Trust your ears

[fas42]

22 minutes ago, opus101 said:

 

Getting back to the title of the thread - I have a hypothesis that 'trust your ears' isn't anything much at all to do with the 'rejection of science' as the OP has opined. Rather its push-back against the objectivist mantra 'you can't trust your ears'.

 

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 ... 😀.

[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.

 

 

[AnotherSpin]

6 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Does that mean that objective reality doesn't exist and we shouldn't attempt to know or understand it? You can sit forever in Plato's cave and assume that the shadows you perceive represent the best reality you can hope for, and that you'll never be able to break the chains. Or you can try to break out into the light and work towards seeing the world the way it really is. Your choice.

 

How exactly are you going to know what is outside your knowing? Can you demonstrate the existence of objects outside the knowing subject? How about breaking the chains of the conceptualizing mind and gaining the freedom from illusion?

[March Audio]

3 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Surely, you are not seriously suggesting that people can't hear the difference between lossy formats such as MP3 and lossless Red Book standard audio. And despite your opinion to the contrary, the issue under discussion is very much a matter of opinion based, in the case of subjectivists, on repeatable experience. Accordingly, I see no point in carrying on this "debate" any further. Bye!

I never suggested that for one moment.  The point was that the area of what we can and cannot hear has been very thoroughly researched over many, many decades.  Its not a case of mere "opinion" as you suggested.

 

However as you bring the subject up high bit rate lossy codecs are very difficult to differentiate, and yes that fact has been very thoroughly researched.

 

No the subject under debate is not just opinion.  The thrusts of the OP, ie that of the effects of bias, is very much a proven phenomenon.  So yes trust your ears - but only when cognitive biases are removed.

[March Audio]

deleted

[March Audio]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

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

 

Are you referring to hetrodyning?

[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.

 

 

[AnotherSpin]

39 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

[..]

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

[..]

 

 

 

No reason to worry, every-thing in apparent world only seems to be true. How can an object be true if it does not remain stable and changes endlessly every millisecond, morphing from one state to another, being born and disappearing infinitely? The unchanging eternal and limitless knowing subject is the only truth.

[Summit]

10 hours ago, March Audio said:

Proof that God does not exist and that black is white.

 

https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4

 

 

Present objective proof that God does exist instead, and try to say what’s black and white in total darkness 💣

 

 

[March Audio]

Dear oh dear, I think the comedy is lost on some people.

[Summit]

Yes, how should one be able to know the difference when someone constantly states that everything that exists can be measured 🤣.

[AnotherSpin]

1 hour ago, Summit said:

 

Present objective proof that God does exist instead, and try to say what’s black and white in total darkness 💣

 

 

 

Exactly. The mind adapts objects according to pre-embedded concepts and habits. This is called an illusion.

[pkane2001]

33 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Exactly. The mind adapts objects according to pre-embedded concepts and habits. This is called an illusion.

At least attempt to struggle to free yourself from the chains. You may be able to see the light. Of course, if you’ve already given up, there is no chance, you’ll see everything as shadows.

[March Audio]

8 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

At least attempt to struggle to free yourself from the chains. You may be able to see the light. Of course, if you’ve already given up, there is no chance, you’ll see everything as shadows.

I actually think that anotherspin and Summit don't exist.  They are just an illusion.  My mind sort of has pre embedded expectations of stupid stuff on forums. As such can safely be ignored 🤪

[pkane2001]

11 minutes ago, March Audio said:

I actually think that anotherspin and Summit don't exist.  They are just an illusion.  My mind sort of has pre embedded expectations of stupid stuff on forums. As such can safely be ignored 🤪

Ha! Agreed. It wasn’t me talking. I was channeling Plato, as AnotherSpin apparently asked to talk to him.

[AnotherSpin]

59 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

At least attempt to struggle to free yourself from the chains. You may be able to see the light. Of course, if you’ve already given up, there is no chance, you’ll see everything as shadows.

 

You can give any characteristics you want, no problem. Am I correct in assuming that you can not demonstrate how objects can exist without you knowing about it?

[Summit]

11 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

You can give any characteristics you want, no problem. Am I correct in assuming that you can not demonstrate how objects can exist without you knowing about it?

 

Some of those that pretend to be objective already know everything that exists, their affect and how to measure them 🤣.

[AnotherSpin]

19 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

Some of those that pretend to be objective already know everything that exists, their affect and how to measure them 🤣.

 

Yes, every thing is in everyone's knowing. 

[Racerxnet]

32 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

Some of those that pretend to be objective already know everything that exists, their affect and how to measure them 🤣.

Stick your finger in a flame and tell me it's an illusion that it is painful. The smoke from your burning flesh you do not smell. The flame is NOT approximately 3000 degrees. Jab your eye with the imaginary screwdriver, the results are not real. Stick your tongue on the bare 120 volt wire. Subjectively,what's going to happen? Off to church on this imaginary Fathers Day. 

[AnotherSpin]

4 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

Stick your finger in a flame and tell me it's an illusion that it is painful. The smoke from your burning flesh you do not smell. The flame is NOT approximately 3000 degrees. Jab your eye with the imaginary screwdriver, the results are not real. Stick your tongue on the bare 120 volt wire. Subjectively,what's going to happen? Off to church on this imaginary Fathers Day. 

 

Nobody is telling pain does not exist. Of course it exist -- in your knowing. Altogether with any other combination of thoughts, or feelings. Also, pain is not wrong, it is right, because it is. What is can not be wrong, it is right. Another thing, the mental perception of pain is an illusion in the sense that the mind assigns a quality to pain. What might be a severe pain for one person is merely light disturbance to another. Also, pain ceases to be pain when the mind is switched off, in deep sleep.

[Summit]

39 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

Stick your finger in a flame and tell me it's an illusion that it is painful. The smoke from your burning flesh you do not smell. The flame is NOT approximately 3000 degrees. Jab your eye with the imaginary screwdriver, the results are not real. Stick your tongue on the bare 120 volt wire. Subjectively,what's going to happen? Off to church on this imaginary Fathers Day. 

 

Why should I do any of those horrible things you suggest? It's not I that constantly rant about illusions and demanding proof of observations and things we  experiencing with our senses.

[Allan F]

14 hours ago, March Audio said:

Proof that God does not exist and that black is white.

 

https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4

 

Shouldn't it more appropriately be called the Un-Babel fish?

[pkane2001]

3 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

You can give any characteristics you want, no problem. Am I correct in assuming that you can not demonstrate how objects can exist without you knowing about it?

Ive demonstrated it perfectly to myself. Since you only exist in my imagination, I have no inclination to demonstrate it to you ;)

[kumakuma]

Deleted.

[AnotherSpin]

28 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Ive demonstrated it perfectly to myself. Since you only exist in my imagination, I have no inclination to demonstrate it to you ;)

 

You have not, it is not possible. But, no worry, I've stopped arguing within my head, and I care even less about arguing with anyone else. Have a nice day.