Making Sense: How sound becomes hearing

[anotherhobby]

Yesterday I stumbled across an article on vox.com called What science still doesn’t know about the five senses. It's about a podcast series, and the one they were highlighting was called Making Sense: How sound becomes hearing. I found this podcast to be fascinating, and echos so much of what gets discussed here on how we perceive sound, subjectivity, and how what we hear is influenced by much more than the sound itself. The podcast goes deep into the topic of how "it’s like we’re all listening to a play performed in our heads just for us."

In the first half they have a researcher that discovered and then developed some auditory illusions that are very interesting. She discusses her research and her fascination with it, and the implications of what it means as to how we perceive sound. You need headphones to experience the illusions, and not all of them worked perfectly on me, but some of them absolutely did, and even with the ones that didn't work, I could see how and why they worked for most people.

In the second half they go into cochlear implants, and talk about how quickly the brain adapts to the electrical impulses to perceive it as sound, and the how it adapts further to tonality and other qualities. The way that our brains construct a new reality around what we are expecting to hear.

This certainly piles a lot more evidence on top of just how unreliable subjective audio testing really is. I can't recommend this podcast episode enough for anybody that's interested in the ideas around sound reproduction and perception. I'm also really looking forward to the rest of the series as this is just the first one. I enjoyed the conclusion so much I transcribed it below:

The brain is constantly editing, shaping, and building the world that we hear. Our brain, our life experience, our familiarity with a piece of music, it all shapes how we hear, and what we hear. Which raises a pretty fundamental question. When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the real music? Is it in my mind of the composer? Or is it in the mind of the conductor who worked long hours to shape the orchestral performance? Is it in the mind of someone in the audience who has never heard it before and doesn't know what to expect? And the answer is surely that there is no one real version of the music, but many. And each one is shaped by the knowledge and expectations that listeners bring to their experiences. The idea that to a very real extent our brains conjure different individual realities inside our heads... On on hand, it's a clear reminder to be humbled, and not just for hearing. No matter how certain we are, what we perceive isn't unfiltered reality, so it's worth questioning ourselves at our most stubborn moments. At the same time though... How cool are brains!?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Thank you

 

[jeroboam]

Came across this video and thought it might be of some interest:-

 

[Spkrdctr]

The brain is constantly editing, shaping, and building the world that we hear. Our brain, our life experience, our familiarity with a piece of music, it all shapes how we hear, and what we hear. Which raises a pretty fundamental question. When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the real music? Is it in my mind of the composer? Or is it in the mind of the conductor who worked long hours to shape the orchestral performance? Is it in the mind of someone in the audience who has never heard it before and doesn't know what to expect? And the answer is surely that there is no one real version of the music, but many. And each one is shaped by the knowledge and expectations that listeners bring to their experiences. The idea that to a very real extent our brains conjure different individual realities inside our heads... On on hand, it's a clear reminder to be humbled, and not just for hearing. No matter how certain we are, what we perceive isn't unfiltered reality, so it's worth questioning ourselves at our most stubborn moments. At the same time though... How cool are brains!?

I wish we could get the above pinned for it would be used constantly. Letting people know that our hearing IS NOT what we think it is. Very low sensitivity and filtered a LOT by the brain. A very interesting issue is that with all of this going on, how are all of our brains giving most of us relatively the same sound? Millions of ears and brains will hear a truck drive by and know it is a truck. If you think about it, what our brains do in controlling our hearing is amazing. Long live the brain!

 

[caught gesture]

When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the real music?

If we look at the sheet music, can’t we determine what is the real music? The interpretation might be different, but the notes, their fundamental frequencies (using the standard Western A440 which serves as a tuning standard for the musical note of A above middle C) and duration as scored by the composer is surely the “real music”.