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Michael Lavorgna wrote, "people who aren't all that interested in the sound quality of the music they listen to are not all that interested in the sound quality of the music they listen to." I was very happy to read this. Yogi Berra is alive and well.
Bill
Follow Ups:
He said: "I never said most of the things I said."
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
> Michael Lavorgna wrote, "people who aren't all that interested in the
> sound quality of the music they listen to are not all that interested in
> the sound quality of the music they listen to."
That's correct. The context for Michael's tongue-in-cheek statement, which
I quoted in my May "As We See It" essay (linked helow) was this:
If you organize a blind test to examine the possible existence of small but
important sonic differences, selecting as listeners people who neither care
about sound quality differences nor have any experience in listening for
sound quality differences will produce null results that prove nothing.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
If a sonic difference exists, shouldn't it be patent to all listeners? By arguing that sonic differences are only audible to "True Believers" you seem to be arguing that something besides hearing is involved in evaluating high end sound.
JE
PS: so long as you are going to grammar nazi my posts, may I point out that I cannot find the word "helow" that you posted above in any of my dictionaries? ;)
"If a sonic difference exists, shouldn't it be patent to all listeners?"
I'm certainly not JA, but it seems to me that your question here has an obvious answer: no. My logic here is relatively simple: not all humans have the same auditory sensitivity. Some people are either congenitally or traumatically hearing-impaired. Some of these impairments are profound(e.g. deafness) and many of them are significant(e.g. high frequency hearing loss). Obviously there are also people with exceptionally sensitive hearing. There is a tremendous variety in people's abilities to discern sound.
To suggest that something can only be described as audible when all humans can hear it does seem to be a rather absurd standard.
Cheers,
Alan Tomlinson
but really you needn't bother.
"To suggest that something can only be described as audible when all humans can hear it does seem to be a rather absurd standard."
That is not my point at all. John Atkinson is saying that there are differences between groups of listeners with presumably similar hearing acuity.
"...people who neither care about sound quality differences nor have any experience in listening for sound quality differences..." are somehow not as capable as others at detecting the "existence of small but important sonic differences." I was wondering how one group could not perceive what the other group could. The difference is either there or it is not. Fortunately, he subsequently provided a link to an article that more fully explained his position.
On a more humorous note, your statement I quoted above reminded me of this bit from Mel Brooks' History of the World. The part I am thinking of is at 20 seconds into the clip.
JE
> There is a tremendous variety in people's abilities to discern sound.
More significantly, if you don't know what to listen for, you won't hear it.
With something new to you, you won't have developed internal models. That
is why, when CD was introduced, listeners were impressed by the absence
of the expected failings of LP and cassette playback but had not developed
internal models related to the then-novel failings of digital sound quality.
I went into this aspect of human hearing in some detail in my 2011
Richard Heyser Memorial lecture to the Audio Engineering Society. (See
both the page linked below and the subsequent page.)
> To suggest that something can only be described as audible when all humans
> can hear it does seem to be a rather absurd standard.
Indeed it does.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
That was an interesting article.
Thanks for the link.
JE
> That was an interesting article. Thanks for the link.
You're welcome. The thing that still astonishes me is that there is a lag
of at least 100 milliseconds between light reaching our eyes and our
consciously experiencing it. We all "see" the world as it existed one tenth
of a second ago.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
I agree: that tenth of a second time delay is interesting and something to keep you thinking.
I had a similar feeling when I first learned that the Big Bang did not create all the atoms in the universe. Rather, the chemistry set petered out by the time you got to boron. Therefore, all the carbon and heavier elements in existence now were forged inside of primordial stars that themselves exploded and so seeded gas clouds of mainly hydrogen and helium that later collapsed into new stars and their planets. Much of that pile of thinking atoms that you call yourself was at one time deep inside one or more ancient stars.
Yes, we literally are stardust.
JE
selecting as listeners people who neither care about sound quality differences nor have any experience
in listening for sound quality differences will produce null results that prove nothing."
Not to mention one may as well be searching for a diamond studded, platinum needle with the Lord's Prayer
hand etched into it and tossed haphazardly into a haystack the size of Peter Aczel's ego.
Of course selecting listeners that DO CARE about sound quality differences and have experience in listening
for sound quality to examine the POSSIBLE differences that MAY exist in SMALL but important sonic
differences in a blind test doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense either.
Especially if the results are to be transcribed and published, ad naseum.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
The funny thing is, professional social and behavioral scientists who routinely use blind testing as an experimental technique are usually very familiar with its limitations and pitfalls. In Critic's Corner, many posters either dismiss it entirely or dismiss everything else entirely. I've never understood that.
that it takes days and often weeks (for me) to discern the differences I find important. Blind testing doesn't seem to allow for that - and I never, ever, trust snap judgements
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
When acoustic memory has been tested (ability to detect small changes in a signal) the uncomfortable part is that the "memory" acuity is a short lived phenomena.
To be clear this is also using a similar "test without prior knowledge" to see if one can hear any difference between A and B and not the impression one gets which includes many things other than the airborne sound reaching ones eardrums.
Overall the most difficult part for the home enthusiast and to a degree in engineering is "our hearing" is much more than the airborne sound and includes what we think, expect, see and know.
Eliminating all the extraneous non-acoustic inputs is why blind testing works pretty well in other areas but leaves the hifi enthusiast scratching their heads when the results aren't what was expected.
In those "other areas" of scientific endeavor, eliminating all those expectations is exactly why it is done and why it is often scorned in home audio.
Well, you know.
Daniel
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