The ASR "objectivists tribe" ;) has to read the Keynotes at the AES160th by Lars Risbo

[MattHooper]

Rick, I’m surprised you’re missing the point here…

Come on, Matt. It's super-easy to measure the grain difference in those two images.

And….?


It could be super easy to measure the distortion on a vinyl record that one might reasonably describe as causing a “ grainy” sound or texture. (cheap perhaps vinyl service noise or inner groove distortion or whatever can cause a granular type of roughness).

But the point is not that grain is easy or difficult to measure--I would expect it to be easy once we define it--it's that the people who use the word have no idea what it means, or even what it sounds like in a way they can convey to someone else.

But that’s missing the point.

As I pointed out, often we are dealing with something we perceive first and later we come up with the technical explanation.
And just like the distortion on the picture on the left can be perceived versus the picture on the right even without a technical explanation, we can seek to characterize that particular distortion in subjective terms “ grainy” - and then we could go onto figure out what is causing this distortion that we have a label for.

I was responding to the question of how, in sound, we would define or characterize “granular texture.”

So I gave a definition, with examples of the perceptual effect of this distortion.

If somebody asks for a definition or characterization, and then that is supplied, it does no good to hand wave it away and ignore this “ because other people may be using the term imprecisely” - that’s just a flat out refusal to engage the content of the reply.
It would mean nobody could ever satisfy such a request, like a request for a definition, not made in good faith.

So the point is in principle, we can define and characterize the subjective impressions produced by a distortion… even before we know exactly what produced that distortion.
Just as “grainy” seems like a reasonable term to describe the distortion of one of the photos, there’s nothing in principle against a certain type of distortion being identified as “grainy” - insofar as reasonable associations can be drawn.

(and as it happens… certainly people can agree that certain distortions sound grainy)

Rick "visual and aural share undefined adjectives only under protest" Denney

Perhaps you missed that I didn’t ONLY adduce a visual analogy to the photos.
That was simply to show how we arrive at useful subjectively described characteristics in another domain.

I also included the comparison of strictly sonic characteristics - how a distortion can have similar sonic characteristics heard in “lightly rubbing sandpaper on an object, lightly pouring fine sand, or grains of sand being agitated over a sheet of paper. ”
In which the sound of a certain distortion can share a similar texture or granular character.


Let’s not go overboard in trying to reduce the usefulness of language.
(I mean, my goodness…. if such sonic descriptions could not lead to any expectation of how something will sound, the name of plenty of my sound effects plug-ins would be completely baffling and wouldn’t give me any insight into what type of character they’re going to impose on the sound!)

 

[Mort]

For the record, I think the overall point Lars is making is accurate and important about the limits of audio science today and the undeveloped research needed.

But the way he chose to tell the story and frame the participants is click-bait at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.

 

[voodooless]

Lol an entertaining thread for sure. Lots of great minds and thoughts.

So if we agree that more research is needed in psycho-acoustics, which should not be difficult to agree, then the two practical questions:

1) Who will pay for that and why? Last time I checked there is no free lunch, not only in America but globally.

I guess Purifi should put the money where their mouth is. If they think they found solutions to audible problems, why not go the extra mile to prove it.

Generally though, I think the industry has very little incentive to do to research. The circle of confusion has served them well for decades. Why change the status quo.

So really, this would come form the companies that do want to step up, or the crazy individuals that go the extra mile to find out. Some universities will also still do research into the subject. But also this isn’t free.

2) How will we determine the relevancy of such research? I would think that Statistics is a branch of science that would bear relevance to that, but then seems that that is also in a bit of disarray except at the macro level - which I don't believe we will ever reach in the psycho-acoustics area?

Relevant compared to what? This is a very complex topic. Audibility is one thing, but how audible, and in what situations? How does this compare to any of the other audible effects? It’s really difficult to quantify all that. So let’s start with the simple things here: determine audibility. Then go from there

 

[Paul7777x]

For the record, I think the overall point Lars is making is accurate and important about the limits of audio science today and the undeveloped research needed.

But the way he chose to tell the story and frame the participants is click-bait at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.

I agree, except that I believe he knew precisely what he was doing.

And chose his words, all of them, quite carefully.

 

[Mort]

Generally though, I think the industry has very little incentive to do to research. The circle of confusion has served them well for decades. Why change the status quo.

This ^ - there is no economic reason to do research because the entire subjectivist product pitch is that measurements are meaningless and 'trust your ears'.

It would have been nice if Lars committed purifi to conducting some of the research themselves.

 

[Paul7777x]

This ^ - there is no economic reason to do research because the entire subjectivist product pitch is that measurements are meaningless and 'trust your ears'.

It would have been nice if Lars committed purifi to conducting some of the research themselves.

Yes to both. But I’m not sure Purifi is big enough to do any serious research into anything as complex as psychoacoustics.

 

[Mort]

Yes to both. But I’m not sure Purifi is big enough to do any serious research into anything as complex as psychoacoustics.

That might be true but it's really the thought that counts.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Wikipedia:Statistics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Wow. an average of 2 edits per second to English Wikipedia, and yet there's no mention of audio at The list of pseudoscience topics. I'll need to have a word with the editors there...

 

[Paul7777x]

And… not remotely related, but I’d rather they did research into a (relatively) full range driver. Say from around 200Hz to 16khz.

 

[MatrixS2000]

So let’s start with the simple things here: determine audibility. Then go from there

YUP!

 

[Salt]

No one here wanting to discuss impulse/step response on this topic?

 

[Mort]

Wow. an average of 2 edits per second to English Wikipedia, and yet there's no mention of audio at The list of pseudoscience topics. I'll need to have a word with the editors there...

That's a good list. Under Psychology

Golden Ear: A pseudo-scientific practice asserting that, despite a lack of measurements of objective proof, some people have super-hearing that enables them to hear music and other audio content better and differently than the average human. This is generally applied to the purchase of audio reproduction equipment.

 

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[voodooless]

No one here wanting to discuss impulse/step response on this topic?

What is often overlooked, is that time and frequency domains are fully linked. You can losslessly convert from one to the other. Pretenting the one hides something the other would not show is just ignorance.

 

[PristineSound]

why not go the extra mile to prove it.

They actually may have already but don't want to publish anything, as it may be considered as IP and why give free help to competition?

We are all so spoiled with Dr. Toole and Dr. Olive publishing their scientific experiments and studies. It was part of their employment contract at Harman. That was the only way they would work for Harman.

If I owned a business, I absolutely won't be sharing any of my IP.

 

[voodooless]

They actually may have already but don't want to publish anything, as it may be considered as IP and why give free help to competition?

So the key point for selling otherwise published measurements of their technology is a secret? Usually you would do that the other way around: publish about audibility of your undisclosed technology.

 

[Power Pop 23]

They actually may have already but don't want to publish anything, as it may be considered as IP and why give free help to competition?

We are all so spoiled with Dr. Toole and Dr. Olive publishing their scientific experiments and studies. It was part of their employment contract at Harman. That was the only way they would work for Harman.

And a thank you to the late Dr. Sidney Harman for agreeing to the terms.

If I owned a business, I absolutely won't be sharing any of my IP.

 

[PristineSound]

So the key point for selling otherwise published measurements of their technology is a secret? Usually you would do that the other way around: publish about audibility of your undisclosed technology.

I was referring to this statement:

If they think they found solutions to audible problems, why not go the extra mile to prove it.

Sometimes a solution isn't hard, if you know the problem. So perhaps proving a problem exists, gives competitive urgency to create products that's in parity to yours.

 

[NTK]

How can you know when Toole hasn't really tested some quality treatment or done any comparisons here? This is exactly the problems with such studies, they are very limited.

And what exactly does "listen through rooms" mean? That the room has no influence on sound quality?
Clearly that's not the case considering how much the room influences, something everybody knows who either has experiences same setup in different rooms, been to hifi shows or tested different positions in rooms or experienced with treatment.

Do you speaker sound the same whether you place them in a naked 15m2 room with tiles vs a well treated 35m2 room? No, the difference is huge. Frequency response and time domain will be very different. The irony here is that Toole's research support the audibility of difference in frequency response.

I think what Toole is trying to say here is that we can still enjoy music under different conditions. But different conditions that has been tested are very limited. So it says very little about sound quality in regards to the influence of treatment and different types of rooms.

Supporting data? What about just using your ears at some of those YouTube videos where they compare untreated rooms to treated? The difference is striking, even when listening through a phone. "Listening through a room" with such major differences immediately becomes rather silly.

Dr Toole built the speaker shuffler room at Harman for the purpose of comparative evaluation of loudspeakers by listeners, and for not rooms nor for room treatments. Well, yes, room geometry, furnishings, and acoustic treatments will all greatly affect the quality of the reproduced sounds in the room. If rooms make no difference, people wouldn't be spending substantial amounts of time and money on concert hall acoustic research.

The preparation study Dr Toole did was to show, for the purpose of evaluating relative sound quality of loudspeakers, rooms had no significant confounding influence. Good loudspeakers ranked higher in listening tests than poor loudspeakers regardless of the rooms in which the comparisons were conducted (as long as they were compared in the same room), and therefore one speaker shuffler room was sufficient for the job.

In the same preparation work, Dr Toole also looked at the differences of rooms. Since blind, fast physical switching between rooms wasn't possible, he used binaural recordings in the comparisons. The results were the following, and they showed the effects from the rooms overwhelmed those from the loudspeakers. These results therefore showed that, even with rooms of very different sound quality, when listeners were given the little bit of time to adapt to the room, they could "listen through the room", and were able to rate the sound quality of loudspeakers with high consistency.

 

[Salt]

What is often overlooked, is that time and frequency domains are fully linked. You can losslessly convert from one to the other. Pretenting the one hides something the other would not show is just ignorance.

This is well known by me (and others), but no place to discuss here?