Good reading re: Psychoaccoustics
Jon Yaeger
Ian Iveson
news:jono_1-2812...@user-v7kamh3.dialup.mindspring.com...
> See: http://w3.mit.edu/cheever/www/cheever_thesis.pdf
Thanks Jon
I found the primary data and references useful. However, the
introduction and much of the commentary is very sloppy I think, and
I am surprised it is worth a PhD.
This is disappointing, because he is on the right track. But there
are many unsupported and
half-baked assertions.
I was particularly tickled by the idea that, because the ear itself
produces a particular pattern of distortion, our brain must null
that pattern. As if there was another set of ears in my head with
perfect hearing.
The next step, to assert that the brain will by extension of this
ability also tend to null external distortion of the same pattern is
also flawed. Like saying that a PP stage nulls even harmonics
present at its inputs.
There are a couple of avenues I would love to explore. Years ago I
saw a picture of a brain scan of some animal, probably on the cover
of Scientific American. The scan had a picture on it...a cross in a
circle I think...this was a picture of brain activity, a thought
pattern if you like. It was the same picture that the animal was
looking at. I'd like to see some similar research into
audio-related patterns. In particular, how these relate to the
language-processing and hormone-producing parts of the brain. Human
subjects would be needed ultimately, and perhaps the technology is
not safe enough at the moment
A related area would be inspired by a classic experiment in which a
subject with severed links between the two halves of the brain is
asked to comment in writing and verbally upon a picture viewed with
one eye. The subject can talk about what he sees with the one eye,
and
write about what he sees with the other, but can't do both unless
viewing with both eyes. I might be a bit inaccurate here coz I
don't have the reference...but the principle is correct. Just
because you sense and react to something, doesn't mean you are, or
can be, conscious of it or able to describe it. We tend to wrongly
take these connections for granted in our naive, conscious world.
It is therefore possible that a sound might directly cause an
emotional reaction, without you being able to report that you have
heard the sound. Pictures of brain activity would help. I guess
people with severed brain connections are thin on the ground these
days.
Most residents here are plain reproductionists as far as I have been
able to determine. The few who aren't, Choky the slack TM and Happy
Ears Al and perhaps daft Andre, can't or don't wish to string more
than a couple of
sentences together whilst at the same time make sense.
Oh, there's Carrol now. Anyone else into this stuff?
cheers, Ian
>
> - Jon
Fred Nachbaur
Ian Iveson wrote:
> [...]
>
> Most residents here are plain reproductionists as far as I have been
> able to determine. The few who aren't, Choky the slack TM and Happy
> Ears Al and perhaps daft Andre, can't or don't wish to string more
> than a couple of
> sentences together whilst at the same time make sense.
>
> Oh, there's Carrol now. Anyone else into this stuff?
>
> cheers, Ian
Oh, come now. Isn't that a bit simplistic? "Reproductionism" isn't an
absolute condition, like halitosis or hangnails. Nor is its opposite
(what would we call the opposite? For present purposes I'll borrow from
Al and call them "audiomystics"). Rather, I think residents here all
fall somewhere on the gradation between the two ends of the spectrum.
You won't find many hard-core reproductionists here. Extreme
reproductionists find r.a.t. an unpleasant place, with all that talk
about tubes and transformers which both exhibit measureable distortion.
The only ones that poke their beaks in now and then are Stewart
Pinkerton and Arny Krueger, and that's usually just because someone left
the door open with an injudicious cross-post to r.a.h.e.
Similarly, you won't find many extreme audiomystics. Even the examples
you point out temper their viewpoints with at least a bit of actual
science. We do get the occastional visit alien creatures from some
audiomystic galaxy far far away, but they go away again when they
realize that no one understands what they're on about.
Inbetween, most of the rest of us live in an unstable, often vacillating
twilight zone between the two ends. Compare Patrick Turner's scientific
and measurement-oriented post about the "SEUL EH6550 tube amp tests",
with the sheer poetry in his replies to the "FETs vs. Tubes" thread.
I myself tend closer to the reproductionist end of the spectrum, because
I know from experience that I can get a pretty good idea of how an amp
will sound by doing some tests long before I even hook up a set of
speakers. But even so, the sound checks sometimes surprise me, as they
did with the MiniBloks projects.
All that's completely aside from the musical instrument amp side of
things. Plug a CD player into any well-respected and "good-sounding"
guitar amp, and you'll be floored at just how *awful* it sounds. And yet
within that paradigm of "awful is good" there is a world of nuance;
reduce the grid resistors to the maximum recommended by the manufacturer
so that the EL34's don't burn up every three days, and players complain
about the "lack of crunch." At the other extreme are idiots like me, who
publish performances of classical music played on electric guitar into a
hifi-level amplifier, with no distortion or effects. It sounds neither
like the usual electric guitar, nor like a classical; and yet
inexplicably, it sounds great.
So to answer your question - I think we're all "into this stuff." Else
we wouldn't be here.
Cheers,
Fred
--
+--------------------------------------------+
| Music: http://www3.telus.net/dogstarmusic/ |
| Projects, Vacuum Tubes & other stuff: |
| http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk |
+--------------------------------------------+
Ian Iveson
news:3E11B95B...@netscape.net...
> Oh, come now.
Only if you offer Eden
> Isn't that a bit simplistic?
Absolutely.
If I knew the truth there would be no point in
discussing it. I'm trying to make progress in my attempts to
objectively characterise several points of view that seem even to
their holders shrouded in smog.
You seem to be holding me responsible for your own false dichotomy.
I have been keeping up a little para-thread of my own on these
matters for years now, nurtured only by occasional sarcastic or
otherwise disparaging responses.
I notice I put TM instead of ZM. Perhaps "plain" was going too far?
I don't know why I get this lecture on what people think...I've been
here forever. Just thought of Tom Bombadil, having taken a party to
see the latest LOTR film, and just wondered what happened to him coz
he got left out. Luckily I have nothing to gain by being popular
here.
I will explain "reproductionism" because you have misunderstood. To
counterpose it with "audiomysticism" is clearly prejudicial. I
doubt it is a term that anyone would apply to themselves, so it is
bound to be unhelpful.
I have suggested several opposites to what I mean. "impressionism"
could be close, "recreationism" could be another but it is tricky to
grapple with. If you read the link from the OP, it is maybe a good
example to choose to clarify. To me the author is a
reproductionist, and yet AK and SP would laugh at much of what he is
trying to say. Within reproductionism, he is a fundamentalist
radical and AKSP is a conservative pragmatist, although even that is
simplistic.
Both would agree with the SP motto, "Music is Art, Audio is
Engineering". They would both believe themselves on the high ground
of empiricism. That is, it is possible to define a set of standards
of signal fidelity that encompasses all that is important in the
performance of an audio system, and by implication, perfection is
achievable by meeting those standards. They would only argue about
what is important, which would turn into a debate about listening
tests.
So those folk who talk of "microdynamics" and beyond...they are
reproductionists too. They are still talking about signal fidelity,
but emphasising other (perhaps imaginary) aspects of the signal.
Just to delineate conceptually in my effort to categorise I did
imply reductionism: that a reproductionist believes that
reproduction is the whole story; that quality of audio is solely a
matter of quality of reproduction. I said "plain".
Actually I hoped to stir some life into the topic raised by the OP.
I did a bit of a critique, then I added a couple of my own ideas,
then I wondered is there anything else I might say in a last-ditch
attempt to create dialogue. Unfortunately only the last gasp worked
and has not turned out to be the best of platforms.
I am unsure whether perfect reproduction is a necessary condition
for my impressionism. It is certainly not sufficient, and it may
even be undesirable. It would not be the primary concern: either it
is crucial and has been dealt with, or it doesn't matter anyway.
Neither would impressionism be achieved by arithmetic: like a Krell
with mysterious adjusters.
The great thing about reproductionism is that it lends universal
applicability to products. It is a very simple concept in essence,
that only falls down because it is an impossible dream.
I don't belong to any camp. I just wonder...lonely as a cloud. At
present I suspect that not everything can be extracted from a signal
at once: an uncertainty principle is at work. Perhaps I can get
either the transient or the steady state right, but not both at
once.
> So to answer your question - I think we're all "into this stuff."
> Else we wouldn't be here.
So if everyone is "into this stuff", how come no-one can discuss it
without taking the piss? Why not discuss it now? Why snip out the
issues? Just what exactly do we discuss these
days? Things that are not simplistic presumably...your polls
perhaps?
Maybe you could direct me to a thread sometime in the past few
years when these matters have been productively, or even seriously
discussed? No-one even thanked this OP for taking the trouble to
post.
> It sounds neither
> like the usual electric guitar, nor like a classical; and yet
> inexplicably, it sounds great.
Must be a good guitar, and a good player. Mine sound crap like
that.
cheers, Ian
Choky
we are here all the same -sometimes sheety,sometimes not.
only thing what matters is that we know that we appreciate each other.
everything except that is just dust in the wind........
hehe-but we must be persist in mutual effort to keep this dust in funny
shape.
ps.even if I still hate posts in "tellmeeverythingbouttubesinonepost" type.
--
Choky
Prodanovic Aleksandar
YU
"Ian Iveson" <ianives...@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:7jVR9.1469$Mo3.1...@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net...
Patrick Turner
Fred Nachbaur wrote:
> Ian Iveson wrote:
> > [...]
> >
> > Most residents here are plain reproductionists as far as I have been
> > able to determine. The few who aren't, Choky the slack TM and Happy
> > Ears Al and perhaps daft Andre, can't or don't wish to string more
> > than a couple of
> > sentences together whilst at the same time make sense.
> >
> > Oh, there's Carrol now. Anyone else into this stuff?
> >
> > cheers, Ian
>
> Oh, come now. Isn't that a bit simplistic? "Reproductionism" isn't an
> absolute condition, like halitosis or hangnails. Nor is its opposite
> (what would we call the opposite? For present purposes I'll borrow from
> Al and call them "audiomystics"). Rather, I think residents here all
> fall somewhere on the gradation between the two ends of the spectrum.
Maybe I am a bloomin "Reproductionist".
Do I worry? Nah, I don't give a stuff, and whatever it is that I am,
I don't mind, and although some do, I hope they find solace
with those who are unlike me.
But am I a "post modernist de-constructionalist",
and from a reference point of contemplation of this state of being,
what are you?
Some one asked me, "who the f--k are you"
"me", I replied.
They go, "and how are you going"
I go, "by truck, mainly, sometimes by car, or bus"
they go, "Oh, well how are you?"
So I go " Dunno, I am trying to figure out why I am,
and then I'll let you know about the how bit..."
They go,.....mainly away from me....
I hardly know anyone who discusses philosophy with any meaning.
Those that have, who got famous, or notorious,
beat their wives anyhow.......and kicked the dog.
>
> You won't find many hard-core reproductionists here. Extreme
> reproductionists find r.a.t. an unpleasant place, with all that talk
> about tubes and transformers which both exhibit measureable distortion.
> The only ones that poke their beaks in now and then are Stewart
> Pinkerton and Arny Krueger, and that's usually just because someone left
> the door open with an injudicious cross-post to r.a.h.e.
Are yes, almost time we had a raid from them again.
It does get up a few noses that we here can accept gear with a few "quirks"
and have a very understanding attitude about bits of gear that glow in the
dark.
I imagine the news group, rec.steam.engines gets an extremely hard time
from the petrol heads with extractors and superchargers
draped all over their suped up jalopies.
Does it mean that travel is ruined by doing it in a Stanley Steamer?
> Similarly, you won't find many extreme audiomystics. Even the examples
> you point out temper their viewpoints with at least a bit of actual
> science. We do get the occastional visit alien creatures from some
> audiomystic galaxy far far away, but they go away again when they
> realize that no one understands what they're on about.
>
> Inbetween, most of the rest of us live in an unstable, often vacillating
> twilight zone between the two ends. Compare Patrick Turner's scientific
> and measurement-oriented post about the "SEUL EH6550 tube amp tests",
> with the sheer poetry in his replies to the "FETs vs. Tubes" thread.
>
> I myself tend closer to the reproductionist end of the spectrum, because
> I know from experience that I can get a pretty good idea of how an amp
> will sound by doing some tests long before I even hook up a set of
> speakers. But even so, the sound checks sometimes surprise me, as they
> did with the MiniBloks projects.
>
> All that's completely aside from the musical instrument amp side of
> things. Plug a CD player into any well-respected and "good-sounding"
> guitar amp, and you'll be floored at just how *awful* it sounds. And yet
> within that paradigm of "awful is good" there is a world of nuance;
> reduce the grid resistors to the maximum recommended by the manufacturer
> so that the EL34's don't burn up every three days, and players complain
> about the "lack of crunch."
The vaguries of musicians can be understood if the amp is regarded
as part of the instrument, and part of the artistic expression of the owner
of the gear, Hendrix was a classic. Now there was guy who was more mystic
than reproductionist. Artists don't reproduce, they create.
but do they create a production, or produce a creation.
Parodoxic language for all this stuff can be used any which way,
and I cannot be serious about it.
> At the other extreme are idiots like me, who
> publish performances of classical music played on electric guitar into a
> hifi-level amplifier, with no distortion or effects. It sounds neither
> like the usual electric guitar, nor like a classical; and yet
> inexplicably, it sounds great.
>
> So to answer your question - I think we're all "into this stuff." Else
> we wouldn't be here.
Well, we are each certainly into our own "stuff", and its all the
tapestry of life.
We need to have the open mind about everyone else's "stuff",
so that we can keep an open mind about our own.
But sometimes, when striding life's road,
one cannot be blamed too badly if we sometimes act like Beethoven,
who one day was out walking, when a party of royals
came the other way, and expected him to give way.
He pushed them all asside rudely, and said,
"what the hell would they know!"
Just human nature.
Patrick Turner.
Choky
gig it in right way-then this piece is his fucking own piece,not stolen or
just reproduced............
art is in soul,nowhere else.
Ian is sometime grumpy,but trouble is when someone else also is.
now I'm little pissed with "toomuchseriousity" in this sub-thread.
but-cheer up,you all are just plain Rodents,or Dust in the Wind,including
me.
Fred Nachbaur
Ian Iveson wrote:
> "Fred Nachbaur" <fnac...@netscape.net> wrote in message
> news:3E11B95B...@netscape.net...
>
>
>>Oh, come now.
>
>
> Only if you offer Eden
???
>>Isn't that a bit simplistic?
>
>
> Absolutely.
>
> If I knew the truth there would be no point in
> discussing it. I'm trying to make progress in my attempts to
> objectively characterise several points of view that seem even to
> their holders shrouded in smog.
Hm. Can subjectivity be objectively characterised? Seems like a
tail-chaser if ever there was one.
> You seem to be holding me responsible for your own false dichotomy.
???
> I have been keeping up a little para-thread of my own on these
> matters for years now, nurtured only by occasional sarcastic or
> otherwise disparaging responses.
You seem a bit touchy today... none of what I posted was intended to be
either sarcastic or disparaging.
> I notice I put TM instead of ZM. Perhaps "plain" was going too far?
> I don't know why I get this lecture on what people think...I've been
> here forever. Just thought of Tom Bombadil, having taken a party to
> see the latest LOTR film, and just wondered what happened to him coz
> he got left out. Luckily I have nothing to gain by being popular
> here.
Well, no. It is, after all, rec.audio.tubes, not
pro.ego.stroke.audio.expensive.tubes.
> I will explain "reproductionism" because you have misunderstood.
Thanks for the clarifications.
> To
> counterpose it with "audiomysticism" is clearly prejudicial.
Pity you feel that way. I rather liked the "audiomystic" moniker,
especially since at least one of the blokes you mentioned (Al Marcy)
proudly proclaims himself to be a "mystic" and "earhead." There is also
a nice connotation of independance in the idea of the mystic;
abandonment of the ordinary for the transcendental. But be that as it may...
> I
> doubt it is a term that anyone would apply to themselves, so it is
> bound to be unhelpful.
Well, it's certainly a lot more flattering than "audiophool". ;-)
> I have suggested several opposites to what I mean. "impressionism"
> could be close, "recreationism" could be another but it is tricky to
> grapple with. If you read the link from the OP, it is maybe a good
> example to choose to clarify. To me the author is a
> reproductionist, and yet AK and SP would laugh at much of what he is
> trying to say. Within reproductionism, he is a fundamentalist
> radical and AKSP is a conservative pragmatist, although even that is
> simplistic.
Unfortunately, "impressionism" already has meanings in art and music,
and would IMO only serve to confuse. "Recreationism" is similarly bound
up in the commonly understood meaning of "recreation", and the deeper
meaning as "re-creation" or "creating again" would be lost on most.
Other than that, I like it. (Come to think of it, I do know of one
reference that echoes your meaning: Cat Stevens, in "Morning Has
Broken," has a line, "God's recreation of the new day.")
> Both would agree with the SP motto, "Music is Art, Audio is
> Engineering". They would both believe themselves on the high ground
> of empiricism. That is, it is possible to define a set of standards
> of signal fidelity that encompasses all that is important in the
> performance of an audio system, and by implication, perfection is
> achievable by meeting those standards. They would only argue about
> what is important, which would turn into a debate about listening
> tests.
One of the reasons I didn't pay much attention to the thesis that
started this thread is that it is still in the rut of "how to conduct
listening tests." Again, it comes against the conundrum of objectifying
the subjective.
To an audiomystic / recreationist / earhead, none of this is a problem.
You listen to it, and if you like it, it's good. If you don't like it,
who cares what the numbers (or the neighbours) say, it still sucks.
> So those folk who talk of "microdynamics" and beyond...they are
> reproductionists too. They are still talking about signal fidelity,
> but emphasising other (perhaps imaginary) aspects of the signal.
Sure. The goal of reproductionism is to make the playback
indistinguishable from the original performance. In other words, if you
hung a black curtain in front of your stereo system, there would be no
way to tell if you were playing a recording, or listening to a live
string quartet (or symphony, or punk band, etc.) It's bound to become an
exercise in futility if pursued to its "perfection" for its own sake.
The audiomystic/ recreationist has it easier in that respect. He knows
it's a stereo, makes no bones about it, and enjoys it for what it is.
However, such fellows have their own challenges; if their beloved 300B
happens to have a layer of dust on it, they can't fully enjoy the sound
of their stereo until they dust it off.
> Just to delineate conceptually in my effort to categorise I did
> imply reductionism: that a reproductionist believes that
> reproduction is the whole story; that quality of audio is solely a
> matter of quality of reproduction. I said "plain".
>
> Actually I hoped to stir some life into the topic raised by the OP.
> I did a bit of a critique, then I added a couple of my own ideas,
> then I wondered is there anything else I might say in a last-ditch
> attempt to create dialogue. Unfortunately only the last gasp worked
> and has not turned out to be the best of platforms.
??? Why not?
> I am unsure whether perfect reproduction is a necessary condition
> for my impressionism.
How could it be? Perfect reproduction is unattainable, for one thing,
and immaterial to "impressionists" for another. Where an AK or SP would
suffer, knowing that their new stereo has .001% more distortion than the
neighbour's, the impressionists couldn't care less. However, the
impressionist might be influenced more by visual aspects or sonic
"artifacts."
But it leads to another interesting conundrum. If the reproductionist
suffers as the result of mere knowledge that his reproducer is not
perfect, does that not make him to that degree an impressionist?
> It is certainly not sufficient, and it may
> even be undesirable.
I suspect that this might be closer.
> It would not be the primary concern: either it
> is crucial and has been dealt with, or it doesn't matter anyway.
> Neither would impressionism be achieved by arithmetic: like a Krell
> with mysterious adjusters.
Agreed. Also brings up the point that gear with tons of knobs and dials
and sliders would tend to appeal to the "impressionist" / audiomystic /
recreationist contingent; the reproductionist would argue that a perfect
reproducer would require no adjustments, and any adjustability would
only make it a "less exact copy" of the original.
> The great thing about reproductionism is that it lends universal
> applicability to products. It is a very simple concept in essence,
> that only falls down because it is an impossible dream.
Any absolute is an impossible dream. Including absolute impressionism!
> I don't belong to any camp. I just wonder...lonely as a cloud. At
> present I suspect that not everything can be extracted from a signal
> at once: an uncertainty principle is at work. Perhaps I can get
> either the transient or the steady state right, but not both at
> once.
Interesting thought. But by which criterion (criteria) are you defining
"getting it right?" :-)
>>So to answer your question - I think we're all "into this stuff."
>>Else we wouldn't be here.
>
>
> So if everyone is "into this stuff", how come no-one can discuss it
> without taking the piss?
I give up. How come?
> Why not discuss it now?
OK, why not?
> Why snip out the
> issues?
Usually, to avoid posting the same thing all over again, to help keep
the flow of ideas unencumbered.
> Just what exactly do we discuss these
> days?
Simply browsing the subject headers of the past few weeks should give an
idea.
> Things that are not simplistic presumably...your polls
> perhaps?
Mrrowww! Hsss!! Pffft! :)
> Maybe you could direct me to a thread sometime in the past few
> years when these matters have been productively, or even seriously
> discussed?
Not really. So, there being no time like the present, let's see where
this one goes.
Perhaps it's just one of those things where the "question" itself is
flawed. Like the classic Zen question, "What is the sound of one hand
clapping?", in which realisation comes not by attaining an answer,
rather in realising that it's a self-defeating question.
> No-one even thanked this OP for taking the trouble to
> post.
Is it necessary to formally thank every useful contribution? I think if
we started doing that we'd fall all over ourselves with kudos. ;-)
>>It sounds neither
>>like the usual electric guitar, nor like a classical; and yet
>>inexplicably, it sounds great.
>
>
> Must be a good guitar, and a good player. Mine sound crap like
> that.
Well, it's a reasonably good guitar, but a pretty ho-hum player. But
that's not the point, which is why I said "inexplicably." My point was
that even in outright creationism (let alone recreationism) you can't
always rely on conventional wisdom. "Don't do that, it'll sound crap."
Well, yes. Every other time I tried it, it indeed sounded crap. But this
time it didn't. Why not? (Not seriously expecting an answer...)
Choky
"Fred Nachbaur" <fnac...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:3E18BA75...@netscape.net...
> Well, it's a reasonably good guitar, but a pretty ho-hum player. But
> that's not the point, which is why I said "inexplicably." My point was
> that even in outright creationism (let alone recreationism) you can't
> always rely on conventional wisdom. "Don't do that, it'll sound crap."
> Well, yes. Every other time I tried it, it indeed sounded crap. But this
> time it didn't. Why not? (Not seriously expecting an answer...)
sound realy 'nough good to me-meaning on your clean geeta tunes.
>
> Cheers,
> Fred
> --
> +--------------------------------------------+
> | Music: http://www3.telus.net/dogstarmusic/ |
> | Projects, Vacuum Tubes & other stuff: |
> | http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk |
> +--------------------------------------------+
>
>
--
Choky
Prodanovic Aleksandar
YU
RdM
: ... Just thought of Tom Bombadil, having taken a party to
: see the latest LOTR film, and just wondered what happened to him coz
: he got left out.
Not the only one. (I hope you know it:=}!)
http://fan.theonering.net/writing/stories/files/andelin_bombadil.html
Sung to "You Can Call Me Al", by Paul Simon.
I'm sorry I can't yet comment on the rest;- ! <yet;->>
cheers, Ross.
Ian Iveson
hardest bit. We could do with a proper philosopher.
"Fred Nachbaur" <fnac...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:3E18BA75...@netscape.net...
> ???
Come where? Somewhere nice? ...we've got to get ourselves back to
the garden.
> Hm. Can subjectivity be objectively characterised? Seems like a
> tail-chaser if ever there was one.
You can cope with the concept of feedback surely? If you can see it
from without, why is it necessarily impossible to observe it from
within? If it is possible to know yourself at all, then it must
surely be in the context of being in that loop?
A problem with the DBT thing is that it depends on two passes of the
boundary. The subject can't be objective so there are two
subjective elements: the original listening, and the reporting. I
suggested brain-scanning as a way of removing one of these elements.
The subject should be injected with something radio-active and
continuously scanned throughout the programme.
I do appreciate your point: how would we interpret the brain-scans?
But I don't agree that the problem is *necessarily* insurmountable.
> ???
If I had a dictionary, a thesaurus would be next. Do I forget my
language word by word, or meaning by meaning, I wonder? Will I end
up with one without the other, and which would be worse?
> Well, no. It is, after all, rec.audio.tubes, not
> pro.ego.stroke.audio.expensive.tubes.
Maybe
> You seem a bit touchy today...
No point to a life without touchiness.
I get over-elated. This is my nfb loop ;-)
> none of what I posted was intended to be
> either sarcastic or disparaging.
Didn't say you. You didn't respond in the past, in spite of
provocation. Noble
but exasperating.
> Thanks for the clarifications.
???
> Pity you feel that way. I rather liked the "audiomystic" moniker,
> especially since at least one of the blokes you mentioned (Al
Marcy)
> proudly proclaims himself to be a "mystic" and "earhead." There is
also
> a nice connotation of independance in the idea of the mystic;
> abandonment of the ordinary for the transcendental. But be that as
it may...
I took Al's line to be a double irony, a tactic to disarm the SPAKs.
He knows more than he wishes to discuss.
I'm still looking for the kind of extension of science that might
inform better engineering. No use being transcendental.
> Unfortunately, "impressionism" already has meanings in art and
music,
> and would IMO only serve to confuse.
Yes and no. There would be much in common, but we would need to be
careful to distinguish between original impressionist art and
impressionist representations of art. If we accept that we are part
of the performance, then the parallel is almost complete. See
later...
"Recreationism" is similarly
bound
> up in the commonly understood meaning of "recreation", and the
deeper
> meaning as "re-creation" or "creating again" would be lost on
most.
> Other than that, I like it. (Come to think of it, I do know of one
> reference that echoes your meaning: Cat Stevens, in "Morning Has
> Broken," has a line, "God's recreation of the new day.")
All words have a meaning already of course. Hence the need for
jargon. Is "representationism" too long? How about
"reconstructionism"? Sounds like a post-structural modernist fad
though, or like a new diet.
> One of the reasons I didn't pay much attention to the thesis that
> started this thread is that it is still in the rut of "how to
conduct
> listening tests." Again, it comes against the conundrum of
objectifying
> the subjective.
I don't believe this is necessarily a conundrum, but DBTs can only
make one contribution amongst many in a load of science yet to be
done. How about a bit of classical behaviourism, where DBT subjects
are interned and fed or punished
depending on whether they got the answers right. At the very least
they should use lie detectors.
> To an audiomystic / recreationist / earhead, none of this is a
problem.
> You listen to it, and if you like it, it's good. If you don't like
it,
> who cares what the numbers (or the neighbours) say, it still
sucks.
I always assume that those who say this are lying, because they
don't seem so stupid. It's a monkey-writes-Shakespeare argument.
Music
is a social thing, as are human voices. I want to be part of
history, not an isolated and estranged observer. Anyway, the
self-styled
audiomystics have standards, they fall into camps, it is not the
individual path they claim it to be.
Doncha just hate it when your dinner guests pour tomato ketchup all
over your delicate and lovingly prepared dinner. In fact most Als
seem to go in the same direction, and I guess if you sanitised Al's
lash-up and produced many at an affordable price, everyone would buy
them because their goodness would be found universal.
> ??? Why not?
Dunno. Hasn't been up 'til now.
> Sure. The goal of reproductionism is to make the playback
> indistinguishable from the original performance. In other words,
if you
> hung a black curtain in front of your stereo system, there would
be no
> way to tell if you were playing a recording, or listening to a
live
> string quartet (or symphony, or punk band, etc.) It's bound to
become an
> exercise in futility if pursued to its "perfection" for its own
sake.
No...that would not be a sustainable position. The reproductionist
in my scheme is true only to the signal at the input to the system
under consideration. The SPAK axis does have a coherent plot,
except for the odd chicanery around the objective/subjective
circuit. They have built their castle on a false axiom but can
defend the keep all the same. That is why they are so exasperating
to tangle with. See later...
> The audiomystic/ recreationist has it easier in that respect. He
knows
> it's a stereo, makes no bones about it, and enjoys it for what it
is.
> However, such fellows have their own challenges; if their beloved
300B
> happens to have a layer of dust on it, they can't fully enjoy the
sound
> of their stereo until they dust it off.
Seems to me they are always changing their stuff, with Al a prime
example. Perhaps what they like is change itself. Fair enough...as
long as they are not constantly fretting about what yet needs
attention. But I suspect the risk is that the music falls foul of
fetishism and they might forget to listen. I want to arrive at the
end
result in one leap, which is why I am thrashing away here.
> > I am unsure whether perfect reproduction is a necessary
condition
> > for my impressionism.
>
> How could it be? Perfect reproduction is unattainable, for one
thing,
> and immaterial to "impressionists" for another. Where an AK or SP
would
> suffer, knowing that their new stereo has .001% more distortion
than the
> neighbour's, the impressionists couldn't care less. However, the
> impressionist might be influenced more by visual aspects or sonic
> "artifacts."
Right. I see what you mean. An impressionism that demanded perfect
rendition of the signal, voltage to pressure, would need some
mysticism perhaps to distinguish itself from reproductionism.
Erm...but I still don't want to count it out...it would be giving
too much away...there's another issue here about decoding. What do
the SPAKs say about phono preamps? Is that reproduction? If so,
then decoding is allowed. Now let's say (just for the sake of
logic) that all media content is encoded by the process of becoming
media content, in some way that is undiscovered. A systematic
distortion, in other words, that can be undone. RIAA equalisation
is an example of a known coding, as is Dolby and heaps of others.
So it could be that by accident valve amps do some decoding. It
seems like distortion from the point of view of the SPAKs, but to us
it is merely the correct interpretation. The best impression may
well be perfect rendition, and only becomes otherwise if perfection
is not achievable. An impressionist painting may get you closer to
reality than a flat photograph, but a wrap-round moving photograph
might be better still. Even our impressionism could turn out to be
the truth.
> But it leads to another interesting conundrum. If the
reproductionist
> suffers as the result of mere knowledge that his reproducer is not
> perfect, does that not make him to that degree an impressionist?
Can you be an impressionist by accident? Do failed and miserable
photographers count? But what does a SPAK do if he first decides it
sounds the best he's heard, and then measures it to discover 3% SH
distortion. Seems he has two options: to remain forever the
disgruntled engineer living in denial in that other place, or do the
decent and honourable thing and come here.
> Any absolute is an impossible dream. Including absolute
impressionism!
Absolutely, you must be dreaming!
What, no beginnings, no endings, no centres to define the
peripheries? An infinite, non-cyclical universe? Plenty of scope
for progress then, comrade.
> > I don't belong to any camp. I just wonder...lonely as a cloud.
At
> > present I suspect that not everything can be extracted from a
signal
> > at once: an uncertainty principle is at work. Perhaps I can
get
> > either the transient or the steady state right, but not both at
> > once.
>
> Interesting thought. But by which criterion (criteria) are you
defining
> "getting it right?" :-)
Just for that moment, I envisaged a scope trace and spectrogram,
original and final, superimposed. I wanted them to look the same,
but no matter how much I tried, as one trace got closer, the other
got further away. Sorry.
> Perhaps it's just one of those things where the "question" itself
is
> flawed. Like the classic Zen question, "What is the sound of one
hand
> clapping?", in which realisation comes not by attaining an answer,
> rather in realising that it's a self-defeating question.
And there's a Mu, I think we discovered. An unanswerable question,
like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?", said the dictionary.
It takes a lifetime to be a good artist. All I can hope for is to
be a good engineer. I am happy with my system, except that I might
be even happier if it was even better. I would like to make one
even better but don't know how. Hence I need science. A need to
know surely is sufficient to legitimise the question?
OTOH some things, like death, we don't really want to know about.
Ignorance may be the only bliss we can hope for.
>
> Well, it's a reasonably good guitar, but a pretty ho-hum player.
But
> that's not the point, which is why I said "inexplicably." My point
was
> that even in outright creationism (let alone recreationism) you
can't
> always rely on conventional wisdom. "Don't do that, it'll sound
crap."
> Well, yes. Every other time I tried it, it indeed sounded crap.
But this
> time it didn't. Why not? (Not seriously expecting an answer...)
Music is mysterious, Impressionism is science. My mum said Bob
Dylan was crap and, if there were standards, he would be deemed so.
Then I got lost and wrote all that follows, searching for
categories, nothing new, tiresome requirement for completeness,
sometime I will summarise to a page.
Also check out my hero on the proper place for science
http://freespace.virgin.net/ianiveson.home/hegel.htm
A much greater problem with DBT fetishism IMO is that such tests
automatically exclude any effects that we are not already able to
talk about. They can only survey and quantify what is already
known, and are restricted to effects that subjects are cognisant of
and are able to translate from music to words. Years ago, before I
came here, I sparred with the SPAK on UKRA (but once you sus they
are robots there is no point). One notable slight of logic is the
response "but [this posited effect] cannot be heard because DBT
demonstrates there is no difference with or without it". The
sidestep from "effect" to "difference" is clever. I can directly
hear an effect, but not a difference. SPAKs can pirouette on this
point forever.
The output must not only contain the signal, but also the energy to
decode it,
otherwise the current drain in our heads will alert us to the effort
of translating it. My first mystical thought.
Reproduction has been the aim from the start, which must be a
tempering consideration. AFAIK there was no alchemy that preceded
the original development of the phonograph or radio. The principle
is a simple pair of transducers, one to code, and one to decode.
There may be several in a chain but the role of each is conceived as
passive. There was no science to support any active participation
by the apparatus in actually making music. Left to engineers, we
end up with the Krell (when asked if there might be further progress
to be made in audio engineering, SP said no and he was serious, so I
came here instead). The reproductionists must be right, because
there has never been any alternative.
But the part of the system between my speakers and my ears
is not accounted for, and there is a whole mess of problems in
considering the recording end.
If the coded medium that I buy has been finalised whilst monitoring
in a studio, and if the monitor system was capable of monitoring
everything on the medium, then I find it impossible to argue against
the reproductionist. All I have to do is use the same system that
was used in the studio. Not the same "standard" mind...it has to be
the same thing. Whether any existing standard is adequate or not is,
after
all, the mute point. That is extreme reproductionism and I can't
fault it. The listening room has to be right of course. A true
reconstruction of a truly reconstructable event.
There are several "ifs" in that argument. It certainly applies in
the majority of cases where the "music", or even the sounds, never
existed until they came out of the studio speakers. Direct-injected
guitar, synths, and all instruments that don't start by making a
sound. We are not listening to recordings in these cases. The
analogue medium is essentially the original. In many cases, but for
the voices, the digital medium is also the original. (in which case
they aren't even media are they...they are clones). I like this
stuff, I can listen in the secure knowledge that I am part of
history: the performance is for me (there is no-one else there) I
hear it as live as it ever was, I buy it, the studio gets money, I
understand the cycle and so does the studio. So it's direct and
intimate...the cutting edge of music is easy.
For recorded music (including all human voices and instruments that
make a sound) the story is very different. It is possible that the
recording process has captured more than even the studio monitor
system resolved. In that case you might discover new details,
although they may be a bit rough because they are not finalised.
This only applies if the whole chain is analogue AFAIK. Digital is
absolute, isn't it?
Digital raises the possibility of fudging the damage, and there is
definite non-mystical scope for re-creation. Digital interpolation
is one obvious method, or some analogue post-processing
approximation. But hey, doesn't this also apply to low-resolution
analogue too? There is a Trojan horse here. This is undoubtedly
creationism, signal-wise, and re-creationism sound-wise. No reason
why I can't make it sound better than the original. Closer also to
what it would have been, had it been produced in higher resolution
in the first place. Steady on though...that would take a lot of
clever processing or a big stroke of luck. I suspect valves are a
painkiller rather than a cure in this application. Sounds better
but not like it would have been, which is also a valid departure
from reproduction.
Recordings of live music, performed to an audience, are in another
clearly different category. They are not performed for me, for a
start. I can only be an observer of history. I cannot reproduce
that point in time, and I certainly don't want Woodstock in my
living room anyway. Can't recreate, can't reproduce the experience.
I can only hope for an impression. That's what I mean by
impressionism. The SPAKs argue here that, since I am limited to the
data I have on my medium, the best I can do is to faithfully render
all of it and then, if I like coloration, add distortion. Sounds
true but it isn't. This was the original argument for reproduction,
where the objective was to render the sound itself. "Coloration"
is a simplistic put-down and we should stop using it.
All of these categories can be found in relation to other senses,
with vision being the obvious example. A photograph may be precise,
but it won't give you the same sense of being there as an
impressionist painting could. Down the street from me is the
Hockney art gallery. Bradford folk imagine that Hockney is famous.
His latest dabbling is with photo-montage, which seems to me like
surround-sound with a finite number of speakers...an impressionism
of reproductions.
It would be possible to post-process the film of Woodstock to make
the grass the right colour if I new about grass, and correct the
colour of Jimi's guitar if I had Fender's records. That's not
coloration, is it? Perhaps if I use a SET for the soundtrack I can
get a windswept feel. That might be more realistic.
So there are several legitimate roles for post-processing to make up
for the
shortfalls in the reproductionist view. It appears that valves are
inherently valuable because they deviate from linear just so far as
to lend themselves to circuits that make a contribution to
legitimate post-processing.
To put all this down to "euphony", or "coloration", or "warm glow"
(grrrr...) is what really upsets me. This is science y'know. It's
up to the SPAKist engineers to explain why their stuff *still*
doesn't sound right, and ours does. Ours is the empirical truth.
Also, if this post-processing gets closer to the performance, then
it must be some kind of decoding. But how can I decode what has
never been encoded in the first place? This is one place where the
mystics creep in. Not just an amplifier, a Media Content Recovery
System. Relaxing because it saves your brain the trouble of doing
its own decoding.
Another argument for reproductionism is that each piece of equipment
in a system must be general-purpose, in that it must be capable
of acceptable rendition of a range of audio material. This is true
particularly for power amps and speakers. Hence the SPAKs argue
that any post-processing will in some way make different music sound
more similar. That is an unsupportable generalisation and belittles
our case.
cheers, Ian :-)
Ian Iveson
cheers, Ian
"RdM" <ste...@ihug.co.zn> wrote in message
news:kbji1vslfudqsseat...@4ax.com...
Fred Nachbaur
Ian Iveson wrote:
> Slow, sorry. Working out what the questions are is always the
> hardest bit. We could do with a proper philosopher.
Indeed. But I'm not sure if I'd be capable of understanding what a
proper philosopher was on about. ;-)
> "Fred Nachbaur" <fnac...@netscape.net> wrote in message
> news:3E18BA75...@netscape.net...
>
>
>>???
>
>
> Come where? Somewhere nice? ...we've got to get ourselves back to
> the garden.
OK, fair enough.
>>Hm. Can subjectivity be objectively characterised? Seems like a
>>tail-chaser if ever there was one.
>
>
> You can cope with the concept of feedback surely? If you can see it
> from without, why is it necessarily impossible to observe it from
> within? If it is possible to know yourself at all, then it must
> surely be in the context of being in that loop?
One would by necessity have to be outside to some degree, if only in the
imagination. I'm reminded of a couplet (I think it's from the Vedas)
"The eye can see the entire universe, but it cannot see itself." We need
a mirror such that we can effectively look from the outside. Perhaps the
appropriate testing methodology *can* accomplish this, but it seems like
a herculean task.
Regardless of the methodology used, I suspect that a large number of
samples would be needed to overcome random statistical variations.
> A problem with the DBT thing is that it depends on two passes of the
> boundary. The subject can't be objective so there are two
> subjective elements: the original listening, and the reporting. I
> suggested brain-scanning as a way of removing one of these elements.
> The subject should be injected with something radio-active and
> continuously scanned throughout the programme.
> I do appreciate your point: how would we interpret the brain-scans?
> But I don't agree that the problem is *necessarily* insurmountable.
>
Hm.. count me out. No radioactive injections for me, thanks. :) But I
see what you're getting at; have at least some physical monitoring of
physiological "reality". Other options that may be less intrusive than
injections of radioactive substances might include brain-wave recordings
(EEGs), heart activity (ECGs) and perhaps other electrical signals.
Another problem with DBT is that even two listenings of the same program
on the same equipment can sound different, because of factors like
fatigue, familiarity, and other subjective and essentially "random"
aspects independant of that being tested. Which is again why any method
would still have to rely on a large statistical sampling to be able to
isolate genuine trends from happenstance.
>
>>???
>
>
> If I had a dictionary, a thesaurus would be next. Do I forget my
> language word by word, or meaning by meaning, I wonder? Will I end
> up with one without the other, and which would be worse?
I think the former. As someone who "switched languages" at an early age,
I sometimes try to remember a word in the original German; I know it
exists, and even know the nuances of meaning, but just can't remember
the damn word. Seems odd, to remember the meaning but forget the word,
but that's the best way to put it.
>>Well, no. It is, after all, rec.audio.tubes, not
>>pro.ego.stroke.audio.expensive.tubes.
>
>
> Maybe
>
>
>>You seem a bit touchy today...
>
>
> No point to a life without touchiness.
> I get over-elated. This is my nfb loop ;-)
Hehe. Rather like the Eeyore Philosophy of Life. "Don't bother pinning
the tail back on, it'll probably just fall off again anyway." ;-)
>>none of what I posted was intended to be
>>either sarcastic or disparaging.
>
>
> Didn't say you. You didn't respond in the past, in spite of
> provocation. Noble
> but exasperating.
Ah, I see. I hadn't responded in the past because I wasn't sure what you
were on about. I'm not sure whether you've made yourself clearer this
time, or whether I've read more carefully -- either way, the result is
the same.
>
>>Pity you feel that way. I rather liked the "audiomystic" moniker,
>>especially since at least one of the blokes you mentioned (Al
>
> Marcy)
>
>>proudly proclaims himself to be a "mystic" and "earhead." There is
>
> also
>
>>a nice connotation of independance in the idea of the mystic;
>>abandonment of the ordinary for the transcendental. But be that as
>
> it may...
>
> I took Al's line to be a double irony, a tactic to disarm the SPAKs.
> He knows more than he wishes to discuss.
Oh, I'm sure that he knows more than he wishes to discuss. He drops
hints, though, almost in "code," such that those who have eyes to see
can benefit. Similarly, his line might have the effect of double irony,
but I doubt that it's as blunt as all that (compare LV's attempt at
irony by signing himself "asshole"). No, I think Al genuinely lives the
"mystic / earhead" monicker.
(Note to Al - are we on the right track?)
> I'm still looking for the kind of extension of science that might
> inform better engineering. No use being transcendental.
Yes, but I believe that there is a continuum from consumer to engineer
to scientist to the transcendental. The most successful scientists are
those who could tap into that mystic nature to solve problems that were
otherwise brick walls. Einstein and Kekule come to mind.
But it's a slippery slope. It's too easy to fool oneself, and come up
with very bad science by trusting ones intuition, and not rigorously
checking it. We see such bad science on a regular basis, and some that
*looks* bad but may in fact be valid. Again, this is an area where the
scientific method becomes very difficult to implement.
>>Unfortunately, "impressionism" already has meanings in art and
>
> music,
>
>>and would IMO only serve to confuse.
>
>
> Yes and no. There would be much in common, but we would need to be
> careful to distinguish between original impressionist art and
> impressionist representations of art. If we accept that we are part
> of the performance, then the parallel is almost complete. See
> later...
>
> "Recreationism" is similarly
> bound
>
>>up in the commonly understood meaning of "recreation", and the
>
> deeper
>
>>meaning as "re-creation" or "creating again" would be lost on
>
> most.
>
>>Other than that, I like it. (Come to think of it, I do know of one
>>reference that echoes your meaning: Cat Stevens, in "Morning Has
>>Broken," has a line, "God's recreation of the new day.")
>
>
> All words have a meaning already of course. Hence the need for
> jargon. Is "representationism" too long? How about
> "reconstructionism"? Sounds like a post-structural modernist fad
> though, or like a new diet.
I prefer reconstructionism to representationism, though I'm not sure
why. How about using re-creationism, with the dash to emphasise the
aspect of "creating anew"?
>>One of the reasons I didn't pay much attention to the thesis that
>>started this thread is that it is still in the rut of "how to
>
> conduct
>
>>listening tests." Again, it comes against the conundrum of
>
> objectifying
>
>>the subjective.
>
>
> I don't believe this is necessarily a conundrum, but DBTs can only
> make one contribution amongst many in a load of science yet to be
> done. How about a bit of classical behaviourism, where DBT subjects
> are interned and fed or punished
> depending on whether they got the answers right. At the very least
> they should use lie detectors.
But isn't the whole point to find out what IS the right answer? On the
lie detector issue - a lie detecting machine doesn't exist. Such
machines are merely tools in the hands of a competent interrogator,
measuring physiological effects of "the right questions". However, there
is an aspect to this that could help improve the odds of getting honest
answers; if you're monitoring physiological responses anyway as part of
the experiment, you could *tell* the subject (explicitly or implicitly)
that you are using a "lie detector."
>>To an audiomystic / recreationist / earhead, none of this is a
> problem.
>>You listen to it, and if you like it, it's good. If you don't like
> it,
>>who cares what the numbers (or the neighbours) say, it still
> sucks.
>
> I always assume that those who say this are lying, because they
> don't seem so stupid. It's a monkey-writes-Shakespeare argument.
> Music
> is a social thing, as are human voices. I want to be part of
> history, not an isolated and estranged observer. Anyway, the
> self-styled
> audiomystics have standards, they fall into camps, it is not the
> individual path they claim it to be.
True enough.
Also true. Especially in these days of electronically produced records,
where the input to the system has nothing to with any "original acoustic
stimulus."
"Encoding" is a good way to look at it. There are multiple levels of
encoding, even in the simplest recordings. The reproductionist's
emphasis is to make every step as accurate as possible, from performance
to recording to mastering to playback to amplification to transducers to
the very room the listener is in.
This is where the re-creationist's lot is easier; he's realised that he
has very little control over at least half of the overall process, so
aims instead for the most pleasing outcome in the half over which he
does have control. He chooses his own encoding, if you will, in an
attempt to reverse the negative effects of encodings he cannot otherwise
change.
On the other hand, reproductionists' lives are certainly more
cut-and-dried. Where the re-creationist jumps about from one amp to
another, changes speakers like underwear, and tries out every possible
brand of speaker wires (as you pointed out), the SPAKs tend to buy the
best they can find, and then stick with it. They will hear any given
recording in only One True Way, and have no interest in hearing it any
other way because it would be "full fidelity" (to use an old RCA sales
term).
> So it could be that by accident valve amps do some decoding. It
> seems like distortion from the point of view of the SPAKs, but to us
> it is merely the correct interpretation. The best impression may
> well be perfect rendition, and only becomes otherwise if perfection
> is not achievable. An impressionist painting may get you closer to
> reality than a flat photograph, but a wrap-round moving photograph
> might be better still. Even our impressionism could turn out to be
> the truth.
Wow. That one makes my head spin. But I sort of sense what you're
getting at. It's like my wife's first hearing of "Dark Side of the Moon"
on a valve amplifier. As she said afterwards, "I've heard this a hundred
times, on some really awesome stereos, but I've never heard it like
this!" And I know she wasn't faking it, because I could *see* the look
on her face, the look that said very clearly "Holy smokes, I've never
heard *that* before!" And the whispered, "Did you hear *that*?"
And it's not even what I'd call a "spectacular" valve amp. Or is that
perhaps part of the reason it sounds so good? Is there a point in the
improving of a valve amp where the direction reverses and it starts
sounding worse? If you built a valve amp with .001% THD would it sound
identical to a transistor amp?
This is where I believe there's a difference between SP and AK. To SP,
the figures are everything; an amp with .001% THD is ten times better
than one with .01% THD. But to AK, everything beyond a certain point is
the same. I would put myself closer to AK in this respect; I even have
to listen very closely indeed in order to tell the difference between
the feedback and the no-feedback modes on my home-brew amplifier. And
there's a significant, measurable difference between the two, about 3 dB
on most harmonics.
>>But it leads to another interesting conundrum. If the
> reproductionist
>>suffers as the result of mere knowledge that his reproducer is not
>>perfect, does that not make him to that degree an impressionist?
>
>
> Can you be an impressionist by accident? Do failed and miserable
> photographers count?
I believe that they do, although I don't believe that's the way it
should be. If the incompetent shutterbug happens to be a good marketer,
he is capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of critics who don't
*really* have a sense of true art, and are therefore only faking it.
C.f. "The Emperor's New Clothes."
Or, the failed Karsh wannabe might have an "awakening", of sorts, and
realise that his grainy, under-exposed images have something to say, and
go off and shoot album covers for U2 or the Tragically Hip.
> But what does a SPAK do if he first decides it
> sounds the best he's heard, and then measures it to discover 3% SH
> distortion. Seems he has two options: to remain forever the
> disgruntled engineer living in denial in that other place, or do the
> decent and honourable thing and come here.
I don't believe that they think that way. If it was on a familiar
recording, he would hear the difference between the way it sounds, and
the way it *should* sound. Good/bad doesn't come into the equation; he
might say something like "Well, maybe it sounds *good*, but it doesn't
sound *right*."
If, however, it was an unfamiliar recording that sounded "good" on a 3%
THD system, he would say "but it would sound more accurate on a better
system."
>>Any absolute is an impossible dream. Including absolute
> impressionism!
> Absolutely, you must be dreaming!
Thought so! :)
> What, no beginnings, no endings, no centres to define the
> peripheries? An infinite, non-cyclical universe? Plenty of scope
> for progress then, comrade.
Indeed. But beyond a certain distance we can't tell anymore. It was only
through a great deal of measurement, calculating, figger-futzing around
that astronomers found out that Sirius is further away than Alpha
Centauri. But no-one can tell by looking; if anything, you'd think
Sirius was a lot closer because it's so much brighter. So from the
perspective of a pair of lovers enjoying the night sky, have the
astronomers really made any progress?
>>>I don't belong to any camp. I just wonder...lonely as a cloud.
> At
>>>present I suspect that not everything can be extracted from a
> signal
>>>at once: an uncertainty principle is at work. Perhaps I can
> get
>>>either the transient or the steady state right, but not both at
>>>once.
>>Interesting thought. But by which criterion (criteria) are you
> defining
>>"getting it right?" :-)
>
>
> Just for that moment, I envisaged a scope trace and spectrogram,
> original and final, superimposed. I wanted them to look the same,
> but no matter how much I tried, as one trace got closer, the other
> got further away. Sorry.
Ah, yes. Time-domain vs. frequency-domain. Two very different ways of
looking at the same thing. I would trust the frequency domain more,
since that's the domain that our ears appear to "live in."
But I don't understand how one could appear to get further away as the
other got closer. If you do a series of snapshots in both domains, as a
sine wave morphs into a square wave, for instance, both will display the
shift.
>>Perhaps it's just one of those things where the "question" itself
> is
>>flawed. Like the classic Zen question, "What is the sound of one
> hand
>>clapping?", in which realisation comes not by attaining an answer,
>>rather in realising that it's a self-defeating question.
>
>
> And there's a Mu, I think we discovered. An unanswerable question,
> like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?", said the dictionary.
> It takes a lifetime to be a good artist. All I can hope for is to
> be a good engineer. I am happy with my system, except that I might
> be even happier if it was even better. I would like to make one
> even better but don't know how. Hence I need science. A need to
> know surely is sufficient to legitimise the question?
Well, I suppose. But I'd like to point out that one of most fundamental
aspects of the scientific method is experimentation. Try different
things, and see what happens! If you're happy with your system, you're
happy. You won't know if anything perceptibly better exists unless you
contrast and compare. In the process, perhaps some questions will be
answered, and knowledge/understanding improved.
As to being a good engineer - I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but
engineering is all about compromises. Not just of the bean-counter
variety in the commercial engineering department, but even in the
comfortable backwaters of designing/building stuff for ourselves.
Engineering is little more than application of known principles - known
as the direct result of the scientific method. Good *engineering sense*
is knowing when "close is close enough."
> OTOH some things, like death, we don't really want to know about.
> Ignorance may be the only bliss we can hope for.
A mystic would say that even things that cannot be known, can still be
experienced. The mind is but one of a whole collection of tools at our
disposal.
>>Well, it's a reasonably good guitar, but a pretty ho-hum player.
> But
>>that's not the point, which is why I said "inexplicably." My point
> was
>>that even in outright creationism (let alone recreationism) you
> can't
>>always rely on conventional wisdom. "Don't do that, it'll sound
> crap."
>>Well, yes. Every other time I tried it, it indeed sounded crap.
> But this
>>time it didn't. Why not? (Not seriously expecting an answer...)
>
>
> Music is mysterious, Impressionism is science. My mum said Bob
> Dylan was crap and, if there were standards, he would be deemed so.
I think that by existing standards of music and poetry, BD always has
been crap and is still crap. It's back to the Emperor's New Clothes and
that putzy photographer. Somehow BD managed to strike a nerve, and his
very putziness is what gets applauded by an audience of putzes. There
was the sales and marketing aspect also; the record-machine convinced a
lot of people that BD was "cool" and "profound," and people began
believing it. Inevitably, there were the seeds of real art midst the
chaff; a few real artists (Hendrix, the Byrds, et al) took those seeds
and developed them into art.
> Then I got lost and wrote all that follows, searching for
> categories, nothing new, tiresome requirement for completeness,
> sometime I will summarise to a page.
>
> Also check out my hero on the proper place for science
> http://freespace.virgin.net/ianiveson.home/hegel.htm
>
> A much greater problem with DBT fetishism IMO is that such tests
> automatically exclude any effects that we are not already able to
> talk about. They can only survey and quantify what is already
> known, and are restricted to effects that subjects are cognisant of
> and are able to translate from music to words. Years ago, before I
> came here, I sparred with the SPAK on UKRA (but once you sus they
> are robots there is no point). One notable slight of logic is the
> response "but [this posited effect] cannot be heard because DBT
> demonstrates there is no difference with or without it". The
> sidestep from "effect" to "difference" is clever. I can directly
> hear an effect, but not a difference. SPAKs can pirouette on this
> point forever.
Hm. Interesting. So how would one overcome this in practise? Also, if
you can hear an effect, would you not hear a difference if the effect
were removed?
... and that's about as far as I can make it today. Maybe I'll attempt a
response to the remainder of your tome later... or maybe not.
Cheers,
Fred
--
+--------------------------------------------+
| Music: http://www3.telus.net/dogstarmusic/ |
| Projects: http://dogstar.dantimax.dk |
| Googlism: "fred nachbaur is de hounddog al |
| rond de 380volt volledig stabiel" |
+--------------------------------------------+
Shiva
>
>
> Ian Iveson wrote:
> > Slow, sorry. Working out what the questions are is always the
> > hardest bit. We could do with a proper philosopher.
>
Oh, goody! I can put my swanky phil degree to use!
> Indeed. But I'm not sure if I'd be capable of understanding what a
> proper philosopher was on about. ;-)
>
Hey, that's no biggie, Fred - one school doesn't understand the other, or
simply thinks it's bull. You'll fit right in.
> > "Fred Nachbaur" <fnac...@netscape.net> wrote in message
> > news:3E18BA75...@netscape.net...
> >
> >
> >>???
> >
> >
> > Come where? Somewhere nice? ...we've got to get ourselves back to
> > the garden.
>
> OK, fair enough.
>
Crosby stills & nash were a nasty little thing that happened to neil...
We'll just forget those...
> >>Hm. Can subjectivity be objectively characterised? Seems like a
> >>tail-chaser if ever there was one.
> >
I belive this was nicely covered in Woody Allen's "Love & War".
> >
> > You can cope with the concept of feedback surely? If you can see it
> > from without, why is it necessarily impossible to observe it from
> > within?
Are we sure there's something to onbserve? Are we sure there's a "we", as
in "is there really a self separate fromn the whole?" Are we sure of even a
basic UNC ~(~A & A)? If so, jeesh, how? When a goofball like DeCarte
comes up with silly "irrefutable" facts, as in the pompous & purely
presumptious "I think, therefore I am", doesn't he presuppose a whole bunch
of things like an "I" is necessary for thought to exist, he comes up with an
off-the-wall rule as "therefore" (If Thought -> Thought(lowercase) I??? A
predicate logic student will get a failin' grade with nonsensical
derivations like that...) - he simply assumes that if-then rule is somehow
intrinsically true, and doesn't admit that he's postulatin' rules of
derivation. Without bein' a pest, let's just say taht every "logician"
accepts the fact that what he's dealin' with is simply interesting closed
systems, which have little to do with reality. Logic, in short, is based on
faith & empirical data, so... it's not too logicaL ( from outside of a
closed system). So, one plays with closed systems, or resorts to poetry,
faith or *absurdism*, which I'm a huge fan of - if for no other reason then
for the fact that it, like faith, is immune from intrinsic crit. - it tosses
non-contradiction into the garbage. Any formal system which accepts
non-contradiction, when driven into a contradiction (you can kill a system,
or a theorem, or any formal thing-a-majiggy, by creating a proper formula
within the system's rules which generates a contradiction - like "(premise
of the system)->(bunch of accepted derivations & other agreed-upon
premises) -> "I't's Bob and it's not Bob" (contradiction) -> system's junk.
OK, I stop now...
>> If it is possible to know yourself at all, then it must
> > surely be in the context of being in that loop?
>
> One would by necessity have to be outside to some degree, if only in the
> imagination. I'm reminded of a couplet (I think it's from the Vedas)
> "The eye can see the entire universe, but it cannot see itself." We need
> a mirror such that we can effectively look from the outside. Perhaps the
> appropriate testing methodology *can* accomplish this, but it seems like
> a herculean task.
>
This is where everyone gets into rhetoric, before they even know what they
want to find out, or defining the terms (if you haven't read the Hitchiker's
Guide" as a kid, in the book they build a giant computer,with it's only task
being to "find the answer to life, the universe & everything". To cut
things short, the 'puter grinds away for a few thousand years, and then
spits out the answer, that being "43" (if I remember right). The indignant
scientists ask the box what the answer means, to which the computer replies
'what does the question mean?")
In short 9short?) it's not pedantic to ask that the terms & rules be
defined, such as:
1) What do you mean by *I*? (could this *I* be "everything", a tautology,
and therefor nothin' worth talkin' about? Could it be a nothing? Coiuld it
be *both* or *neither* or both & neither or...)
2) what do you mean by "knowing" ["I"]
3) what would constitute a proof or even a "show" that this knowledge is
obtained? Oh, boredom...
> > boundary. The subject can't be objective so there are two
> > subjective elements: the original listening, and the reporting. I
> > suggested brain-scanning as a way of removing one of these elements.
> > The subject should be injected with something radio-active and
> > continuously scanned throughout the programme.
> > I do appreciate your point: how would we interpret the brain-scans?
> > But I don't agree that the problem is *necessarily* insurmountable.
> >
>
> Hm.. count me out. No radioactive injections for me, thanks. :) But I
> see what you're getting at; have at least some physical monitoring of
> physiological "reality". Other options that may be less intrusive than
> injections of radioactive substances might include brain-wave recordings
> (EEGs), heart activity (ECGs) and perhaps other electrical signals.
????
>Another problem with DBT is that even two listenings of the same program
> on the same equipment can sound different, because of factors like
> fatigue, familiarity, and other subjective and essentially "random"
> aspects independant of that being tested. Which is again why any method
> would still have to rely on a large statistical sampling to be able to
> isolate genuine trends from happenstance.
Hey, there's another typical approach to collectin' data: Joe scientist sets
up an experiment. 99% of his data ranges from 10 to 11, with the other 1%
bein' a scattering of "way" out of range numbers like 2000 & -365 & such.
Common solution: discard those - write them off to bad readings, etc, and
base your report on the remaininhg 99%. So - do you include *every8
empircal aquisition, like the guy who feels that his AC-Delco is the best
soundin' chunk 'o gear from all the esoterica you've had him listen to?
Even if from a prcatical standpoint such a study would be next to
imposible - you may have large-enough samplegroups for the theory of
probability to imly accuracy of 99%, but... The sample groups just couldn't
be random - there's a special breed of people who *likes* participating in
polls, then there are those who *would* do it if payed, and then there are
those who just don't want to do it. It's an iffy preconseption that they're
all the same in the area which you want to study. <The bed looks so soft...
it's right there... to the left... Warm milk...>
>
> >
> >>???
> >
> >
> > If I had a dictionary, a thesaurus would be next. Do I forget my
> > language word by word, or meaning by meaning, I wonder? Will I end
> > up with one without the other, and which would be worse?
>
> I think the former. As someone who "switched languages" at an early age,
> I sometimes try to remember a word in the original German; I know it
> exists, and even know the nuances of meaning, but just can't remember
> the damn word. Seems odd, to remember the meaning but forget the word,
> but that's the best way to put it.
>
The most anoying thing is *knowing* that there's *just the word* for what
you're tryin' to get across, and not using second-best words in hope of
remembering it - makes for less-than -fluid speech...
Fred Nachbaur
Shiva wrote:
> "Fred Nachbaur" <fnac...@netscape.net> wrote in message
> news:3E2C9722...@netscape.net...
>
>>
>>Ian Iveson wrote:
>>
>>>Slow, sorry. Working out what the questions are is always the
>>>hardest bit. We could do with a proper philosopher.
>>
>
> Oh, goody! I can put my swanky phil degree to use!
> [...]
LOL! Thanks for that, dim. You made my evening. It was a real hoot
reading your discussion about stuffy old Descartes and tautologies and
stuff, replete with your ubiquitous apostrophes and studied mis-spellings.
Good thing we don't take ourselves too seriously around here, even
whilst we're being serious. ;-)
Thanks, and cheers,
Shiva
>
<snip>
> Good thing we don't take ourselves too seriously around here, even
> whilst we're being serious. ;-)
>
> Thanks, and cheers,
> Fred
I tried tain' myself seriously - it took way too much effort & was't too
much fun. What *is* serious is that I'm broke, have a whole bunch of
"no-rush" "gravy" jobs which would get me back in $$$ (read: not have to
wonder where my next month's rent is coming from), but instead of doing
them, I spent days rebuilding & setting up those Ampex 440's (will probably
end up bein' paid ~$0.50 an hour or so - friends...), playing with 2e26's, &
wasting money on *more* useless tape transports I'll never use for real...
Talk about "harmless" addictions...
-dim