Interesting. If that is true, then it does auger for the idea that humans have some innate sense of how music sounds, or should sound. I don't know why that would be the case.
I wanted to ask about that. So does this result reveal that the old stories about, for example, British, German and American hi-fi buffs liking different kinds of sound as bs? Maybe they just bought what was best marketed to them.
Homo sapiens is Homo musicus.
I have the same idea or feeling; Homo sapiens is Homo musicus. Dina Kirnarskaya even insists Homo musicus is older than Homo sapiens.
The Natural Musician: On abilities, giftedness, and talent
Dina Kirnarskaya
Russian Gnesins' Academy of Music, Professor of Psychology and Musicology, Moscow, Russia
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/v...o/9780199560134.001.0001/acprof-9780199560134
Chapter-11
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/v...134.001.0001/acprof-9780199560134-chapter-011
"Homo musicus — Musical Man, who creates, performs, and listens to music — is older than Homo sapiens."
Man made music of a sort even when he did not know how to measure things or count them properly, and the very concept of numbers was still but a glimmer in his brain. He made music when he could not find the reason for natural phenomena, the rain, hail, and drought around him....
Matt, you started by saying you think drilling down through chains of assumptions and justifications can be enlightening. Yours or mine?
If you mean mine, a more cynical man than I might worry you're setting yourself up for confirmation bias.
The answer, obviously, is what every mastering engineer believes is a decent example of his work.
Answer: Every other mastering engineer's work.
You talked about tube amps: "My tube amps *seem to me* to produce a certain coloration in my system: a slightly fuller sound, slightly softer ... Let's just for sake-of-argument presume the tube amps are coloring my system, altering it slightly toward my preference. What exactly is lost or "crippled?"
Answer: plenty of work already mixed and mastered warm and syrupy. Why don't those guys get a fair shake too? I want clear glass in my window. You want a warm tint. That's fine. If you want me to say it's equally valid, I will. Hey, it's 2020.
Sure, if you love music, but are unpleasantly sensitive to part of the musical spectrum, then by all means notch it out or shelve it down. But surely that's a special case. At best a preference. Valid on every level except the scientific.
Er...if we accept the fact someone DOES have a preference it just as valid on a scientific level
Matt, that simply isn't true. If your preference is to go birdwatching with rose-tinted binoculars, why would the ornithological community accept your reports of bird colors as meaningful? Your viewing might be pleasant to you, absolutely, but it represents no scientific currency. It would have to be accepted as an empirically observable "fact" that Mr. Hooper personally prefers to view birds through a chromatically distorted lens, but such an observation doesn't bless Mr. Hooper with the same scientific credibility as Mr. Audubon or a thousand others. Actually it rules it out completely. "Don't listen to old Hooper," the scientists would say. "He thinks everything is pink."
What about parrots?
What about parrots?
If, under multiple blind listening tests, person A consistently prefers a loudspeaker with 3db more output above neutral from 8-12kHz, then it's absolutely valid to say that a speaker with 3db more output in that region is a better speaker than a neutral speaker(for person A).
I don't like to speak for other people either, so let's postulate a theoretical Mr. X, who prefers a colored and inaccurate playback chain because overall he kinda likes the mellifluous and euphonic sound it makes. That's humanly valid, societally valid, possibly musically valid, possibly valid in many, many other different ways, but a deliberate and whimsical departure from accuracy can never be scientifically valid.
Suppose Mr. X works in a medical lab, but doesn't like the image in his microscope, so he defocusses it a little, and changes the backlight to orange, and loses sight of some bacteria, but the ones he can still see are now more pleasantly rounded, and so on. Is that scientific? Would you trust Mr. X with your blood work?
Matt, that simply isn't true. If your preference is to go birdwatching with rose-tinted binoculars, why would the ornithological community accept your reports of bird colors as meaningful? Your viewing might be pleasant to you, absolutely, but it represents no scientific currency. It would have to be accepted as an empirically observable "fact" that Mr. Hooper personally prefers to view birds through a chromatically distorted lens, but such an observation doesn't bless Mr. Hooper with the same scientific credibility as Mr. Audubon or a thousand others. Actually it rules it out completely. "Don't listen to old Hooper," the scientists would say. "He thinks everything is pink."
I don't like to speak for other people either, so let's postulate a theoretical Mr. X, who prefers a colored and inaccurate playback chain because overall he kinda likes the mellifluous and euphonic sound it makes. That's humanly valid, societally valid, possibly musically valid, possibly valid in many, many other different ways, but a deliberate and whimsical departure from accuracy can never be scientifically valid. Suppose Mr. X works in a medical lab, but doesn't like the image in his microscope, so he defocusses it a little, and changes the backlight to orange, and loses sight of some bacteria, but the ones he can still see are now more pleasantly rounded, and so on. Is that scientific? Would you trust Mr. X with your blood work?
Now I know lab work carries responsibilities and obligations that listening to records doesn't, and that all we're really doing here is counting angels on the head of a pin. But honestly, I feel that if Mr. X wants to claim scientific validity for deliberate inaccuracy, he isn't making any kind of cogent sense.
It is assuming the particular value of some group of people - "the accurate description of birds" - and simply pointing out how a deviation from practices (e.g. tinted binoculars) doesn't serve that value. Well, obviously. That's the same as saying that someone who prefers a colored hi-fi system isn't serving the value of those who prefer a neutral hi-fi system.
The point was that preferences can be valid "on a scientific level" because preferences are "facts" which can be studied scientifically.
Your first para - no. It's the same as saying that someone who prefers a colored hi-fi system is abandoning scientific rigor and exiting the project, which is the unbiased interrogation of the master file presented. Which is fine, but a strange message for a science forum.
Your second para - sure, illogical choices can be studied by scientists, and reasons for them can be discovered, but understanding their derivations doesn't make the illogical choices themselves scientific.
I hate to speak for other people, but I believe that @MattHooper is just trying to say that it's scientifically valid for those for which that preference is true. I don't think he's trying to generalize it to the majority(he can correct me if I'm wrong), which I agree with.
If, under multiple blind listening tests, person A consistently prefers a loudspeaker with 3db more output above neutral from 8-12kHz, then it's absolutely valid to say that a speaker with 3db more output in that region is a better speaker than a neutral speaker(for person A).
What's not valid is to say that speaker is a better speaker(in general), but I don't think Matt is trying to say that. I could be wrong, though.
Level matching is implied.What? If it's 3db higher on 8-12khz, it simply means volume is not matched, and we already know that the louder one will be preferred more.
You're right, I should have said "If, under multiple blind listening tests, person A consistently prefers a loudspeaker with 3db more output above neutral from 8-12kHz, *and the overall level is matched, then it's absolutely valid to say that a speaker with 3db more output in that region is a better speaker than a neutral speaker(for person A)."
The point still remains the same.