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Just an interesting experience I thought I would share...The other day, as I was walking towards the office, I saw what looked like a dead bird on the dry and dusty gray spring grass. As I approached, I saw a light colored body with a darker wing and head, and the way the bird was laying, it was surely a dead bird. Then I walked closer.
I could not believe my eyes. It was a piece of tattered and snow-molded white-ish gray cardboard.
I walked back to where I last saw a "bird", expecting to now see the cardboard for what it was, having the memory of that new image in my mind.
Guess what.
I saw the bird again! The light colored body, and darker wing and head! My brain simply refused to accept that image for what it was, and that combination of shape and color, as viewed at 15 feet, was indeed a dead bird according to my senses. My vision and logic were NOT aligned at all at that point, and I stood there in amazement.
Indeed, a very strange (and unlikely) optical illusion.
I was SO CERTAIN that what I was viewing was a dead bird. Even after seeing it was just cardboard, I still SAW a dead bird there!
Kind of makes you wonder about what we are all so certain about hearing... doesn't it? Ah - perception. The "accuracy" of our eyes (and ears) may be finite, but our brain's ability to convert stimuli into perception is very hard to place "limits" on at best.
Why do audiophiles so often avoid the very real possibility that what they are "certainly hearing" may be generated by their brain?
Trust me gentlemen... I "know what I saw"!
And I was wrong. "Dead" wrong! :o)
Follow Ups:
The following quote from wikipedia explains a lot IMHO about the audiophile experience. The audiophile experiences cognitive dissonance in first hearing that $2500 cartridge. The mind wrestles between the reality that it doesn't sound any better and the believe that it must, especially since I just spent $2500.john
Quote: Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term which describes the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. More precisely, it is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, where "cognition" is defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior.
The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive.
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marc g. - audiophile by day, music lover by night
The point is not whether it is possible to fool the senses. Of course it is, and it can be fairly easy to do so under the right circumstances. In real life, however, we are rarely fooled which is why examples like your experience make strong impressions upon us. How many other sensory errors came to your attention on that day? Maybe another one or two on a bad day but that would probably be all. We constantly rely on our senses without thinking, we do trust them, and we trust them because they rarely let us down, not because we think they're perfect. We trust our friends also, and they occasionally let us down but we accept that. Trust does not require a perfect record with no chance of error.It does not make sense to say that because we can make mistakes, we can't trust our senses. You made a visual mistake. Do you now distrust your eyes? If you do, how many times do you re-read everything you read in order to ensure you got it right? How many times do you look at people you know in order to convince yourself that they are the people you think they are? How many times do you recheck the liquid level in the measuring cup to ensure that you have 1 cup of liquid in it for the recipe you are making, and to ensure that the liquid is milk instead of coffee? You aren't going to do any of those things differently because you made this particular error, and you are going to look once only for each one of them and for most of the other things you look at during the day, and there are simply too many things we look at each day to count. Our error rate is extremely low.
I'm fed up of hearing how we can be fooled as if that fact were a proof that our senses are unreliable. Unreliability depends on the incidence of error, not the possibility of it, and our senses are pretty damn reliable under most circumstances. In general we also know when we have to pay a bit more attention because particular circumstances which are present may lead us to make a mistake. Then there are simply the occasional odd case like yours that makes a profound impression on us. I'm not downplaying that experience but I am trying to fit it into it's proper place as a fairly rare occurrence in your visual life.
Yes, we audiophiles can make mistakes with our hearing as well, but I have yet to see any proof that we are more prone to do so with our audio activities than we are elsewhere in our lives. Hearing may or may not be as reliable as seeing—part of that depends on how good a particular individual's eyesight and hearing are and a blind person's hearing is always likely to be better than their sight while a hearing impaired person's sight is likely to be better than their hearing—but our hearing is reliable in normal activities and there's nothing to suggest that it suddenly becomes less reliable when we listen to our systems.
Beliefs and wishes can predispose us to making an error of judgement, but they don't guarantee that we will do so. Just because we're listening to a new component that we hope will make an improvement in our system and we believe we hear an improvement does not mean that the improvement we believed we heard is a result of our hope and that we did not hear an actual improvement. Most of the time we are capable of discerning whether or not something makes a genuine difference. On those occasions when we do make an error, it does not have to be that we made it because of our pre-existing hope or beliefs. We can make errors for other reasons as well and our hopes and beliefs don't protect us from those other causes and ensure that the only way we can make an error is as a result of our hope or belief.
There's an awful lot of rubbish claimed about just what the possibility of error means for the reliability of our senses, and just as much rubbish claimed about how our beliefs and hopes impact on the reliability of our senses. I wish the so-called objectivists who want to call the reliability of our senses into question would actually start to be honest about just what the possibility of error really means when it comes to reliability, and just what the impact of holding a pre-existing belief really is when we make judgements, instead of making absolutely sweeping statements about these things which simply don't hold up to real life experience.
Yes we can make mistakes. Yes we should check and double check some things. No it is not the case that we are automatically mistaken just because we claim to hear a difference that can't easily be accounted for. If someone is going to make a claim that another is mistaken because they had to have made a particular sort of mistake, that claim requires just as much proof as the claim being dismissed. Claims that somebody heard something aren't automatically more suspect than claims that they couldn't have heard it and had to have made a mistake. If you want to ask for evidence that the person really heard something, that's fine but you should also be prepared to put up evidence that they made a mistake if you're going to claim that they did and the fact that people can make certain sorts of mistake is not proof that they actually did so in a particular case. If you're going to claim that they're mistaken in a particular case, you have to show that they are actually wrong in that particular case and that means testing that particular individual under the circumstances in which thec claim to have seen/heard/perceived a difference.
You can't prove anything other than the fact that you made a mistake in a particular set of circumstances, and that the particular sense or senses involved aren't infallible, from any particular incident, no matter how striking it is. Claims about reliability have to be demonstrated with data showing the frequency of error. One mistake says nothing about reliability.
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No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
. . . so we can play it under RBNG's pillow every night. ;-)
... and just for good measure add a subliminal message, "DBTs are for Girlie-Boys, not Bass Nuts".
if I relax, don't think about HiFi and just listen (a little distraction helps some times too - maybe a snack while listening), my brain fills in the blanks.Examples:
After a while FM, TT and tape noise fade away and only music is left.
System that lack the nth degree of frequency response sound balanced and full spectrum.
The lack of pin point imaging is not an issue.
On the other side:
A system that lacks dynamics never sounds good.
Psychoacoustics, relaxation and time cure most audio system ills if you can just enjoy the music. Try it if you can.
...let's say two people with the same bodies but different brains hear a stereo. A thinks a sound from it sounds like an actual cymbal, and likes it, and B doesn't. B goes off to find a better speaker. Turns out A is a drummer and was right, as measured...his brain was consonant for this. The ability to choose allows B to find what sounds best to him. This doesn't mean B was wrong, as the brain's finished, processed product is all he has to go on in making the choice of what the best speaker is for him.This is what is at the preference for a component that measures poorly. We can't measure the brain's processing of the product (well, we can, kind of...anyone see the House episode recently...).
We have to trust our senses and in reality the mind amazingly deals with the complexity that its senses make it aware of.
And that's what his books are all about, although I've only read a review of the "Loop" one.
- This signature is two channel only -
I like the bit about "musical epilepsy"...the ultimate system!
> Trust me gentlemen... I "know what I saw"! <Sadly, if you had performed double blind tests on this experience, you'd have seen neither a dead bird nor cardboard. Just the inside of your blindfold. :)
You were careful to check what you saw just as careful listening determines if there are sonic differences in cables, amps, etc. If we do a quick listen, our experiences can often be wrong. That's why long term listening is the best way to make sonic determinations. Go back in a week or a month and see if it still looks like a dead bird. You'll probably wonder how you ever mistook it for such.
Long term is the only way to go. I have run into similar optical illusions myself so I get Presto's message. Long term has been the only way that has worked for me.
Bill
You simply can't believe your eyes and ears. In audio it's why we have magazines and sites such as these to create and maintain a level of mass hysteria by reinforcing one's illusions with the the illusions of others, the so-called cognoscenti being at the zenith of illusion maintenance.
so I attended a live concert. Much to my chagrin, what I had thought to be a rousing trumpet solo turned out to be two fat guys in red leotards playing the Latvian national anthem with their armpits. You really can't trust your senses.
How was the armpit solo?
Looks like I was the butt of a Latvian practical joke. I DID in fact hear what I thought I heard. Sometimes you just cannot trust people.
I had a car crash and lost my memory for a while. It came back slowly and, unfortunatly, not completely.
I lost alot of reading and writing skills, so at least I have an excuse for my terrible grammar. They were still in there but I could not access them... and I also had to think out loud so that I could listen to my own words and then process them.... real odd.But when I listened to music, I had no memory attatched to them. This was great for me because everything that I heard was like hearing it for the first time. Might sound silly, I even knew the words to songs but there was no memory attached. It was quite liberating to listen to everything without an active (mind perceived or projected) prejudice.
Shame that I was also left with Tinnitus that originates inside my head rather than from actual hearing damage.
Probably off topic really,
Oh well,
K
At someone's house a few years ago, we were doing a "vinyl vs. CD" comparison. While playing a symphonic work on CD, the owner's wife made a comment about a "kazoo", even though she knew it was rather strange for one to be in a symphony orchestra.When we then played the vinyl of the same performance, she realized the "kazoo" was really an English horn.
z
SQ-110 G5 xlr IC's between my CDP and Amp. As i listened i suddenly became aware of how dead silent the recording background sounded.I had never noticed this quality with my current IC's in place but i had read several reviews of these cables. Only upon rereading them did i notice this is something everyone had been saying about these cables. I did not begin my listening session with these reviews fresh in mind and was not specifically looking to hear this quietness.I tend to think the phenomenon i noticed in this instance was a real perception not induced by my previous reading of reviews noting it. I think i could have failed to recognize this aspect had i not read about it but the recognition of this aspect did not escape my awareness and it was accurate.
;-)
what do you think art/ music/ literature is all about. It is getting our imagination to work. There is so much buried in each of our imaginations. This is where creativity exists. Good for you.
...compare the sonic differences between tubes, speakers, etc? I've lost all faith in my ability to recall true sound for more than about 3 seconds. But my brain seems to fill in the gaps with what I think I remember.
... and then, I listened to a needle scratching a groove and thought it sounded even better. I realized my ear/brain was being fooled, but I still kept on trusting the audible illusions. And what's worse, I did'nt care one iota that I was being fooled. So, now I know I'm a fool... What does it matter?
> So, now I know I'm a fool... What does it matter?It matters because this will lead you to make different decisions in the future. Probably wiser ones.
We were talking about something else here. While you would'nt want to mistake a punching bag for your wife's face, acknowledging "foolishness" by allowing your senses to be completely tricked on occasion is one of the cornerstones of civilization. We acknowledge our own foolishness everday when we accept photography, recordings, literature, perfumes, food additives, and other lifelike facsimiles. This type of foolishness is not a cause for alarm, is usually not life-threatening, and it has nothing to do with decision making.
> We acknowledge our own foolishness everday when we accept photography,
> recordings, literature, perfumes, food additives, and other lifelike
> facsimiles. This type of foolishness is not a cause for alarm, is
> usually not life-threatening,I agree with every nuance.
> ...and it has nothing to do with decision making.
except this one.
Are you stating, to take the first item on you list, that you would make the same decisions if you thought a photograph of an apple was an apple and not a picture of an apple? I cannot believe this is your intention but that is what your words appear to say.
Why should the audiophile be concerned with decision making of the sort you mention? Playtime and the mechanisms behind it, nothing more...
> Why should the audiophile be concerned with decision making of the
> sort you mention?Of the sort I mention? This looks like strong projection on your part since I only mentioned decision making in a very general way and used a photograph (your example) and an apple as an illustration.
> Playtime and the mechanisms behind it, nothing
> more...You mention the mechanisms. A subjectivist would not concern themselves with the mechanisms. So for an objectivist like yourself do you find knowing about the tricks behind the illusions a help or a hindrance?
Actually, I am neither pure objectivist nor pure subjectivist and I suspect that most people are equally impure. If I have a tendency to start off as an objectivist I can turn into a subjectivist as soon as it is obvious that my objectivist viewpoints and methodologies will do me no good. And why would the subjectivist be mum about mechanisms? We all talk about the same things, but we apply our knowledge differently.
> If I have a tendency to start off as an objectivist I can turn into a
> subjectivist as soon as it is obvious that my objectivist viewpoints
> and methodologies will do me no good.I find this very hard to believe. If you know how an illusion is performed you cannot choose to forget at will so that it can be appreciated as an innocent.
> And why would the subjectivist be mum about mechanisms?
It is less keeping mum (not talking about?) than not dragging in stuff which lies outside the subjective domain of experience.
Our brains are active intepreters, filtering out most of what is bombarding us and being stimulated only by a small slice of "reality" - our brains interpret based upon a virtual library of experience. You recognized a bird where there was cardboard because the physical appearance of the cardboard, at paces, locked with an archetype of a bird stored in your brain.If you had never seen a bird before, of if the only birds you had ever seen were Ostriches, the cardboard would likely have registered as something else.
Take the "Mona Lisa" for example: Why does one recognize the image of a woman and not simply an abstract sloshing of paint and colors on fabric? It requires first a stored archetype (or several), from which the brain can draw an interpretation of the optical stimulus.
Chris
%22In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.%22 - Yogi Berra
z
watches them fall to the ground. That technique of identifying dead birds has proved to be near infallible.Nevertheless I'd suggest you not try it yourself, you'd likely kill your shadow.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
--a good one in fact. Fortunately scientists have learned that's not the only way to identify a bird--though apparently they didn't do quite as well with the ivory-billed woodpecker out in Louisiana. They shoulda shot that sucker. :-)
see if your perceptions are the same regarding your "bird" over the course of several months.
On more than one occasion while walking through a woods I was misled to thinking I was approaching an animal. Turned out they were dead trees.
That is a great story. It just helps illustrate the point that our brains are always trying to match what our senses tell us to our known patterns. In your case it was visual and I've done the same thing before with things that are laying by the street or sidewalk.It works the same way with sound as well so I could certainly see someone building the case that we may not be entirely accurate with what we *think* we hear. Our toddler is a great example. He is trying to say what he thinks are the right words and we are trying to figure out what words he is saying! Most of the time we are way off of the mark. But I've done the same thing in foreign countries when someone is speaking what I think is my language.
Ultimately it's just the way we are built.
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