Trust your ears

[John Dyson]

2 hours ago, March Audio said:

Im afraid that's simply not true.  There has been probably 100 years of objective scientific research into what we can and cannot hear.  It is very far from mere opinion.  How do you think lossy formats such as mp3 and AAC were developed.

 

Subjective opinions can be analysed in an objective and scientific way to obtain accurate data and conclusions.  See the Floyd Toole video above. The problem arises when there are no controls put in place and the influences of bias steer the conclusions.

 

The potential influence of bias is not questioned in any field, except seemingly by some audiophiles.

 

BTW, objectivists don't insist they are right, they just look at actual evidence to form conclusions.  This very much includes subjective analysis - when that data can be trusted.

Actually, regarding frequency response -- I'd like to see any articles on parametric effects for detecting HF beyond normal sine wave perception.  I have a reason for this, and it is related to my own odd detection of frequencies that I cannot normally hear.

 

Here is what I mean by 'parametric effects', which can be similar to how UHF/SHF amplifiers used to have to work, since there were very few direct amplifying devices that would work well.  A lot of older satellite receivers needed to use 'parametric amplification' because even if there were devices that could work at the high frequencies, they were more noisy than the parametric method.  (noise comes from resistance, not capacitance or inductance.)

 

Parameteric amplification can happen by the 'power supply' being energy from other frequencies instead of being a normal DC source.   The amplification can result from either a 'mixing with gain' or a negative resistance type amplification.

 

Most of the time, measurements appear to be of certain kinds of signals, esp sine wave.   For gain less than one, but still getting past the 'processing problem', the pump frequencies can even be less than the 'out of range' signal.

 

Again, I am just wondering because of my own experience.   I am NOT talking about 'sounding different', but actually detecting a sound that is similar to what I remember that 18kHz signals used to sound like.   I believe that there is room for experimentation (I mean, REAL expermentation, not anecdotal like my own experience.)

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes. One trusts one's ears in life, constantly - we don't walk around with a sound meter, and a spectrum analyser, just in case our ears let us down when a runaway truck, unseen, behind us is about to mow us down 😉. Out ears do a damn fine job - they tell us instantly that the sound of some system, no matter how expensive, is awful - and make it almost impossible to fool one's hearing with something pretending to be live sound, "behind the curtain".

 

Trouble is, this is hard to measure - and the objectivists just wish that this difficulty would go away ... 😀.

I have an important anecdote about trusting ones hearing as 'accurate'.   I am very very very sensitive to audio 'tells' from an intellectual and 'wetware' processing standpoint.  The oddity is that there are NO (zero) tells when my hearing becomes more or less defective  wrt frequency range.  My variable hearing has become apparent by experience and painful embarassment.

 

People might sometimes believe that they have accurate and reliable hearing, but I doubt it.   Is is only by chance and not from an assumed fact that hearing might be consistent.   A set of measurements from day to day for some amount of time might give a baseline.   This variability might get worse as we get older, but my assumptions of consistency have been totally wrong.

 

This is from a person who used to do REAL recordings, and know what they are supposed to sound like, and also effectively perfect pitch.   My  hearing went well above the 20kHz norm when young (up to 30), which is exceptional for a man, down to approx 6kHz to 15kHz today.   This sensitivity might be based on meds, time of day, etc. I have been able to track it to some degree.

 

 I am GREAT at detecting defects in audio, but have NO tells regarding frequency response in my hearing, and no difference 'feeling'.   I can detect modulation distortion, almost any kind of distortion,within my ability to hear, MILES away, but cannot know the frequency range of my hearing unless I do a direct comparison of something that I heard before.  If listening to material that I don't know, my ability to describe the spectrum above about 5kHz is incredibly unreliable.  It takes a reference comparison to make any judgements at all.

 

Bottom line, our egos will tell us that subjective measurements are accurate, but not necessarily representing reality.  SOME subjective measurements might be useful, but still, not to trust if one's life is dependent on it.  Also, with my engineering background, have also found some strange, parametric effects that might actually vary the spectral sensitivity based upon the coincedental material.   That is, one signal might actually pump the sensitivity at another frequency.  This should be investigated, because static frequency range experiments have been done over and over again.

 

The hearing sensitivity and various aspects of hearing acuity are interesting subjects, but except in the youngest individuals who probably havent' been trained well to detect anything but 'tones', I doubt that there is much reliability when trying to do measurements by hearing.

 

As someone who has been abused by subjective measurements, please please, for your own sanity, try the objective methods first!!!   'Hearing' isn't all that reliable for measurment.

 

 

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, March Audio said:

Are you referring to hetrodyning?

It MIGHT be hetrodying, but the way it sounds -- the signal appears to maintain something like the original frequency.   I can still *easily* remember what 15,75kHz sounds like -- but what I percieve is noticeably higher than that (>15kHz), sounds like  higher frequency than I could possibly hear in normal cases.   I *might* be mistaken, but also it sounds higher than what I can normally hear.  (I used to go nuts by the intensity of the sound of department store jewlery security systems -- too loud, obviously using a relatively high power.)   The sound doesn't seem like >20kHz, but more like between 15k and 20kHz.   I COULD be wrong.  (Even when I could hear very high frequencies, it wasn't the relatively low levels that I see on the spectrograms.)

There have been times, when working on my project, hearing *really* high freqs that I hadn't heard in a long time popping in and out.   Then, when looking at the spectrogram, there is a low level 15-20kHz signal.   So far, I have never heard the case where there had been >20kHz (by noting the band on the spectrogram.)  Because of a passing interest, I had checked this thing ffrom time to time.

 

Again-- I am not making a strong assertion, only it SEEMS to be true.

This pumping (or as you suggest hetrodyning) might be effect that some people mistakenly guess has hearing > 20kHz and that is why a study might be interesting.

 

 

[John Dyson]

11 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

It seems to me that what I have said is relevant. I believe that we can trust our ears and I justify my opinion by saying that all so-called objective data is within our subjective knowing. I can say it again, I don't demand to agree with me. Everyone has the right to think as he or she chooses and to express his or her opinion freely. Given, of course, freedom still means something. 

Off topic (like this subject), but I'll comment:

You can trust your hearing to know what you like for enjoyable listening.

For technical measurement, hearing is not trustworthy for many/most things, and can vary quite a bit.   This is from real, personal experience, and many people have seen the results of my dependence on my hearing for my project.   In fact, since my hearing (and probably most peoples) is somewhat variable, doing a calibration over longer than a few minuts will have limited benefit.

I will give an exception for direct, immediate A/B comparisons, where there can be some reliability.

 

Reliability over days/weeks/months is VERY suspect.   For comparisons, for highly detailed differences, people usually seem not to have accurate memory beyond about 10seconds.

 

In particular, frequency response (a spectral estimate) appears to be incredibly unreliable in the general case.

Again, I am speaking for purposes where it would be desirable to have access to an objective type measurement, but sometimes such 'objective' technique/technology might not exist.