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nabob33@hotmail.com wrote:
> Michael Mossey wrote:
> > nabob33@hotmail.com wrote:
> > > Michael Mossey wrote:
> > > > Well, you and the other scientists/engineers in this forum
> > >
> > > For the record, I am neither.
> > >
> > > > have always
> > > > maintained that the evidence says our ears don't work
differently
> > in
> > > > hearing music. I realize that may be true. But I ask again:
how
> > > would
> > > > you know if that were true?
> > >
> > > You mean, besides sheer common sense and the absolute lack of
> > > countervailing evidence?
> >
> > You are dodging the question. First of all, I'm sure you will be
the
> > first to agree that "common sense" can be wrong.
>
> As you are about to demonstrate...
>
> > Secondly, my own
> > common sense tells me that quick-switching obscures differences.
>
> That is because your common sense is ill-informed. The common sense
of
> someone who was at least passingly familiar with the psychoacoustics
> literature would be very different.
I didn't expect you to use the word common sense to describe scientific
knowledge. That's "uncommon" sense in the sense that not many people
have that knowledge, and it is also not based on intuition.
I thought you were referring to the common experience: ask someone to
compare two sounds, and they will want them closer in time to hear the
differences better. Common sense is: feel confused or uncertain? Look
closer, listen closer. That's an intuition or a direct experience. It
needs to be investigated.
I've done a lot of investigating of my musical consciousness, and it
has become obvious to me that I can't be conscious of how a signal
affects me musically when I'm doing quick switching. This is "common
sense" in the sense that it is intuition, but it is also something
highly investigated.
When anyone tells me something, I generally ask (or think to myself)
the question, "How do you know?" I wonder how you know that quick
switching comparisons provide conscious access to all musical aspects
of a signal? You would say you know it from evidence gathered through
experimentation. I say, that's fine, but were the experimentors aware
how different modes of attention affect consciousness? So far, no one
has pointed me to an experiment that shows any attention to this. So I
wonder, how certain is this knowledge that quick-switching provides
complete conscious access to the signal?
>
> > And
> > thirdly, you are dodging my question which is to ask about the
> current
> > evidence: was it gathered in a way that accounts for a different
> "mode
> > of hearing," or a way that could rule this out? And given that
this
> is
> > such a difficult problem (akin to understanding consciousness) how
> was
> > it solved?
>
> It is your unproven assumption that there is even such a thing as
> "different modes of hearing." Nothing we know about hearing
perception
> suggests that we *hear* music differently than we hear anything else.
> (And yes, there have been plenty of psychoacoustics experiments
dealing
> with music. There are whole textbooks on the subject.)
"Different modes of hearing" refers to a very obvious subjective
phenomena. What you consciously experience depends on what you are
paying attention to. Very simple, and I don't see how you can disagree
with that.
So I'm asking, how does the research prove "what you are paying
attention to" doesn't matter? You've come back at me with a lot of
different responses but not an answer to my question. If you don't
want to answer it, that's fine. If you want to refer me to a specific
book, that's fine.
> >
> > >
> > > > Wouldn't that require listening tests that
> > > > could control how a subject listens and employ a variety of
> > listening
> > > > modes, ranging from "enjoying music" to "hearing sound"?
> > >
> > > Your ear does not "enjoy music." It only reacts to rapid changes
in
> > air
> > > pressure. That's how we know that it doesn't operate differently.
> >
> > You are taking a highly reductionist approach.
>
> Reductionism is only wrong if it leaves something out. What have I
left
> out about the operation of the ear?
Reductionism in this sense is reducing something to components and
making irrelevant their interaction. You separated "enjoyment" (which
takes place across a large section of the brain) from "hearing" (which
I assume you mean refers to the physical ear and perhaps the auditory
cortex). In essense, you are saying the ear "doesn't operate
differently" because you have reduced it to a model in which there is
no connection between ear and consciousness.
>
> > There is much more I
> > could learn about psychoacoustics and neurology, I admit that. And
> if
> > I find some time between my other four hobbies I will check out a
> book
> > on psychoacoustics from the library. (I have an account at the
> Caltech
> > library.) But I'm suspicious of a reductionist approach,
especially
> > its ability to rule out possibilities.
> >
> > >
> > > > Have these
> > > > tests been done? And how would the test subject's listening
mode
> > be
> > > > controlled (what seems to me an extraordinarily difficult
> > > problem--has
> > > > someone solved it?)?
> > >
> > > Have you ever actually cracked a textbook on psychoacoustics? You
> > > certainly seem to be interested enough in the subject. You would
be
> > > amazed at what has actually been tested--and what has been
> eliminated
> > > as a realistic possibility as a result of those tests.
> > >
> > > > > And another thing we know from
> > > > > experiments that have been done already is that people are
> better
> > > at
> > > > > identifying differences in sounds like tones and pink noise
> than
> > > > > music--which at least suggests that our mental reaction to
> music
> > > > > actually obscures differences (though there are other and
> > probably
> > > > > better explanations for this).
> > > >
> > > > What kinds of differences? I'm sure frequency response
> differences
> > > are
> > > > audible in pink noise and steady-state tones; how about
something
> > > like
> > > > jitter? Suppose we had a malfunctioning digital recorder with
so
> > > much
> > > > jitter that there's no argument it can be heard; wouldn't it be
> > heard
> > > > first on signals with transients?
> > >
> > > We're talking about analog interconnects, aren't we? Can you
offer
> > any
> > > physical explanation for how they might possibly affect anything
> > other
> > > than frequency response?
> >
> > Well I'm addressing your argument that the results of pink noise
> > suggest it is better than music as a test stimulus. I'm asking
"for
> > what effects?" I'm interested in all of audio, not just
> interconnects.
> > In fact the effects of amplifiers and recorders are probably more
> > interesting to me than interconnects.
> >
> > The argument that interconnects could only affect frequency
response
> is
> > reductionist. That's its weakness.
>
> Only if it leaves something out. So I'll ask again, what am I leaving
> out? You went to CalTech. I'd be embarrassed to admit in this company
> how I fulfilled my science distribution requirement. So you tell me:
> What can interconnects do to a signal besides affect freuency
response?
>
> bob
To hypothesize that interconnects make an audible difference, all I
have to know is that they are part of the system. Anything that's a
part of a system can interact with the rest of the system.
The answer to your question is, I don't know. If my listening tests
demonstrate interconnects make a difference, the next step would be to
investigate why. I wouldn't go into that step assuming that frequency
response is the difference, but I would try to be open to any
possibility.
-Mike