An Enticing Marketing Story, Theory Without Measurement?

[Bentoronto]

Misplaced 'room correction' is the equivalent of the monitor with strange colours, 'blooms' around stationary objects and trails behind moving objects. You might still see the objects, but they're all being imbued with an unnatural characteristic that blurs the separation between them and destroys the illusion of a 'reality'. But overall the screen combined with the ambient room reflections and selected calibration sequences gives an average of 'grey' when measured with a single photocell at the viewing position, so it must be accurate, of course.

Room EQ does not reconstruct the room. It changes the speaker output without changing the percept of the room. So you are right to say it is like distorting the source.

The listener "computes" the soundscape from the available cues and using Gestalt-like heuristics. In a vision process, the "objects" that the brain construes can be all kinds of corporeal things (like a triangle) and some rather conceptual things like "turning counter-clockwise" as in the non-veridical perception you get when tape recorder reels stop turning. Others can identify what is comparable in sound better than I can.

It isn't helpful to think in terms of manipulating the sound reaching the listener. Better is to think in terms of manipulating the building block cues reaching the listener so they can compute good sound objects.

 

[Cosmik]

Better is to think in terms of manipulating the building block cues reaching the listener so they can compute good sound objects.

I presume you mean at the recording stage? I don't think there is anything meaningful we can/should do at the playback stage except ensure clean reproduction.

 

[Bentoronto]

Those quantities can, however, be used to ensure that we hear the objects at their best and crucially with maximum separation (a CRT might have shown your triangle with pincushion distortion, and if its resolution was poor it wouldn't have been as clear; if it had a strange colour cast or was set up too dim or offensively bright it would get in the way of seeing the pure illusion; there would be many ways to smear the objects together and lose the clean separation between them).

The law of good (or simple) contour isn't based on colour per se (you may have been "taken in" by the illusion like all of us).

Without understanding the "law" you can't work with it successfully. But what stimuli and what competing and/or discrepant cues are in play is an applied-science question which is handled in the recording studio as a matter of art, just as painters produce "studies" leading to a final work.

Perhaps psychologists should spend more time with hearing so as to progress on figuring out what are the effective parameters of cues and the sound heuristic. For sure, the graphic artists (and fine artists like Escher) who produce entertaining "optical illusions" are working just like a recording team, sussing out the best artwork before outputting it.

My point here is that you need to think in terms of cues and heuristics, not timbre, phase, and arrival time.

 

[GrimSurfer]

It isn't helpful to think in terms of manipulating the sound reaching the listener. Better is to think in terms of manipulating the building block cues reaching the listener so they can compute good sound objects.

It IS helpful to think in terms of manipulating the sound reaching the user... because this is actually what it is doing.

The second sentence is pseudo scientific, psycho acoustic bullshit. Emphasis on the bullshit.

We can see this for what it is through deconstruction:

1. What are "building block cues"?

2. What is a "sound object"?

 

[GrimSurfer]

The law of good (or simple) contour isn't based on colour per se (you may have been "taken in" by the illusion like all of us).

Without understanding the "law" you can't work with it successfully. But what stimuli and what competing and/or discrepant cues are in play is an applied-science question which is handled in the recording studio as a matter of art, just as painters produce "studies" leading to a final work.

Perhaps psychologists should spend more time with hearing so as to progress on figuring out what are the effective parameters of cues and the sound heuristic. For sure, the graphic artists (and fine artists like Escher) who produce entertaining "optical illusions" are working just like a recording team, sussing out the best artwork before outputting it.

My point here is that you need to think in terms of cues and heuristics, not timbre, phase, and arrival time.

What is this "law of good contour"? Please provide a reference describing it and demonstrating its acceptance in science.

 

[Cosmik]

The law of good (or simple) contour isn't based on colour per se (you may have been "taken in" by the illusion like all of us).

I wasn't taken in by anything, thanks very much. You'd probably agree that if the image had colour fringes around the blobs or the blobs were different colours, etc. it might not 'work' as well - or it might work 'better' but seeing as the audio system doesn't know anything about the illusion or the intention, that would be a fault in the reproduction.

 

[Bentoronto]

I presume you mean at the recording stage? I don't think there is anything meaningful we can/should do at the playback stage except ensure clean reproduction.

It is true you don't control anything except at the production end. But in fact the issue here and always in the past has been what gets finally delivered in the car or ear buds or Martin Logans and what studio monitor helps get there.

But back to cues. Think of the movie sound person. The scene is a large deserted factory at night with actors running; but the dialog is recorded in a dead-silent echo-less booth. Think cues: does that "work" in propelling (a) the purposes of the script or even more to our own little world (b) the "reality" of the sound?

As in my previous reply, it ultimately is really a matter of getting the parameters straight. What helps and challenges the ability of the listener to compute the correct percepts (or at least the message the director wants to impart)? Up-close mic'ing? Being out of breath? Background factory noises? Factory timbre? The kind of mic used in such locations? Some may matter and some may not but the consideration is by cues not Hertz'.

 

[Bentoronto]

I wasn't taken in by anything, thanks very much

Sorry if that seemed like a personal attack. But I didn't say you were taken in. I said (a) you were as it were "taken in" and (b) we all were.

Yes, at some extreme, a bad monitor will render the illusion ineffective. But thinking in terms of colour is an example of following an unproductive course of action due to inadequate grasp of the key parameters in producing this effect.... with obvious analogy to our sound thread.

To make the oboe a more distinct perceptual object in an orchestra, should you turn up the treble on the oboe mic? All the time or during solo passages?

 

[GrimSurfer]

Wouldn't it be interesting if this thread and the one on BACCH merged?

 

[Dialectic]

Wouldn't it be interesting if this thread and the one on BACCH merged?

BACCH is based on measurements. One has to take measurements to use the more advanced versions of BACCH. The lab where BACCH was developed includes advanced measurement facilities where highly illuminating directivity measurements of loudspeakers have been taken.

So please give it a rest.

 

[Bentoronto]

... is pseudo scientific, psycho acoustic bullshit. Emphasis on the bullshit.

We can see this for what it is through deconstruction:

1. What are "building block cues"?

2. What is a "sound object"?

What is your reaction to the oboe issue at the end of post 408? When Beethoven wants you to attend to the oboe, what to do? Aside from the part the artists play in this, room EQ or think about the cues that make the oboe salient*?


*Key take-away point: of which, cranking up the mic loudness parameter is only one cue

 

[Cosmik]

To make the oboe a more distinct perceptual object in an orchestra, should you turn up the treble on the oboe mic? All the time or during solo passages?

But I find that to be one of these audiophile misunderstandings: they imagine that 'the sound' is something that should be played with in that way. If you turn up the treble then sure, you may make the oboe stand out, but you are also changing the sound of the oboe. At the moment you begin turning the knob, you are taking part in the performance *and* doing it by 'flavouring' the sound in a particularly crude way. If there are other things coming through the same channel as the oboe, you are also turning them up - or some proportion of their spectrum. You thus smear them all with the same crude brush.

So no, don't turn up the treble - the listener can cope without and will ultimately prefer 'solidity' rather than a squishy sound that's always changing. And who is this maestro who knows whether the oboe is meant to stand out or not? A trained conductor familiar with the piece? An eminent musicologist? No, some bloke who normally mixes rap music.

 

[Dialectic]

But I find that to be one of these audiophile misunderstandings: they imagine that 'the sound' is something that should be played with in that way. If you turn up the treble then sure, you may make the oboe stand out, but you are also changing the sound of the oboe. At the moment you begin turning the knob, you are taking part in the performance *and* doing it by 'flavouring' the sound in a particularly crude way. If there are other things coming through the same channel as the oboe, you are also turning them up - or some proportion of their spectrum. You thus smear them all with the same crude brush.

So no, don't turn up the treble - the listener can cope without and will ultimately prefer 'solidity' rather than a squishy sound that's always changing. And who is this maestro who knows whether the oboe is meant to stand out or not? A trained conductor familiar with the piece? An eminent musicologist? No, some bloke who normally mixes rap music.

On more than 90% of commercial orchestral recordings, spot mics--not EQ--are used to play with the sound by emphasizing certain instruments at certain times in the music. (This practice is purportedly the speciality of DG's so-called tonmeisters.) This practice works reasonably well when done correctly, but changes in spot mic levels do cause a change in spatial perspective that is audible on good systems--particularly through BACCH.

 

[GrimSurfer]

What is your reaction to the oboe issue at the end of post 408? When Beethoven wants you to attend to the oboe, what to do? Aside from the part the artists play in this, room EQ or think about the cues that make the oboe salient*?


*Key take-away point: of which, cranking up the mic loudness parameter is only one cue

You haven't answered the questions. What are building block cues and sound objects? English please.

 

[Bentoronto]

You haven't answered the questions. What are building block cues and sound objects? English please.

Please see post 386.

"Cues" means "features of a stimulus that are perceived and used by an organism in a particular situation or setting to identify and make judgments about that stimulus and its properties."

The term "building block" is redundant but meant to help finesse the meaning for people new to the study of perception.

"Sound objects" isn't any sort of standard term; I used it instead of repeating "percepts" too much.

 

[GrimSurfer]

You're either working with a poor online translation programme or you're grappling issues which are not yet clear in your mind.

Your continued reliance on analogy (painting, canvas, etc) and use of invented terms (Gestalt like heuristics, building block cues, sound objects) seems intended more to impress than inform.

 

[Bentoronto]

Gestalt like heuristics

For those who may have failed Psych 101, here are a few reminder words about Gestalt theory as applied to photography.

https://www.adorama.com/alc/0013706...-Psychology-That-Can-Improve-Your-Photography

About that "heuristic" thing, frankly I made it up myself to replace using the rather stilted notion of "laws". But I was just using the current meme based on Kahneman's fabulous best-seller book. And Kahneman did win a Nobel Prize for his heuristics... but then, you certainly must know all about that.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Well, at least we've established that your background isn't in EE, physics... or sound.

 

[Dialectic]

Well, at least we've established that your background isn't in EE... or sound.

I'm glad the not-very-well-read or -informed guy who's been here for a month has established that one needs a B.E. in electrical engineering from Blowhard State University to participate in the discussion.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Better a degree in one of the hard sciences than a Master's of Bullshit from the Ronald M. Popeil and Sally Struthers School of Marketing.