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We hear what we expect to hear

krabapple

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Killingbeans

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Indeed interesting. A bit like the branch predictor in modern microprocessor architectures.

And yes, it's been formed by evolution to conserve energy. It will not reveal details in music... on the contrary :D
 
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Feelas

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This is actually pretty impressive and not necessarily bad, since if one is accustomed to neutral audio (e.g. acoustic music in nicely reverberant spaces), you can pretty much predict that they're getting "the most musical components" from the recordings, even on bad gear (unless it deviates pretty badly or misses stuff entirely). OTOH, that'd mean that audio engineers and musicians will focus & hear absolutely different stuff, given (impossible) identical anatomical features and the same hardware.
 

Phorize

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‘WYSIATI—What You See Is All There Is.’ Daniel Kahneman
 

Phorize

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That’s an interesting study. Of course Kahneman & Tversky published a pretty conclusive paper establishing cognitive bias as foundational element of human behaviour study in 1973. Audiophiles are immune to it obviously, but their shaman still don’t enjoy being reminded of this research. For a laugh I pointed this out to the ever popular audio sales glove puppet Darko. It would be characteristic of a human brain to erroneously attribute what followed to my actions, but he did completely close down the comments on his YouTube channel shortly afterwards. Just sayin’.
 
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raistlin65

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That’s an interesting study. Of course Kahneman & Tversky published a pretty conclusive paper establishing cognitive bias as foundational element of human behaviour study in 1973. Audiophiles are immune to it obviously, but their shaman still don’t enjoy being reminded of this research. For a laugh I pointed this out to the ever popular audio sales glove puppet Darko. It would be characteristic of a human brain to erroneously attribute what followed to my actions, but he did completely close down the comments on his YouTube channel shortly afterwards. Just sayin’.

I think every human very much needs to read Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow to understand how that initial research has been extended. Thinking Fast and Slow should be required reading for every college student. It would dramatically improve the way a lot of people think for the rest of their lives.

However, while that research should open people's minds to the possibility of audio perception bias, this neurological research is direct evidence. Glad to see you shared it with Darko. Can't wait to see how other outspoken subjectivists respond to it.
 

Frank Dernie

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During my career I spent a fair bit of time away from home but none more than a period I worked in France and before I got a permanent place to live I was in a small village hotel and took a little pair of AR Powered Partners and a portable CD player so I could listen in my room.

Anyway, one evening particularly enjoying what I was listening to and thinking it sounded great i asked myself if I needed the fancy hifi I had at home because it seemed to me it didn't really sound much better.

Anyway, I brought the ARs home at the weekend and set them up next to my main system, which then would have been Spectral DAC, preamp and power amp driving Sonus Faber Extremas.

Well the ARs sounded pitiful in direct comparison, spectacularly so. I really wasn't finding my enjoyment ruined in the hotel though.
I am sure my brain fills in what my ears don't get in a car or with a portable on music I know.
 

sergeauckland

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I can relate to Frank's story above as I had a similar experience with my little Genelecs when in our cottage in France. In the absence of a direct comparison, they sounded very good indeed, and it was only at home that their limitations were noticed.

As to expectation bias, I'm the worse person to take a blind test of most electronics (not to say cables). I don't expect to hear a difference, and I don't. That's true also sighted, even more so than blind.

Asked to express a preference rather than same/different, then sighted I can do so easily, blind more difficult.

Blind tests work best on those that refuse to take them.....

S.
 

Zensō

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I think every human very much needs to read Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow to understand how that initial research has been extended. Thinking Fast and Slow should be required reading for every college student. It would dramatically improve the way a lot of people think for the rest of their lives.

However, while that research should open people's minds to the possibility of audio perception bias, this neurological research is direct evidence. Glad to see you shared it with Darko. Can't wait to see how other outspoken subjectivists respond to it.
I’d guess they’re likely to ignore it, as they’ve ignored all of the other evidence to dispute their questionable findings.
 

Feelas

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I think every human very much needs to read Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow to understand how that initial research has been extended. Thinking Fast and Slow should be required reading for every college student. It would dramatically improve the way a lot of people think for the rest of their lives.

However, while that research should open people's minds to the possibility of audio perception bias, this neurological research is direct evidence. Glad to see you shared it with Darko. Can't wait to see how other outspoken subjectivists respond to it.
Still, one should be on guard and wary of the fact, that psychological research is subject to a severe reproduction crisis, thus even with famous Stanford's Prison Experiment it's not entirely possible to regard it as showing anything viable, due to being impossible to reproduce and being said (actually source from Stanford's tapes) that Zimbardo somehow influenced the experiment, putting many other experiments into question.

Kahneman would probably be the first to tell you that it's a mistake to disregard things, when you're not entirely sure what the state-of-art says. It's a different type of bias to disregard things entirely, and this is not real scientific skepticism.
 

pozz

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It will not reveal details in music... on the contrary :D
It will once you are trained. This is the same ability responsible for voluntarily selecting specific auditory streams out of a hubbub, like one person talking on a noisy street or a specific instrument in a piece of music. I don't think the exact relationship is understood, from what I've read.
 

raistlin65

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I can relate to Frank's story above as I had a similar experience with my little Genelecs when in our cottage in France. In the absence of a direct comparison, they sounded very good indeed, and it was only at home that their limitations were noticed.

Which suggests there might be some listener tolerance when we don't have better measuring equipment to compare against.

In other words, while speaker A sounds significantly better than speaker B in direct comparison, speaker B might be able to offer the same level of aesthetic experience if the listener stops comparing it to better speakers.

Maybe there's a threshold for speaker or headphone accuracy where the brain does not need increased accuracy to have a better experience? And of course, this threshold could be different from person to person and influenced by other factors. For example, a violinist could be more sensitive to how string instruments are rendered. Or perhaps one person's hearing is just a little better than another's.

And it could depend on how one listens. Very analytical listening of music that pays focused attention to detail might benefit for more accuracy than one who simply immerses themselves in the emotional experience of the music.
 

Feelas

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I would say it's just normal acclimation/accommodation. The same we Toole says we begin to 'hear through' a room's defects after a short time.
Exactly. There's been research about people having molds put into ear, so HRTF is wrong and placement is perceived wrongly, and after some time people were able to locate sound as well in space, as with original ear shape.
 

Killingbeans

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It will once you are trained. This is the same ability responsible for voluntarily selecting specific auditory streams out of a hubbub, like one person talking on a noisy street or a specific instrument in a piece of music. I don't think the exact relationship is understood, from what I've read.

Makes sense. I guess it can be either a curse or a blessing.

Speaking of streams in a hubbub, I've been told it also heavily relies on binaural cues. I have hearing damage on one ear, and I struggle to hear people talking to me when there's other sounds involved. Prediction might be my only ally in those situations :D
 

Killingbeans

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Which suggests there might be some listener tolerance when we don't have better measuring equipment to compare against.

I have an anecdotal (purely subjective!) story that makes me think that's true:

I once bought a new CD and had my first listen on a discman with some crappy bundled earbuds. Didn't sound good at all, but I got a feeling of what the music was about. Then I listened to the album several times on my speaker setup and enjoyed it thoroughly. Later I had a listen on the discman again, and the cheap earbuds sounded MUCH better! It might have been because I recalled the emotions the speaker setup gave me, or it might simply be because I expected it to sound better... or it could have been something completely unrelated. But it definitely was an eye opener for me.

That's also why I get a little uneasy when people say they can't judge gear without listening to familiar music. Sure, it gives you some specific cues to listen for, but like pozz points out above, it takes a lot of training to hear through the things you are expecting. Simply relying on oodles of self confidence doesn't cut it.
 
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