How The Ear Works

[microstrip]

One reason that we are always struggling with this topic - How the Ear Works - is that the ear is intimately intertwined with the brain. We already know that the ear is an active instrument - and hence it does not work without the input and feedback (and also feed-forward) from the brain.

Gary,

Maybe this is why the high-end is so subjective. Some people have excellent hearing, shown by frequency measurement tests, but their perception of sound in a noisy background or simply with a mixed conversation is not good. But the opposite also happens - some people with bad hearing are excellent listeners. Hearing and listening are different things.

IMHO, the hearing of high-end consumers is progressively educated. I am sure my hearing is not as good as thirty years ago, but my discrimination abilities improved a lot. The best training come from life auditions, but they also brought the more biased approaches. I praise some aspects that I associate with a life event of classic music or jazz, and I am perhaps less sensitive to others that heavy rock listeners consider of great importance.

Can anyone build a model of how this happens in terms of how the ear works?

 

[garylkoh]

Maybe this is why the high-end is so subjective. Some people have excellent hearing, shown by frequency measurement tests, but their perception of sound in a noisy background or simply with a mixed conversation is not good. But the opposite also happens - some people with bad hearing are excellent listeners. Hearing and listening are different things.

Hearing is a function of sense, listening is a function of cognition. As we learn, experience, and listen more, our discrimination improves. The more we listen, the better listeners we become because the brain is exercised. But hearing does not improve, in fact as we age, hearing declines.

 

[Gedlee]

On what basis do you select them? I have no trouble finding excellent ones but there are many that are not.

Kal - I think that my point was that I don't - select them. I don't listen to much (any?) classical on my system, only live. I don't avoid classical recordings because they are bad, it's because it's not my style of music. It's just that the few that I do have - and I have no idea how they were choosen, I don't remember (on sale!?) - are pretty bad. There are lots of excellent recordings in my prefered genre however. I don't lack for good recordings in that context.

 

[Gedlee]

One reason that we are always struggling with this topic - How the Ear Works - is that the ear is intimately intertwined with the brain. We already know that the ear is an active instrument - and hence it does not work without the input and feedback (and also feed-forward) from the brain.

Here is one example - the discovery of privileged binding between visual and auditory perception.

One of my favaorites is a Honda study where they had listeners listen to cars as they showed a film of the drive. They asked the subjects to rate the sound quality. Then they mixed up the sound and video. The scores tracked the video perfectly.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

One of my favaorites is a Honda study where they had listeners listen to cars as they showed a film of the drive. They asked the subjects to rate the sound quality. Then they mixed up the sound and video. The scores tracked the video perfectly.

i'm a General Manager of a large Honda Dealership. over the years i've observed many many Honda focus groups of customers/general public being asked many different types of questions by Honda. honestly; if my actual customers were like those people in the focus groups i'd just kill myself right now. my conclusion is that there must be some sort of IQ filter at the door to the meeting room.....and it's set very low. real people don't have the time to get involved with those things. so any 'findings' are extremely suspect in my mind as they relate to the real world.

this is not to say that Honda cannot have valid research into how people interact with cars or the driving environment; but i've not seen any valid 'group' of people who resemble my customers.

 

[tony ky ma]

May be this experience can let us understand something between eye and ear, watching big screen with surround sound, gun fire in screen sound of bullet hit the wall behind, do you feel you are in there ? not too much feeling for me, but listen to a hi end 2 channel, I will feel a 3D sound stage in there no matter your eye is open or close
tony ma

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Kal - I think that my point was that I don't - select them. I don't listen to much (any?) classical on my system, only live. I don't avoid classical recordings because they are bad, it's because it's not my style of music. It's just that the few that I do have - and I have no idea how they were choosen, I don't remember (on sale!?) - are pretty bad. There are lots of excellent recordings in my prefered genre however. I don't lack for good recordings in that context.

OK. If I can draw from my experience, you might have received them as gifts. Since relatives and friends know of my interest in music and audio, they often choose to buy me recordings (once LPs, now CDs) and I cringe as soon as I see the package.

 

[Gedlee]

i'm a General Manager of a large Honda Dealership. over the years i've observed many many Honda focus groups of customers/general public being asked many different types of questions by Honda. honestly; if my actual customers were like those people in the focus groups i'd just kill myself right now. my conclusion is that there must be some sort of IQ filter at the door to the meeting room.....and it's set very low. real people don't have the time to get involved with those things. so any 'findings' are extremely suspect in my mind as they relate to the real world.

this is not to say that Honda cannot have valid research into how people interact with cars or the driving environment; but i've not seen any valid 'group' of people who resemble my customers.

The study was done in Japan. Based on what I know of Honda engineering, it was a well controlled and executed study. IMO opinion Honda are the very best at what they do. What you are talking about are US based marketing studies - kind of the automotive equivalent of selling Monster Cable.

 

[amirm]

I believe that there was an experiment done by Floyd Toole where he had blind and sighted tests on loudspeakers, and in the sighted tests, the larger speakers all rated better, while in the blind tests the smaller speakers rated better. (I'm sure Amir will find this paper - it wasn't in my bookmarks)

At your service http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/dishonesty-of-sighted-audio-product.html

"The mean loudspeaker ratings and 95% confidence intervals are plotted in Figure 1 for both sighted and blind tests. The sighted tests produced a significant increase in preference ratings for the larger, more expensive loudspeakers G and D. (note: G and D were identical loudspeakers except with different cross-overs, voiced ostensibly for differences in German and Northern European tastes, respectively. The negligible perceptual differences between loudspeakers G and D found in this test resulted in the creation of a single loudspeaker SKU for all of Europe, and the demise of an engineer who specialized in the lost art of German speaker voicing)."

Figure 1:

Amir's translation: Speaker S did the best in blind testing. But once the curtains were removed, preference shifted toward the larger (and expensive) speakers (G/D).

 

[garylkoh]

Thanks, Amir.

It would be very interesting to discover the difference between Position 1 and Position 2 because Position 1 seems to favor the smaller speaker whereas Position 2 favors the larger. If the listening panel could see the room, but not the speakers, it would also affect the result.

It's a pity that the complete paper is locked away from us common folk by the AES.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Thanks, Amir.

It would be very interesting to discover the difference between Position 1 and Position 2 because Position 1 seems to favor the smaller speaker whereas Position 2 favors the larger. If the listening panel could see the room, but not the speakers, it would also affect the result.

It's a pity that the complete paper is locked away from us common folk by the AES.

I'd love to know more about those speaker positions as well. I find it interesting that the audible differences in speaker positioning all but vanished when eyes were open!

Tim

 

[Ethan Winer]

Did you or didn't you say this:

As I recall from that other thread, I was asked which of my CDs sound great. I also recall mentioning that I have some great sounding DVDs.

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

I real wonder how it can be? (sound amazing and better IMO than being there.)

Very easy! The last live rock concert I went to was about five years ago. The band was great, but the sound was horrible. Not just horrible, but unbelievably loud. Over the top loud. And I like really loud music! But this was just stoopid loud, and piercing. I told my friend who was with me that if the volume were 1 dB louder I'd go to the box office and demand my money back. Now, had there been a recording made from the concert, with microphones close up to avoid the venue's dreadful 5-second reverb and a competent mix engineer not duplicating the overly-bright sound the live engineer mixed, a recording of the concert could have been excellent.

Likewise for small venues such as the club where the live Jeff Beck DVD was made. Maybe if you're lucky enough to have a perfectly centered seat right up front, the sound you hear live could be excellent. But people stuck in the back, or way over to one side, are not so lucky. But the recording made from that concert sounds great.

Same for classical music. A few years ago I went to Carnegie Hall to hear Lynn Harrell and Emanual Ax. My friend and I were way in the back, off to one side. All we heard was piano with a smattering of cello here and there. But a recording made with microphones placed well could have been great.

--Ethan

 

[Gedlee]

Once again I completely concur with Ethan.

What we must ALL remember is that live acoustic instruments are not the only types of musical performances that exist. In so many discussions that I see, this underlying assumption is present. In a recent test between the Orions and some Behringers, I declined to participate simply because live acoustic instuments were ASSUMED to be the standard. No other source material was used. I just did not see this as reasonable.

I used to go to a lot of live "rock" concerts. (I used to mix them as well.) But lately they have ALL been so bad that I don;t go anymore. And its not that the groups are bad (although that is sometimes the case) its that the sound is so bad. Modern mixers have too many "degrees of freedom" in their toolbox, when they don;t even understand the simplest ones. This inevitably leads to poorly setup sound systems. In my day, the setup was simpler and the engineers more knowledgeable so disasters were rare. Today, it is the norm.

So yes, I completely concur that a recording can easily be better than the live performance and almost certainly when the live performance uses sound reinforcment. Consider that most broadway shows use sound reinforcment (but some of those have been quite good. Circ-du-Soleil comes to mind.)

Its only live large scale acoustical recordings that seem to always lack what I hope for. Live they are usually fine (at least where I go.)

 

[Ethan Winer]

Consider that most broadway shows use sound reinforcment (but some of those have been quite good. Circ-du-Soleil comes to mind.)

I've never seen Circ-du-Soleil live, but what I've watched on TV in HD has sounded excellent.

I too stopped going to live "rock" concerts after that dreadful experience 5 years ago. Never again. But I helped a friend video a live southern rock concert earlier this year, so I guess that counts. Thankfully their sound was good and at a nice loud (full) but not crazy volume.

I've also been to see Mamma Mia twice on Broadway. Interestingly (is that a word?) the sound was very different both times. The first time all the actor's speaking voices had too much treble and not enough bass, but the music was well balanced and at a good loud volume. The second time the voices were fine but the music was not loud enough until the last number. Then the mix engineer cranked the volume so loud it sounded like about 20 percent distortion. Thankfully I have the movie on Blu-ray and the sound is excellent.

--Ethan

 

[Gedlee]

Generally the sound of shows in Vegas is good, but one time my enjoyment of "Phantom of the Opera" was ruined by poor sound. The Beatles show was superb! First rate audio.

But we are off the topic - it seems like the topic kind of got stale.

 

[tony ky ma]

Now I understand what is the main different point in here, you guys said shouldn't have any emotion feeling from repro sound, and I believe that because they are mostly Rock music, and recording sound is better than live one that is also from Rock concert, the reason I guess that the instruments in Rock music is electrical and sound from speakers. I can't say anything about them because they are not my favor (Rock music from digital in put). but I am lucky to have lot of chance listen to real sound of different fine acoustic instruments like violin viola cello during recording when I in operating the Studer A80, let me catch the different timbre in between, their repro from a analog system, I don't expect they will sound exactly as the original but just sound like a real one or closer will be good enough, first of all it need to understand the main difference between real sound and repro sound
tony ma

 

[RBFC]

Well, I believe it's time to close this one. If anyone has thoughts or information regarding the original topic, I'll be happy to reopen it. Just PM me if you have interest in continuing the topic.

Thanks,

Lee