Expectation Bias

[fas42]

39 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Frank, you do realize that you're talking to people here that have not heard your system, met you in person, or know anything about you except for what you've been constantly repeating here. We've not met any of these people (are there more than one?), including this mysterious friend up the road. Is he real, flesh and blood? I've heard of him and your amazing results when helping him tune his system ;)

 

 

He's a good Welsh man, with a very long, deep interest in squeezing the most from whatever he has around - at one stage I did a half-hearted attempt at having musical evenings, one or two of them; and he was the 'survivor' from that. Most times we have a good laugh when we get together, as I mention some of things said, and the attitude of, say, some members of this forum, .

 

The results he gets are from his efforts; what he gets from me is good feedback as to whether his latest ideas are going in the right direction. Early on, he was frequently sabotaging the quality, because he got excited about some idea he got from somewhere else - his ear has got much better over time, so now he has no difficulty in picking a weakness in the SQ.

 

And, of course, he has done zero to "treat the room!" ... the SQ lives or dies by how much his changes improve the integrity - as it should be ...

[botrytis]

41 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Where's the fun in that? 🙃

 

Loss of Your sanity?

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Your sanity?

 

Too late for that, I'm afraid... ;)

 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

38 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

A key word there is, "enhance" - I want the music to be as is was for the musicians, and the people who listened to them at the time. Thought experiment: you listen to a string quartet in a room; then put a soundproof barrier between them and you, put up a couple of microphones on their side at stereo speaker positions, send that signal to speakers on your side, and have them again play - I want the same experience, no more, no less.

 

Sorry to say, but that is never going to happen. The sound wave pattern produced by different instruments will simply never be reproduced in the same way by a set of speakers, for starters. Obviously there are many other aspects at play.

 

Your demonstration - which aims to prove that the room is not part of the equation - is purely theoretical.

 

Would I prefer a bad system in a good room than a great system in a bad room ? I have no idea. I would prefer a great system in a great room.

 

What constitutes a good room ? It is probably a matter of preference. The fact that you have met audiophiles who have been excessive, in your point of view, with room treatment, does not surprise me - but this is unrelated to the discussion. Your condemnation of what you perceive as excessive behavior by audiophiles has led you to adopt a reverse attitude which is just as excessive !

[kumakuma]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Thought experiment: you listen to a string quartet in a room; then put a soundproof barrier between them and you, put up a couple of microphones on their side at stereo speaker positions, send that signal to speakers on your side, and have them again play - I want the same experience, no more, no less.

 

 

No, you don't want that experience.

 

 

 

[fas42]

30 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

Sorry to say, but that is never going to happen. The sound wave pattern produced by different instruments will simply never be reproduced in the same way by a set of speakers, for starters. Obviously there are many other aspects at play.

 

The sound waves don't have to be. The ear/brain system is remarkably adept at adjusting for massive changes in sound waves - this is why you can listen to someone playing a real piano in a house, and then walk from room to room, while the playing continues; you still hear that person playing the piano, with no radical change in the sense of it, yet the sound waves if you were to record them would be monstrously different in each other area. The mind adapts; but it can't adapt once there are too many anomalies, giveaways that the sound is 'fake'.

 

30 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

Your demonstration - which aims to prove that the room is not part of the equation - is purely theoretical.

 

Could always be done, with a "competent system" ...

 

30 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Would I prefer a bad system in a good room than a great system in a bad room ? I have no idea. I would prefer a great system in a great room.

 

 

Great system in a 'bad' room, of course. If you can listen to a live instrument in that space, without, er, losing your sanity, then good reproduction won't have a problem.

 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

Okay, let's do a role call ... who here has a system that can do the mono replay trick; that is, the soundstage remains completely disconnected from the speakers, irrespective of how far left or right of the centre of the two speakers you are?

 

Crickets on this so far ... why am I not surprised?

[Allan F]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

The laws of physics don't apply to how the brain interprets the data!

The laws of physics determine what data is presented to the brain for interpretation. and that data is a product of both the playback system and the physical effect of the room upon the sound. The brain has no independent basis for "correcting", rejecting, or ignoring the latter. That is why room correction in the form of physical devices, digital signal processing, or a combination of both is employed by many to compensate for the deleterious effect of the room.
 

[botrytis]

Laws of physics also determines HOW you hear.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

The laws of physics determine what data is presented to the brain for interpretation. and that data is a product of both the playback system and the physical effect of the room upon the sound. The brain has no independent basis for "correcting", rejecting, or ignoring the latter. That is why room correction in the form of physical devices, digital signal processing, or a combination of both is employed by many to compensate for the deleterious effect of the room.
 

 

The brain most certainly does - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect. But it requires the playback system data to have sufficient integrity, so that the stream of music from the speakers constantly forms a coherent sound source. The brain hears, a) the sound data of the recording, b) any completely extraneous sounds in the listening space, and c) the reaction of the listening space to the sound data being projected into the room. It's quite easy to discard b), but c) could be the tricky one. IME, there's a quite sharp cutoff point, where the information in a) is able to dominate, and the brain can quite easily ignore c) ; the latter "doesn't make sense!", with good enough playback, and is rejected by the listening ear/brain as being irrelevant.

[fas42]

Just hunted this down,

 

 

A very nice example of how well done reproduction completely dominates the listening space - the former is what is front and centre; the place where the listeners are is insignificant.

[Allan F]

59 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The brain most certainly does - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect.

 

The "cocktail party effect" applies to sound extraneous to the source upon which the brain is focused. It has no application to the sound the brain is focused upon when listening to a music playback system, because the effect of the room is integral to that sound and is not extraneous. My last comment on the subject as it is clear that you live in your own separate reality and simply don't get it.

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

The "cocktail party effect" applies to sound extraneous to the source upon which the brain is focused. It has no application to the sound the brain is focused upon when listening to a music playback system. My last comment on the subject as it is apparent that you simply don't get it.

 

Ah, the magic of "a music playback system" strikes once again - it has unique properties which allow it to operate outside the constraints and behaviour of other sound sources - how interesting, .

[Allan F]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Ah, the magic of "a music playback system" strikes once again - it has unique properties which allow it to operate outside the constraints and behaviour of other sound sources - how interesting, .

 

Once again, you and your tunnel vision completely missed the point. Over and out!

[fas42]

Let me see ... I will construct a cocktail party situation, where each person speaking is replaced by an audio speaker - as in, a rectangular box with drivers - and play the side of a conversation for each person there, with their unique contribution to the group through their assigned speaker box.

 

Will that be subject to the Cocktail Party Effect, or not ... most interesting, .

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

The sound waves don't have to be. The ear/brain system is remarkably adept at adjusting for massive changes in sound waves - this is why you can listen to someone playing a real piano in a house, and then walk from room to room, while the playing continues; you still hear that person playing the piano, with no radical change in the sense of it, yet the sound waves if you were to record them would be monstrously different in each other area. The mind adapts; but it can't adapt once there are too many anomalies, giveaways that the sound is 'fake'.

 

But the sound is always going to be "fake" with speakers! It does not matter how "competent" they (or the rest of the system) is. 

 

Claiming that you can take a pair of Edifier speakers, or any other speaker for that matter, and apply a few tweaks to "ensure the integrity" of the system, and make it sound like "magic" (so giving the illusion of real instruments) is not credible. I don't but it, sorry. 

 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

Just hunted this down,

 

 

A very nice example of how well done reproduction completely dominates the listening space - the former is what is front and centre; the place where the listeners are is insignificant.

 

Speaker directivity is just one aspect of sound reproduction. 

[fas42]

22 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

But the sound is always going to be "fake" with speakers! It does not matter how "competent" they (or the rest of the system) is. 

 

We get a Hendrix's track, and use DSP to remove the guitar sound in it. And then have a top notch guitarist, using a live Marshall amp to accompany the track, copying the Hendrix contribution - is that going to be a fake, guitar sound?

 

22 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Moreover, claiming that you can take a pair of Edifier speakers, or any other speaker for that matter, and apply a few tweaks to "ensure the integrity" of the system, and make it sound like "magic" (so giving the illusion of real instruments) is not credible. I don't but it, sorry. 

 

 

The illusion of real instruments has been achieved repeatedly, by many enthusiasts over the years. All that I'm talking about here is working out precisely how to go about this, so that it is constantly on tap. And that the illusion never falters. Note I have repeatedly pointed out that the Edifiers have not been able to do this with complete robustness; the "close, but no cigar" stage. And the reason for that is there is at least one weakness as yet unsolved - currently the Toslink connection.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

We get a Hendrix's track, and use DSP to remove the guitar sound in it. And then have a top notch guitarist, using a live Marshall amp to accompany the track, copying the Hendrix contribution - is that going to be a fake, guitar sound?

 

Try that with an acoustical instrument. 

[fas42]

6 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

Speaker directivity is just one aspect of sound reproduction. 

 

If you have never experienced the illusion being so powerful that where you listen to a speaker is completely irrelevant, then you won't ever fully understand. And that's why I find so many high end rigs of no interest - they are quite incapable of doing this.

[fas42]

2 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

Try that with an acoustical instrument. 

 

Would be possible - where most setups fail is that they can't go loud enough, their ability to reproduce transients falls short - there's too much obvious distortion, and the giveaways are everywhere.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The illusion of real instruments has been achieved repeatedly, by many enthusiasts over the years

 

Nonsense. 

[bodiebill]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

If the sound is "messed up" by the room, then the setup ain't workin' right ...

 

Well... the room (alas) is actually part of the setup. Did you ever put your gear in a bathroom? Did the illusion stay the same?

[One and a half]

34 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Would be possible - where most setups fail is that they can't go loud enough, their ability to reproduce transients falls short - there's too much obvious distortion, and the giveaways are everywhere.

Errr, provided the recording can match, playback systems are up to the task, just requires engineering.

Either have a full blown band in your living room, failing that, then compromise on flawed chains from recording,  AC supply and any weakness Frank can dream up.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Here is an interesting read illustrating the differences between live music and home reproduction: http://www.moultonlabs.com/images/pdfs/loudspeaker_as_musical_instrument.pdf

Most of it is pretty basic, but it is a good recap.