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Re: Agreement and disagreement

Earl,

"Which leads me into the area that you are uncomfortable with and the one that I am most comfortable with. You seem to be unsure that true accuracy will achieve what you are seeking - fair enough, perhaps you haven't experienced it, perhaps it can never really be achieved, whatever. But what I have found (personal subjective opinion here) is that I am more satisfied with the sound the more accurate it is when judged by an absolutely objective criteria. This could be coincidence, or wishful thinking, but I ask you, does that seem likely. Doesn't it just seem intuitively like it should happen this way. What else in our universe works in any other way? How could it be that the key to good sound is locked away from us never to reveal itself through science? Maybe its the scientist in me, but this just doesn't seem logical. Most professional believe that measurements are absolutely reliable predictors of mean opinions of quality."

So far improved accuracy has seemed to work for me too, however I remain hesitant about total accuracy.

Part of my reason for that is that I think there's a question about accuracy to what. I know people with wildly different systems and they all claim to be seeking accuracy, but different aspects of the "sound of music" appeal to them and their systems do sound different and individual. Do I assume many of us are fooling ourselves about what is accurate, including people who do listen to a reasonable amount of live music? More importantly, are they choosing the sound they get because of personal preference or because aspects of that sound strike them as more accurate in relation to what they focus on when they listen to live music? That's not a trivial question and I'm unaware of any research to try and answer that question.

The 2 of us can drive separately from A to B in identical cars along the same route. Weather conditions and time of day are the same. Do we perceive the same scenery and do we have the same driving experience? We'll probably attend to some different aspects of the scenery and give a different description of some aspects of the route so I think it's fair to say that our perceptions are different. Our driving styles will definitely mediate our driving experience. Whose report of the trip is going to be more accurate, assuming both of us report honestly? It's a meaningless question. We've both answered accurately but the trip was different in some ways for each of us.

Our perceptions are complex and they do differ from person to person. What we perceive when we listen to music isn't simply the product of the acoustic waveform in the room. There are other contributors to our perception and they are personal. Does everyone's perception correlate to the same degree with their raw sensation? I doubt it, but I also don't know how we could go about establishing it.

And, if one person's "accuracy" now is another's "re-interpretation", why should that change when we have the ability to reproduce things with 100% accuracy to the source when we don't all perceive the source in the same way?

It's possible that having total accuracy would satisfy many of us, and it may make it easier for many of us to focus on those aspects of the music that most interest us, even though there is some variation from person to person there, but I'm uncertain that it will satisfy all of us. It probably would satisfy those of us who fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean for what we respond to, however that is measured, but I wonder whether it's less likely to satisfy those at the extreme ends of the bell curve for this. There's a wide range of variation in musical tastes (classical vs pop vs jazz vs…) and many of those forms have very different sonic traits. I would expect there to be similar variations in what we all perceive as accurate, irrespective of measurements.

I always remain cautious about views that leave no room for individual differences. They tend not to work for everyone though some views do seem to work for more people than do others. There is less variation among us on some things than on others. Until we can achieve total accuracy and see how a wide range of people respond, I will choose to remain cautious.

David Aiken

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