Do we hear differently?

[NorthStar]

Yes, we all hear differently, definitively! :b

We have five senses (hearing being one of them),
and they transmit to our emotional brain center in unique ways for each one of us.

 

[Gregadd]

We percive differently and we place different emphasis on what we hear.

Let's imagine you were in a restaurant with Halle Berry and she startetd to choke. You admistered the the Heimlech manuever and saved her life. As a reward she gave you a big sloppy kiss. The genral public when told that story would hear you saved Halle Berry's life. Tell that story to your wife and she might respond, You kisssed Halle Berry!

 

[cjfrbw]

We percive differently and we place different emphasis on what we hear.

Let's imagine you were in a restaurant with Halle Berry and she startetd to choke. You admistered the the Heimlech manuever and saved her life. As a reward she gave you a big sloppy kiss. The genral public when told that story would hear you saved Halle Berry's life. Tell that story to your wife and she might respond, You kisssed Halle Berry!

Maybe because after doing the Heimlich, you didn't let go.

 

[NorthStar]

We percive differently and we place different emphasis on what we hear.

Let's imagine you were in a restaurant with Halle Berry and she startetd to choke. You admistered the the Heimlech manuever and saved her life. As a reward she gave you a big sloppy kiss. The genral public when told that story would hear you saved Halle Berry's life. Tell that story to your wife and she might respond, You kisssed Halle Berry!

That's it Greg! ...In that one only short paragraph is the entire mystery of human behavior; including the Internet. :b

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Yes, we all hear differently, definitively! :b

We have five senses (hearing being one of them),
and they transmit to our emotional brain center in unique ways for each one of us.

We have more than 5. Do you fall down a lot?

 

[NorthStar]

We have more than 5. Do you fall down a lot?

Ohhhh Kallll, here he comes.

* 'Falling down' would be part of the Touch. :b

 

[terryj]

Ohhhh Kallll, here he comes.

* 'Falling down' would be part of the Touch. :b

MANY more then five!..and no, you need to look prior to the 'hitting the ground' (touch being one sense that might tell you you had reached your destination) and wonder why your internal 'sense' of balance failed you in the first place.

 

[jkeny]

Some great points made on this thread.
I imagine we have a general consensus that what we hear is distributed in a bell curve as someone pointed out earlier but what we pay attention to is a different story & has a lot of variance.

Learning, training & exposure come into play.
Do the Ipod generation have any concept of what quality music sounds like? Even if they were sat in front of a quality system would they still prefer their iPod sound? Perhaps in a lot of cases? Given enough exposure & time I'm sure they could be trained in what to listen for & learn how a quality system sounds better than an iPod system.

Nobody is immune to this. One aspect of digital systems that some consider distortion & others think of as ultra-realism is the apparent increased detail in digital. I find this to be like MSG in food - it confers a larger than life taste to the food & robs it of it's subtlety. For some MSG in food gives them a headache, just like this distortion in digital. For others, they expect this ultra-detail, not recognising it as distortion. Again, exposure to different systems, learning & training the ear is crucial. As amirm says, once the ear is trained it can more easily recognise this issue in situations where before it would have remained unheard.

What happens when we start with a front end like this, we select other elements in the system which will tone down the excesses of this distortion. I'm sure this is what some people call synergy. This can be one of the reasons why different people can hear different things when the same device is introduced into their different systems. The one that is tuned to mask the distortion somewhat will sound different to the system that is tuned in a way to make the system more energetic as a means of compensating for some dull elements in their system.

This is such a difficult balancing act & has no real guide book to follow that it requires a lot of energy to maintain. I'm not surprised people turn to measurements for the security of something that is concrete! Of course mixing both measurements & listening is how to do it but some go overboard on either side.

 

[mep]

Mike's adaptation point is also very important. A great example is when you hear your family members talk in different rooms of your house. If you think about it, each room is acoustically very different so the voice if measured, would show to be very different. But I bet you hear them exactly the same! The brain is bombarded with such distortions all the time and learns to tune out what is not important.

Amir-I find this post of yours to be interesting. If I go to my brother’s house for example and the rest of the family is there, the sound of everyone’s voice changes according to the room acoustics as people move from room to room as you stated. However, I hear each of those changes in the tone of their voice, but I still recognize the voices of each family member. I guess my point is that I don’t hear each voice as “exactly the same.” I hear and recognize each voice, but I certainly hear the effect each different room has on the sound of their voice.

 

[jkeny]

Amir-I find this post of yours to be interesting. If I go to my brother’s house for example and the rest of the family is there, the sound of everyone’s voice changes according to the room acoustics as people move from room to room as you stated. However, I hear each of those changes in the tone of their voice, but I still recognize the voices of each family member. I guess my point is that I don’t hear each voice as “exactly the same.” I hear and recognize each voice, but I certainly hear the effect each different room has on the sound of their voice.

I referenced James Kaiser before & this is what he has to say specifically about this

if you listen to somebody talk on the telephone, it only takes a second or so of conversation for you to know who is talking, in addition to what was said. If you try to do that analysis spectrum-wise, you'll find that you can't. But this approach is doing it just fine. Why? Because one's ear is looking at the modulations. It's a modulation detector. It's a transient detector. It's not simply a spectrum analyzer. It's a lot more. So the signal processing algorithms that you have to have are ones that can look not only at the amplitude modulation that's going on, but also the frequency modulation that's going on

Interesting, for our evaluation of all things audio!

 

[cjfrbw]

Ohhhh Kallll, here he comes.

* 'Falling down' would be part of the Touch. :b

Proprioception and equlibrium.

I tried to explain the oculogyric reflex on Audio Asylum once, to illustrate the connection between the auditory cortex and the visual cortex via reflex and space discrimination. They treated me like I was crazy, one guy said he laughed so hard he fell out of his chair at the crazy person. Somebody even posted it on another board so that everybody could get a good yuck out of it, and a whole bunch of them also laughed at the crazy person.

That was when I first started posting on boards and realized right away that audiences aren't always what you expect on the internet. Sometimes there really are only bozos on the bus.

 

[mep]

Proprioception and equlibrium.

I tried to explain the oculogyric reflex on Audio Asylum once, to illustrate the connection between the auditory cortex and the visual cortex via reflex and space discrimination. They treated me like I was crazy, one guy said he laughed so hard he fell out of his chair at the crazy person. Somebody even posted it on another board so that everybody could get a good yuck out of it, and a whole bunch of them also laughed at the crazy person.

That was when I first started posting on boards and realized right away that audiences aren't always what you expect on the internet. Sometimes there really are only bozos on the bus.

And that might be the little yellow bus.

 

[NorthStar]

You guys are all funny. :b

 

[JackD201]

You're more likely to throw up in a yellow submarine.

Hi Ron

 

[cjfrbw]

You're more likely to throw up in a yellow submarine.

Hi Ron

Or Jim Morrison's Blue Bus.

 

[ack]

Music reproduction and music reproduction perception are expressions of art and reactions to it. As such, we are all bound, almost by definition, to act and react differently. The artist - aka sound recordist and equipment designer/manufacturer - has a vision, expressed in a certain way. The art lover - aka the listener/audiophile - is bound to react in all sorts of ways to the art.

Artists vary in all sorts of ways, and so do art lovers. Both camps are biased and bound by their own experiences, abilities, exposure to the subject (music), and most of all, personal preferences. In the end, the higher the exposure to the subject, the more sophisticated both camps become when it comes to 'acting' and 'reacting' to the art. Happens with all expressions of art.

 

[JackD201]

Music reproduction and music reproduction perception are expressions of art and reactions to it. As such, we are all bound, almost by definition, to act and react differently. The artist - aka sound recordist and equipment designer/manufacturer - has a vision, expressed in a certain way. The art lover - aka the listener/audiophile - is bound to react in all sorts of ways to the art.

Artists vary in all sorts of ways, and so do art lovers. Both camps are biased and bound by their own experiences, abilities, exposure to the subject (music), and most of all, personal preferences. In the end, the higher the exposure to the subject, the more sophisticated both camps become when it comes to 'acting' and 'reacting' to the art. Happens with all expressions of art.

My Sister and I were like cats and dogs for almost all of my life. She's 8 years older so she enjoyed almost a decade of relative peace. LOL. For some reason any conversation would end up in irritation or even anger. That is until we took a long trip comprised of a bunch of seminars. Finally one fateful morning in Boston we had another bad argument over nothing. During a lull one of us, I can't remember who, asked, "why do we fight about everything even when we agree?'. We threshed it out and it turned out that I read a lot of meaning from tone and body language and I express myself the same way. She on the other hand rarely even looks at people while they are talking since she focuses word for word and assembles and derives meaning from such. Well, no wonder she always felt I was never taking her seriously. When speaking she takes extreme amounts of time to lay down even the most basic predicates while looking at you with a steely gaze that makes Clint Eastwood look like Don Amici. No wonder I always felt like she was talking to me like an idiot. No wonder too that we never had problems through written mediums. We've been fine, more than fine since that trip. We learned we adapted.

We may hear very similarly but we can understand things very differently.

It wouldn't take a leap of faith to believe that a big reason there are such heated debates on forums is that we sorely lack an understanding of how the other guy not hears but listens.

 

[NorthStar]

You guys probably recorded yourself before (your voice) and heard it very differently than what you normally hear from yourself in real life right?
What's more reel to reel? :b

 

[Orb]

I think the thread would had been better as; do we hear differently and-or do we perceive differently?

The distinction is pretty important IMO as one relates to the physical nature of processing external sounds, while the other is actually how we respond-cognitive to sensory input.
Kal would be better at explaining it for sure

So IMO we hear the same but we perceive differently.
Bit like the "Do you see what I see".
Interestingly both music and colours come back to the part of the brain relating to language (colour more so it seems while we develop as infants).
All IMO of course, Kal would be the guru on this I feel.

Cheers
Orb

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I referenced James Kaiser before & this is what he has to say specifically about this:

if you listen to somebody talk on the telephone, it only takes a second or so of conversation for you to know who is talking, in addition to what was said. If you try to do that analysis spectrum-wise, you'll find that you can't. But this approach is doing it just fine. Why? Because one's ear is looking at the modulations. It's a modulation detector. It's a transient detector. It's not simply a spectrum analyzer. It's a lot more. So the signal processing algorithms that you have to have are ones that can look not only at the amplitude modulation that's going on, but also the frequency modulation that's going on​

Even more significantly (since we do have electronic detectors for modulation, transients, etc.), our brains have a library of sound memories to which new sounds are automatically compared and from which similarities are extracted. This is critical for any identification task and, often, the identification can override significant new data. The same applies to judgement about musical sounds.