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Swerd
12-23-2003, 01:14 PM
Why do we like high fidelity sound? There are many reasons, but the one that keeps me coming back is the entertainment I get from the illusion of hearing music performed in front of me. A while back there was a post asking what is your definition of an audiophile. I would add that it is someone who not only likes reproduced sound for its content and accuracy, but also enjoys the illusion created by sound systems that make recorded music sound as if the musicians are present in the same room as you are.

This illusion of three-dimensional presence from a recording is a different experience from enjoying content whether it is music or a movie. We have binaural hearing and binocular vision, and our brains are very quick at taking the raw visual and aural data and processing it into a three-dimensional picture. Many other animals may have sharper vision, or more sensitive ears, but only a few other animals may be as good as we are at the mental recreation process. Primates, most predators like dogs, cats and bears, and most birds, especially the predatory birds have binocular vision and binaural hearing, and I assume they have the mental ability to process that input. It would be interesting to know what whales and dolphins do with their ability to generate and hear sounds over very long distances under water. I dobut if any of these animals are capable of enjoying music like we do.

Most of us who like this audio illusion want to know, how do I get more of it? Is it caused by improved electronic and audio equipment? Sure, but that is only part of it. Our brains also create it. For reasons none of us understand, the human brain, along with the eyes and ears, does a remarkable job of creating a map of the world we live in. Sometimes this ability has led to some truly remarkable discoveries, and perhaps as often it has led to some truly bizarre misconceptions. History is full of examples, such as the widespread belief in 15th century Europe that the world must be flat. Right or wrong, our brains are constantly at work processing what we take in.

Our brains are extremely good at taking limited information, usually collected by our eyes and ears, and working it up into a reconstructed picture (image, vision, etc.) of what we think is actually out there. All of us do this to varying degrees; it is human nature to do it. Maybe it is what makes humans such good explorers, scientists, and philosophers. Think of the prehistoric human hunters and gatherers. There are other animals that are much better hunters, they have better vision, hearing, and sense of smell, and may be stronger and faster, but I believe only humans are capable of tracking their prey. Humans learned to look at footprints left by animals (that were otherwise undetectable) and imagining where that animal went, based on the tracks that they left. We often call this “vision”, the capacity to imagine events that have not happened, or that we did not witness. It is this same capacity that many of us play with when we listen to music on our audio systems.

It’s always good to remind yourself that this hobby of high fidelity audio is nothing more than our playing with expensive toys that produce the illusion of three-dimensional sound. This illusion is one that we as humans are particularly well equipped to perceive.

Our brains are active participants in creating the illusion. Why is it that people would rather speculate over insignificant little details of audio, such as the purity of the copper in your speaker cables, and ignore the entire aspect of human perception as a part of this illusion? Attitudes, beliefs, and expectations (as woodman likes to remind us) have a lot more to do with this illusion than the characteristics of the audio hardware that you use. It is just a lot easier to measure those characteristics than it is to examine human perception.

I say this as an admonition to both the hardheaded engineers who say, “If you can’t measure it, it isn’t real” and to the naďve audiophiles who say “I heard it so it must be real”. Stop, you’re both wrong. It’s a real illusion. It couldn’t exist without human perception.

Happy holidays to all of you. I hope that you hear some new and wonderful illusions on your sound systems.

Jimmy C
12-23-2003, 03:03 PM
...then where the hell does all the gargage go? Oohh... that's right - New Joisey :^)

Interesting post, most of the time we do not take into account the brain's take on all things audio. How else could one explain different reactions to different speakers? Sure, it has a lot to do with the rooms (err...OK, MOSTLY) but mood, ambient temps, and a host of other things usually not thought about come into play.

WHY do we like this stuff? Like anything else, no real explanation. I know people REALLY into music (instrument playing)... believe me, they think we are nuts for spending anymore than a boombox - and most people would probably not be happy with REAL sound of a live show, in their livingroom, on a daily basis anyway. We need a certain amount of "smoothing"... have you ever heard the live crash of a Ziljian in a small venue?... it ain't exactly easy on the ears...lol.

Here are my my reasons we like this "hobby"... (can we call this a hobby?)

1. Better than average musical reproduction... we find the apparitional stage "fun" - most people wouldn't care

2. It's sometimes a convesation piece - the "toy" thing... believe me, I was w-a-y cooler when I had an Suzuki RM 250... :^)

3. It may represent a period of rest (similar to a cigarette break).. its downtime in hectic world.

A few thoughts, Happy Holidays, all!

Wireworm5
12-24-2003, 02:44 AM
I agree, our brain's have more to do with the sound process than our differences in hearing.(assuming our hearing is okay) I say this as I mentioned once before,I had a dream of a loud rock concert and I woke up with my ears ringing in a quiet room. This leads me to the believe that audiophiles have trained their listening skills much like a musician has trained his ears to recognized notes. We memorize songs and only need to hear them physically to reinforce our memory of it.

Worf101
01-05-2004, 06:45 AM
I'm new to all of this. I had no blinkin' idea of what a soundstage effect was until 3.5 years ago. It was all mud to me before then. Now I know what mids and tweets sound like and the characteristics of different speakers as well. I've calibrated my system, tweeked it with MODERATELY priced cable upgrades (got rid of all the red and black spaghetti cables) and now think I know a little about what I'm hearing and doing. All that being said I know that it's still at least 60% in my mind when I'm listening to music and hear different instruments placed around the room. To me this is a nice "side effect" of my improved system but not the end of it. The music is the end and the journey on which it takes me....

Da Worfster

jbangelfish
01-05-2004, 07:59 AM
We had this discussion awhile back and since everyone's perception is different to some degree, it makes it impossible for everyone to agree on what sounds good and what does not. I like for my stereo to be able to trick me in that it can place sounds out where it seems that it should not be able to do and to get me as close to believing that I'm in the room with the instruments or the vocalists as is possible.
What is a Ziljian? 2nd time I've heard of it.
PS, animals that hunt, track prey but usually use their best sense which is smell. Whether any have the intelligence to look at tracks and think dinner is around the corner, probably not.

Swerd
01-05-2004, 10:08 AM
Hey Worf

I just reread this thread after being away for the holidays. It's funny how today it seems more like mental masturbation than deep insight.

Yes you're right, soundstage & imaging is just a nice side effect. Without music that we love, we would never have bought the good sound system in the first place. In fact, those friends of mine who had the most interesting, diverse, or large music collections often had (several) cheap sound systems strewn about their house. Some of them were musicians. They never put the hardware before the software.

Swerd
01-05-2004, 10:39 AM
We had this discussion awhile back and since everyone's perception is different to some degree, it makes it impossible for everyone to agree on what sounds good and what does not. I like for my stereo to be able to trick me in that it can place sounds out where it seems that it should not be able to do and to get me as close to believing that I'm in the room with the instruments or the vocalists as is possible.

I quess the reason I wrote this post is that if we acknowledge that the "audio illusion" is a product of everyone's different perception, then it might be wrong to attribute this psychoacoustic trick to any particular kind of hardware. That message may have been lost in my ramblings.



What is a Ziljian?

Ziljian (properly spelled Zildjian) is a maker of cymbols favored by most drummers. It is a family name that I believe is Turkish. They have a closely held secret formula for mixing metals for their brass alloy that makes their cymbols sound good. See http://www.zildjian.com/adaa/adaa_2003_legacy.asp. Most, if not all, other cymbols, sound like cheap pie tins in comparison. A simple test of a speakers high frequency response is how realistic the cymbols sound.


PS, animals that hunt, track prey but usually use their best sense which is smell. Whether any have the intelligence to look at tracks and think dinner is around the corner, probably not.

I tried to avoid mentioning sense of smell because humans hardly rely on it. Compared to some dogs, humans hardly have any sense of smell at all. It is difficult for me to imagine how bloodhounds might view the world. I tried to limit my comments to those animals that rely primarily on sight and sound. There are dogs, the so called sight-hounds, that hunt more like cats in that they must see their prey running. This is also true for the birds of prey, who have at best a poor sense of smell.

jbangelfish
01-05-2004, 11:49 AM
Still, good components will achieve these special effects better than others. It does have alot to do with the mind but certain acoustic effects can be achieved much better with well designed equipment. This was what I liked so much about the original Bose 901 which nearly everyone loves to hate even though they never heard them. With their direct reflecting design, they managed to create a very large image with better depth than anything else I've ever heard. Beyond that, they had some shortcomings especially in upper treble.
Nice to finally learn what a Ziljian is. Cymbals are hard to duplicate very well and CD's seem to seldom get it right. I have no idea why other than the fact that it is a difficult sound to reproduce. LP's normally do just fine with it. This is a common CD complaint.
As to hunting animals, it's hard to put yourself in their place but the better you are at it, the better the hunter you will be. I used to hunt with birds of prey (gyrfalcons, peregrines and some redtails), yup they can see real good.
Bill

mtrycraft
01-05-2004, 09:46 PM
[QUOTE=Swerd]I quess the reason I wrote this post is that if we acknowledge that the "audio illusion" is a product of everyone's different perception, then it might be wrong to attribute this psychoacoustic trick to any particular kind of hardware. That message may have been lost in my ramblings.QUOTE]

I can only rely on what research has shown.
Dr. Toole's work in speaker research has indicated that most of us do like the same sounding speakers, under bias controls when other information doesn't cloud our judgements of what we really hear.

If that were not the case, speaker design would not have a goal and a maker would have to satisfy every listener differently, an impossibility.

I can only conclude that while perceptions may be different due to other influences besides what we really hear, what we really hear is the same or very similar and judge similarly.

jbangelfish
01-06-2004, 07:53 AM
Probably nearly everyone would like Apogee Scintillas or some of the others that are considered to be among the top few. This is probably due to an accuracy that nearly anyone can appreciate as being very good or better than what they are accustomed to.
When it comes down to the hair splitting of which cables or speaker wire sounds like what, it gets trickier and the closer things are together in sound, the more each individual's perception or imagination will affect the test.
Bill