated in our system? I reckon it could explain why we want to 'live with' a system for a while before we pass judgement on it. If this is correct, it would explain what is the biggest oversight of DBT & why long term listening can often be at odds with DBTs? Worth considering, IMO
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sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
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Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Oct 24, 2019 9:41:11 GMT 10
John As both you and I already know, much of this comes down to experience. In my case, it started out with listening to the >15kHZ equalised Program feeds from the National broadcaster (A.B.C) going through Chatswood Exchange in Sydney, with high quality Vinyl sourced material via a higher quality Monitoring amplifier and decent speaker constructed by the Senior Technicians, when I was a young Technician with the then P.M.G. department. It was a revelation compared with what you eventually heard through even the best of the A.M. radios.
Alex
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Post by soundandmotion on Oct 24, 2019 19:56:21 GMT 10
... It may be that this statistical aspect of auditory perception is of more importance when we are judging the 'naturalness' of our playback system? We are assimilating a 'feel' or 'gist' about the sound of our playback system over time which is stored in memory & it is this 'gist' that is compared when a new device is incorporated in our system? I reckon it could explain why we want to 'live with' a system for a while before we pass judgement on it. If this is correct, it would explain what is the biggest oversight of DBT & why long term listening can often be at odds with DBTs? Hi John, Now John, you know blind testing has no duration requirement. There are plenty of interesting things to bring up (like the paper you linked - you always find interesting papers), without creating straw men... Cheers, SAM
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sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
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Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Oct 24, 2019 21:12:04 GMT 10
... It may be that this statistical aspect of auditory perception is of more importance when we are judging the 'naturalness' of our playback system? We are assimilating a 'feel' or 'gist' about the sound of our playback system over time which is stored in memory & it is this 'gist' that is compared when a new device is incorporated in our system? I reckon it could explain why we want to 'live with' a system for a while before we pass judgement on it. If this is correct, it would explain what is the biggest oversight of DBT & why long term listening can often be at odds with DBTs? Hi John, Now John, you know blind testing has no duration requirement. There are plenty of interesting things to bring up (like the paper you linked - you always find interesting papers), without creating straw men... Cheers, SAM Sam In my case, I usually make up my within about 30 seconds whether something is an improvement or not. HOWEVER, after modifications of any kind, especially involving large value electrolytics you need to listen for a much longer period of time as the damn things often improve for up to 48 hours or more. I found this particularly so this week where an E.E. friend of mine got me to construct his PCB (with components supplied) for the Jung Regulator, where he is currently working with Walt Jung in the design of a new version with PCBs he supplied to Walt Jung. I damn near wrote it off as markedly inferior to the existing John Linsley Hood PSU add on in my highly modified Silicon Chip DAC, then held back on sending the email. It was just as well I did or I would have ended up very red faced. It was still a little too " focussed" sounding, but a 100uF Silmic 2 replacing the existing Panasonic FC in the + and -21V unregulated PSU reduced that effect. Tonight it was sounding even better again as the Silmic further formed too. Before you get stuck into about these statements, I would point out that there are numerous reports of this type of behaviour with the Elna Silmic2.
As for DBTs, they are often a waste of time, as the majority of E.E.s appear to reject the results when the results don't go the way that they expected. This is based on a series of 6 separate DBT sessions with 8 repeats in each, performed by E.E Martin Colloms and a friend , with comparison.wav files that I suppled . The results were a total of 48 out of 48 positive results and the DBTs were correctly performed, yet almost all the qualified E.Es in a large USA based forum refuse to accept the validity of the results. My reports have also been confirmed by 2 NSW based E.Es in the home of one of them. Before they became E.Es quite a while ago, they both worked behind the counter at a Sydney Jaycar store where I first met them back in the David Tillbrook days,(ETI5000, and AEM6000 amplifiers) where he visited the store on one occasion and I got to meet him.
Regards Alex
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Post by soundandmotion on Oct 24, 2019 23:51:58 GMT 10
Hi Alex, Since the first dozen or so posts in this thread were about color perception, the next dozen or so about perception in general, and the last dozen about auditory perception, I answered your comment about DBTs in a new thread here: music-and-perception.boards.net/post/524/threadCheers, SAM
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jkenny
Full Member
Posts: 83
About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 25, 2019 7:52:44 GMT 10
... It may be that this statistical aspect of auditory perception is of more importance when we are judging the 'naturalness' of our playback system? We are assimilating a 'feel' or 'gist' about the sound of our playback system over time which is stored in memory & it is this 'gist' that is compared when a new device is incorporated in our system? I reckon it could explain why we want to 'live with' a system for a while before we pass judgement on it. If this is correct, it would explain what is the biggest oversight of DBT & why long term listening can often be at odds with DBTs? Hi John, Now John, you know blind testing has no duration requirement. There are plenty of interesting things to bring up (like the paper you linked - you always find interesting papers), without creating straw men... Cheers, SAM Sure, SAM, I know that but typically I've never seen that done in practise - have you? If you have some examples of such DBT tests I would be interested in reading about them. I don't consider what I said is a strawman, I look on it as a point of discussion worth considering based on the context I provided I think we all know of the advantage that 'living' with the sound of a new device confers on our evaluation of devices PS: I will continue this on the new DBT thread
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jkenny
Full Member
Posts: 83
About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 25, 2019 10:48:29 GMT 10
To bring this back on track to Visual perception as the thread title implies, a good overview of this Ensemble Perception aspect of visual perception is presented in this paper whitneylab.berkeley.edu/PDFs/Whitney_Yamanashi_Annual_Rev_Psych_2017.pdfBear in mind that the biological organisms are efficient in resource usage so when a particular processing pathway is already defined for vision processing it is likely/possible that the same pathway/approach could be used in auditory perception/processing. In other words what we learn about how visual perception works may well also apply to auditory perception in a lot of cases? Some of the interesting extracts from this paper which might also relate to auditory perception: "Ensemble representations might be the basis of some of our fastest and richest perceptual experiences (Intraub 1981, Potter 1975, Thorpe et al. 1996), which do not rely on explicitly or consciously representing all of the individual members of the scene (see Section 3.4)." - is this where the "better illusion of realism" come from, that very good audio playback systems produce? "Single-Item Recognition Is Not a Prerequisite for Ensemble Coding" - it's a holistic perception - it's the gestalt or gist that is being perceived, not individual details "Ensemble Representations Can Be Extracted with a Temporal Resolution at or Beyond the Temporal Resolution of Individual Object Recognition" - we can sense the gist faster than we can absorb individual details
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jkenny
Full Member
Posts: 83
About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 27, 2019 6:08:18 GMT 10
Just to round off this sub-topic on the role of Ensemble Perception or Summary Statistics in perception (both visual & auditory), this site offers a great resource with up-to-date research www.elisepiazza.com/index.html
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sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021)
Global Moderator
Posts: 226
About Me: Retired ex Principal Telecommunications Technical Officer with 43 years at Telstra (Australia)
I am also a Moderator in Hi Fi Critic Forum
Electronics hobbyist for >65 years with DIY projects including Loudspeakers, Stereo FM tuner, S/W Regen Receiver, Superhet AM ,
Synchrodyne PLL AM tuner (Phase Lock Loop),Stereo Tape Deck, Amplifiers including I.C. types, Class A, Class AB 100W/Ch. (ETI5000) 240W/Ch. Mosfet (AEM6000) ,several DACs , numerous PSUs including VERY low noise (<4uV) types etc.for myself and friends
Audio Industry Affiliation: NIL
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Post by sandyk (RIP Alex, 1939 - 2021) on Oct 27, 2019 7:02:44 GMT 10
Just to round off this sub-topic on the role of Ensemble Perception or Summary Statistics in perception (both visual & auditory), this site offers a great resource with up-to-date research www.elisepiazza.com/index.html
Just don't tell the closed minded members of another forum about it .
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jkenny
Full Member
Posts: 83
About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 27, 2019 7:23:31 GMT 10
Just to round off this sub-topic on the role of Ensemble Perception or Summary Statistics in perception (both visual & auditory), this site offers a great resource with up-to-date research www.elisepiazza.com/index.html
Just don't tell the closed minded members of another forum about it .
I just changed my avatar image with one from that site On those other forums I've seen some say that it represents someone who is so open-minded that their brain is escaping I felt it was a good image depicting the central role that the brain plays in auditory perception
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Post by Audiophile Neuroscience on Oct 27, 2019 12:12:33 GMT 10
Hi John In my current working with E.E. John Dyson we are both frequently noticing audible differences well below what have been the previously recognised limitations, in fact a fraction of a dB. John is even more surprised than I am !
Kid Regards Alex
I've always wondered if it's less the absolute dB difference that's being perceived, rather some change in the relationship between different parts of the waveform that is being perceived? And because we have only simple measurements, atm. it is only seen in measurements as a small dB change? It may well be that our auditory perception uses patterns i.e how the sound waveform changes over time - like an auditory fingerprint, if you like & that we are sensitive to a subtle change in pattern. In ordinary measurements this may only show as a small change in dB which is normally dismissed as inaudible. This is the possible weakness that I find in measurements - no device measures perfectly, rather measurements below a certain level are considered audibly insignificant. This is very different from "perfect" & is based on premises that need to be analysed - one being that the measurements are showing everything that is psychoacoustically relevant (which nearly all sane people admit is not a correct premise) & the second premise being that measurement values below a certain level are inaudible. Again we go back to the double bind that we don't really know exactly what to measure that is psychoacoustically significant - both measurements & psychoacoustics need to advance together in lock-step in order to progress but we're at a impasse hi John my expectation would be that there does not necessarily have to be any difference in audible level to discern a difference in sound quality. Obviously if there is a significant difference in level it will make other things stand out. Level matching is a pre-requisite, as you already know, when doing comparisons for hearing differences in sound quality. I totally agree with you that there needs to be far better ways to measure audible differences that correlate with our perceptual experience. I think the assertion that is made by some, that any audible difference will be measurable and indeed some go so far as to say easily measurable is naïve to the extreme. I think it is equally naïve to think that if you can't measure it you can't hear it.
Some time ago, it was interesting but not particularly surprising to see how the red pill blue pill thread unfolded on computer audiophile with respect to measurements and audible differences. The chief technologist, who I consider an otherwise very intelligent person, was adamant that if there was an audible difference in the proposed testing scenario, it would be easily measured. After Mani did here a difference, many pages and a couple of threads later they were still looking at ways of measuring it. That said, it is possible that mani guessed the correct responses but the p value of 0.01 means that the odds this was 100 to 1.
David -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Post by Audiophile Neuroscience on Oct 27, 2019 12:24:49 GMT 10
The position that all the deniers adopt is that a complex waveform will mask issues compared to a pure tone It is very simplistic thinking & fails to understand (not that they've tried to read anything about it) that auditory perception works to a large extent, by pattern identification/matching & thus pure tones ignore this aspect of auditory perception - only complex waveforms have such pattern & even more importantly patterns inherent in music is important at a higher level of perception. Research has already been done that indicates summarised statistical analysis (or ensemble encoding) of sound waves is one of the techniques used by auditory perception. Ensemble encoding is also used in visual perception - see here for one of the papers www.elisepiazza.com/papers/Piazza%20et%20al%20(2013).pdfyes I agree that pattern recognition is incredibly important as is knowing what patterns to look for. It's all part of the interpretive evaluative way we process things and assign meaning. Put another way, we tend to see things that we look for and we look for what we know and that has meaning to us. When I was a medical student it never ceased to amaze me how a half deaf cardiologist could "hear" far more through his stethoscope than all the medical students combined who had far superior hearing acuity. After decades of looking at CT scans and MRI scans of the spine it takes me a matter of seconds to "see" what the untrained eye simply cannot make out even if they stared at it for hours. David ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." - - Louis Armstrong
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jkenny
Full Member
Posts: 83
About Me: Audio equipment designer forever in pursuit of more realistic & engaging music reproduction purely because of the extra enjoyment of music created by such reproduction.
http://Ciunas.biz
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Post by jkenny on Oct 28, 2019 8:13:57 GMT 10
Yes, David agree with almost all you say
I only disagree on one thing in your above two posts - If the same difference is consistently perceived between two soundfield then there must be some physically tangible difference between these soundfields which auditory perception can perceive. A measurement of this difference should be possible but may never emerge unless we understand a lot more about auditory perception & there is enough interest/energy/money to develop measurements based on this knowledge. Somehow I doubt this will happen.
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