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March Audio

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I had hoped that the thread was going to be a genuine attempt to work towards discovering how audible noise floor modulation might be
I would suggest that you are naive if you think that creating a couple of files which nobody knows the composition of unknown is going to answer that question. Your objective in creating that thread does not appear to be a genuine intent to asses the issue & because I therefore decide to not take part in such a "test" you call it waring - is disingenuous to me.

The composition was explained. Why is it not genuine? The only thing that isn't revealed is the level of the modulation in the two files.

And with that you are off again, yes it is very wearing. I will leave you, as Amir, to your ASA thread and its two contributors, which is interesting in itself. Nothing further to say.
 
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fas42

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Fine. Brilliant no problem. Now use that info to to define what my hifi needs to do to make a more convincingly realistic reproduction, define what I should be looking for in a bit of equipment that helps to achieve this..
BE, the problem always was when I first got convincing replay to happen, is understanding why my brain was doing that for me. The ASA research is very clearly, to me, leading in the direction of getting the "scientific" explanation for that - the ear/brain hears sounds, it then predicts what will come next, and matches up what it is heard with those expectations. If there is high correlation, then the "illusion" continues; if the disparity is too great then the mind says, OK, I got it wrong - what's really going on - and this "internal game" continues while you listen.

In terms of getting realistic reproduction, it needs to be understood which cues are most important for this process to happen, and which artifacts disturb the correlation to the point where the brain "lets go" of the illusion.
 

John Kenny

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Well repeatedly saying people are ignoring this subject, or words to that effect, does paint a different picture.

ASA, well we get it. Your brain processes the aural information and may use specific cues and attributes to portray a sound field in you mind. these cues are allegedly very important for hifi to reproduce.

Fine. Brilliant no problem. Now use that info to to define what my hifi needs to do to make a more convincingly realistic reproduction, define what I should be looking for in a bit of equipment that helps to achieve this.

It needs to go beyond a hypothesis to be of continuing interest.
Well if you don't understand the implications of psychoacoustics to thresholds of audibility & therefore to what you consider below audibility in measurements then you will continue to be an "objectivist" who just wants the bit of the objective truth that suits.

For instance, I'll quote something from a 1994 paper which bears on this "The essential problem is that the threshold of hearing is always described for single tones and it is well known that the threshold for a tone complex is not the same as the threshold for each tone in the complex taken independently. In general, the threshold for equally exciting complexes is lower – even if the components are more than a critical-band apart."

"Detection of complexes built up of separately inaudible components occurs because of the statistical nature of detection at threshold. The probability of not detecting a complex is in fact described by the combined probability of not detecting each component when presented alone."

Tim made a point to me on the ASA thread that how could something inaudible cause any electrical signal that auditory processing could do anything with. I gave him examples of fMRI showing ultrasonic tones generating electrical signals. Here's another example where complexes built up of tones that are individually inaudible but the complex is audible.

I'll leave that with you before I go to sleep.
 

March Audio

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BE, the problem always was when I first got convincing replay to happen, is understanding why my brain was doing that for me. The ASA research is very clearly, to me, leading in the direction of getting the "scientific" explanation for that - the ear/brain hears sounds, it then predicts what will come next, and matches up what it is heard with those expectations. If there is high correlation, then the "illusion" continues; if the disparity is too great then the mind says, OK, I got it wrong - what's really going on - and this "internal game" continues while you listen.

In terms of getting realistic reproduction, it needs to be understood which cues are most important for this process to happen, and which artifacts disturb the correlation to the point where the brain "lets go" of the illusion.

Fine, no problem with this. You appear to have solved and understood the problem. You say you can get your hifi to produce this illusion for you.

Now articulate it in a specific and explicit way that allows the rest of us to to fix the "issues" with our systems to turn them into illusory masters.

If you can't I will leave you and JK to continue debating in the ASA thread. It shouldn't be discussed in this thread.
 
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John Kenny

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The composition was explained. Why is it not genuine? The only thing that isn't revealed is the level of the modulation in the two files.

And with that you are off again, yes it is very wearing. I will leave you, as Amir, to your ASA thread and its two contributors, which is interesting in itself. Nothing further to say.
Thank you - I do appreciate your leaving it be
 

fas42

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Fine, no problem with this. You appear to have solved and understood the problem. You say you can get your hifi to produce this illusion for you.

Now articulate it in a specific and explicit way that allows the rest of us to to fix the "issues" with our systems to turn them into illusory masters.

If you can't I will leave you and JK to continue debating in the ASA thread. It shouldn't be discussed in this thread.
No, that is not how science works! And if I'm incorrect please inform me why ... a scientist makes an observation ... and makes it repeatedly - unless I'm off the planet, he doesn't say, "Hmmm, I don't have an immediate explanation for this at hand. Therefore, what I experienced never happened - and I should just ignore it."

IOW, I'm on a learning curve with this, to this day. I have only just started to assimilate what's in the ASA material, literally a few days ago and a lot of it looks very promising, the concepts match my experiences. And I'll continue to correlate my experiences and ASA as I peruse the literature ...

What I have "solved", to some degree, is being able to repeat the observations, with a variety of equipment - IOW the behaviour was not unique to one combination of equipment - thus demonstrating to some degree that this is a function of the brain, not the equipment.

The "how" to get an observable example I have repeated over and over again, in endless posts, etc, over the years - my advantage is that I know what to listen for, to be able to tell whether I'm getting close to that behaviour - and that's somewhat difficult to communicate to someone else.
 

March Audio

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No, that is not how science works! And if I'm incorrect please inform me why ... a scientist makes an observation ... and makes it repeatedly - unless I'm off the planet, he doesn't say, "Hmmm, I don't have an immediate explanation for this at hand. Therefore, what I experienced never happened - and I should just ignore it."

IOW, I'm on a learning curve with this, to this day. I have only just started to assimilate what's in the ASA material, literally a few days ago and a lot of it looks very promising, the concepts match my experiences. And I'll continue to correlate my experiences and ASA as I peruse the literature ...

What I have "solved", to some degree, is being able to repeat the observations, with a variety of equipment - IOW the behaviour was not unique to one combination of equipment - thus demonstrating to some degree that this is a function of the brain, not the equipment.

The "how" to get an observable example I have repeated over and over again, in endless posts, etc, over the years - my advantage is that I know what to listen for, to be able to tell whether I'm getting close to that behaviour - and that's somewhat difficult to communicate to someone else.

OK, clearly the answer is "no you cant".

You could have posted that in one short sentence.

I'm not ignoring it, I am not denying it, its just nothing useful is coming out of the discussion. Also, you seemed to have a handle on this, your ASA with your laptop is apparently working wonders. When you have genuinely figured it out it will become very interesting.

I will leave you and JK to discuss by yourselves in the ASA thread.
 
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DonH56

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I have a great deal of knowledge and experience on a variety of topics. Many do. But, most of my knowledge I have learned over decades of schooling and experience. When teaching (rare these days), I work from a text, but for posting on the 'net most of the time I am doing it off-the-cuff, frequently while a test is running or I am at lunch at work, or in the comfort of my home media room. I do not have references close by and am posting for fun, to learn, and to share, but I am rarely rigorous in my posts. I have to do that 12 hours a day at work and I want to relax when I get home. College is easy -- I can tell the students to go do their own research and look it up. Here, the challenge is to support a position when the audience is either incapable or is uninterested in digging up those references and expects me to provide them.

That is not a slam; nobody knows everything, and not having expertise in a field makes things very hard to follow. I am tempted to call it the "JJ Issue" based on one of Amir's recent posts, but it is a problem for any expert -- it is all too easy to assume knowledge base higher than your audience. And, if I make an assertion, I should be able to back it up with hard data or theory, but I am frankly often too lazy to do so. And at times, stuff I "know" may be hard for me to find. It may be in a reference I don't have on the shelf, it may be something I remember but do not remember where it came from, or it may be in a paper either in a box buried someplace in the shed or no longer available to me (e.g. JAES papers). When AJ and others question my source, and/or fundamental knowledge, the trick is to not take it as a personal attack, realize they have every right to ask, and either look it up or simply state I do not have the reference.

The catch for them is now they would have to do the legwork, accept it, or dismiss it as unsupported. The problem with the latter is that, whether I provide the reference or not, I may be right... When I read things I tend to weigh the author as well as the data. Dilbert comic aside, if a trashman proposes a quantum physics hypothesis, I am less likely to consider it than if it came from Stephen Hawkings. Please, do not take that as an insult to trashmen (or trashwomen) everywhere...

I have the same issue in something like psychoacoustics, a subject I'd love to know more about, but simply don't have time to learn and follow up on all the papers, and as a result get in trouble whenever I try to make an assertion.

Random thoughts - Don
 

amirm

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Nothing random about it. One of the lines I learned in management training to reduce conflict in meetings was, "assume competence." Of course that is the last thing one would want to do on the Internet. There are however exceptions. People occasionally join forums that know what they are doing. And Don is one of them. This is the reason I have given him the special title as a notice that people should "assume competence" on this part. Like in a company, assumption of competence doesn't mean automatic agreement with what someone might say, but you better start way, way higher than "assume wrong" or "assume incompetence."

In this forum, I like to get to that level. Without it, we won't attract top experts to this forum. Who wants to come here and be challenged on whether they know the ABCs of their business? I remember an instance of this when I was at Microsoft and managing the Windows Media Player team among others. In short order, a few people started to tell me how WMP works! I kept telling them it was wrong and that I had even checked with the actual developers but they would continue to challenge me on that front. I quit the forum right there for a few days but then decided it was the nature of that and continued to be active. But I know of hardly anyone in the industry who looks at it this way. They always comment on how they don't know why I participate in the way I do given the hostility and challenges of everything from your manhood to 1+1 being 2.

So let's raise the bar of how we treat our resident experts like Don. I need to be able to point to examples like this to attract other experts. They need to know that they would be treated with respect and that this place is fun. Take these two away and we have no shot at it.
 

Thomas savage

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Nothing random about it. One of the lines I learned in management training to reduce conflict in meetings was, "assume competence." Of course that is the last thing one would want to do on the Internet. There are however exceptions. People occasionally join forums that know what they are doing. And Don is one of them. This is the reason I have given him the special title as a notice that people should "assume competence" on this part. Like in a company, assumption of competence doesn't mean automatic agreement with what someone might say, but you better start way, way higher than "assume wrong" or "assume incompetence."

In this forum, I like to get to that level. Without it, we won't attract top experts to this forum. Who wants to come here and be challenged on whether they know the ABCs of their business? I remember an instance of this when I was at Microsoft and managing the Windows Media Player team among others. In short order, a few people started to tell me how WMP works! I kept telling them it was wrong and that I had even checked with the actual developers but they would continue to challenge me on that front. I quit the forum right there for a few days but then decided it was the nature of that and continued to be active. But I know of hardly anyone in the industry who looks at it this way. They always comment on how they don't know why I participate in the way I do given the hostility and challenges of everything from your manhood to 1+1 being 2.

So let's raise the bar of how we treat our resident experts like Don. I need to be able to point to examples like this to attract other experts. They need to know that they would be treated with respect and that this place is fun. Take these two away and we have no shot at it.
Amir You have gone up in my estimation, 1+1 = 2 but did you use a calculator? :D
 

DonH56

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Thanks Amir.

Old geek/mathematician joke: 2 + 2 = 5 for very large values of 2. :)
 

John Kenny

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I have the same issue in something like psychoacoustics, a subject I'd love to know more about, but simply don't have time to learn and follow up on all the papers, and as a result get in trouble whenever I try to make an assertion.

Random thoughts - Don
Hi Don,
I'm not saying I'm an expert - far from it but the ASA thread is a good source of relevant info on psychoacoustics & I know Frank & I would welcome any questions you might have & we would try our best to answer them or direct you to relevant areas for information.
 
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