Reading this post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=494426 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55055&view=findpost&p=494426) got me thinking.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled? I haven't heard of any ABXing on sight, smell or touch issues. My impression is that most people can see the difference (slight though it is) between 720p and 1080p/i and they don't confuse one fabric for another by feel.
If our eyes were like our ears, you could do an ABX over a standard definition TV and a 1080i TV and people would not be able to tell the difference between the screens.
Why did we develop such easily fooled hearing devices? I wonder if it's just humans that are so easily fooled audibly.
Bearcat
Why did we develop such easily fooled hearing devices? I wonder if it's just humans that are so easily fooled audibly.
Bearcat
If your dog could speak, the first thing he'd tell you is to "ditch those lousy MP3s." (The only humans currently doing so are Sterophile journos in their editorial rants.)
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled? I haven't heard of any ABXing on sight, smell or touch issues.
Just because you haven't heard doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Wine tastings are commonly done double blind and in fact most of the "taste" of the wine is precisely in the smell of it. The senses of taste and smell are more like one sense than two. Blindfolded and with their noses plugged people can't tell the difference in taste between a slice of potato and a slice of apple, for instance.
If our eyes were like our ears, you could do an ABX over a standard definition TV and a 1080i TV and people would not be able to tell the difference between the screens.
Well, you are talking about resolution, not illusions. The eyes detect light - vibrations at many many gigaherts (terahertz?) whereas ears detect sound a generally less than 15khz tops. Lower frequency, lower resolution for equal aperture. Law of physics you know, and the apature of the ears is not much more than the aperture of the eyes.
Furthermore the physical limits of the eyes as far as resolution goes in much greater than the ears.
We can out-do the limits of our ears fairly easily, but we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
Why did we develop such easily fooled hearing devices? I wonder if it's just humans that are so easily fooled audibly.
Site is easily fooled in fact. You'll see lots more optical illusions than you will auditory ones. They are published in magazines and books all the time. Just go down to your nearest library and take out a book on optical illusions. Ever seen a mirage on a hot stretch of payment? That's your eyes being fooled. Happens regularly around my neck of the woods in summer.
Furthermore our eyes and brains reconstruce an apparantly real and highly detailed three dimensional view of the world around us, but that's almost a complete hallucination. Actually we can see only a tiny part of our visual field in any detail at all. So we are in fact being fooled by our vision nearly continuously.
That's all helpful Ed, and what you say is true. I think i was unclear. What i was wondering is why our ears are so readily fooled by our positive expectations.. You can't give someone chocolate cream pie, tell them it's cherry cream pie and fool them. You can't give someone slightly grayed eye glasses, tell them "these are awesomely dark sunglasses" and have them think the bright summer day is suddenly dim and comfortable. I'm excluding hypnosis situations..
However, you *can* easily fool most people in to thinking that two cables sound different if they are different gauges,
That's all helpful Ed, and what you say is true. I think i was unclear. What i was wondering is why our ears are so readily fooled by our positive expectations..
I don't think they're particularly more or less easily fooled then any other sense.
You can't give someone chocolate cream pie, tell them it's cherry cream pie and fool them.
Yeah and you can't play a bass note to most people and tell them its treble either.
Compare a fine glass or wine verses a merely good glass of wine and most people won't know the difference either. Double blind tests have been done with food and video technology for a very long time, not just audio.
You can't give someone chocolate cream pie, tell them it's cherry cream pie and fool them. You can't give someone slightly grayed eye glasses, tell them "these are awesomely dark sunglasses" and have them think the bright summer day is suddenly dim and comfortable. I'm excluding hypnosis situations..
However, you *can* easily fool most people in to thinking that two cables sound different if they are different gauges,
In all of these cases, considering they're not done blind, it's simple cases of people trusting their eyesight more than their other sense you are "testing".
Meanwhile, on the internet...
Four concentric circles (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_AdeUgwXpSAM/SoERdhOc32I/AAAAAAAARPo/ED9tM2Tvu2I/s400/four+circles.jpg)
Yeah and you can't play a bass note to most people and tell them its treble either.
Compare a fine glass or wine verses a merely good glass of wine and most people won't know the difference either. Double blind tests have been done with food and video technology for a very long time, not just audio.
Thank you. That's a much better comparative to the ones i came up with and points out the silly fallacy in my argument.
I appreciate that.
<snip> </snip>
Meanwhile, on the internet...
Four concentric circles (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_AdeUgwXpSAM/SoERdhOc32I/AAAAAAAARPo/ED9tM2Tvu2I/s400/four+circles.jpg)
What's most interesting to me about those kinds of optical illusions is that once you see one in a certain way it can be very hard to force your brain to see it in another, and some are harder than others for some people. I find the faces vs vase illusion easy to switch back and forth as well as the spinning dancer. However, that one you posted above messes with my eyes so much that it just kind of vibrates back and forth and refuses to settle. I do have some very mild cerebral palsy and astigmatism so that is a factor.
spinning dancer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spinning_Dancer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spinning_Dancer)
vase illusion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase)
Is is usually the case that after you're done ABXing something, that you continue to hear differences, or you can't hear what you once did just like a person who can't ever un-see the vase or the faces?
What i was wondering is why our ears are so readily fooled by our positive expectations..
You haven't provided any evidence that they are more readily fooled than any other sense. What "fools" us is not so much our senses as our brains. Take any two sensory inputs of the same kind at a level that is down near the noise level of that particular sense, and you'll find people believing that they have detected differences that aren't really there.
You can't give someone chocolate cream pie, tell them it's cherry cream pie and fool them.
But you can give someone two identical chocolate cream pies and with a little showmanship convince the eater that one is clearly better than the other.
You can't give someone slightly grayed eye glasses, tell them "these are awesomely dark sunglasses" and have them think the bright summer day is suddenly dim and comfortable. I'm excluding hypnosis situations..
However, you *can* easily fool most people in to thinking that two cables sound different if they are different gauges,
I bet you could convince a customer that two identical sunglasses were "obviously" different by charging ten bucks for one and five hundred bucks for the other, though.
Furthermore the physical limits of the eyes as far as resolution goes in much greater than the ears.
We can out-do the limits of our ears fairly easily, but we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
Apple would have you believe their retina display does
Furthermore the physical limits of the eyes as far as resolution goes in much greater than the ears.
We can out-do the limits of our ears fairly easily, but we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
Apple would have you believe their retina display does
The Retina display is around 320dpi. It's not really out-doing the eyes, but it's close enough. You'd need 1000dpi reproduction to make out the pixels on a 320dpi image, such as print.
If our eyes were like our ears, you could do an ABX over a standard definition TV and a 1080i TV and people would not be able to tell the difference between the screens.
Wrong comparison entirely.
SD vs 1080i is like AM radio vs CD - i.e. 4-10kHz bandwidth vs 22kHz bandwidth.
CD vs mp3 is exactly like uncompressed video vs DVD (MPEG-2), or TIFF vs JPEG.
(Normal people never see uncompressed digital video, unless they work in a TV studio).
The differences between uncompressed video and compressed video, or uncompressed images and compressed images, are perfectly comparable to CD vs mp3. Similar lossy coding principles, based on similar masking principles.
Most human senses are roughly logarithmic on at least one scale. Most human senses exhibit masking. There's nothing special about hearing at all.
Cheers,
David.
Big post. Typed in a relative hurry. Proofread once.
May contain some errors or weasel words. Please indicate. Yay.
===========
Our eyes are your primary sense by a fairly long distance. Ears come second, then smell/taste and lastly touch.
The less important a sense is, the less our brain is adapted to prioritize extracting any information content over simply letting in the rough experience, and the greater the emotional impact of input through that sense—and by extension, the greater the irrationality that comes with it.
What's most interesting to me about those kinds of optical illusions is that once you see one in a certain way it can be very hard to force your brain to see it in another, and some are harder than others for some people.
Optical illusions are fine and dandy, but they have nothing to do with audiophoolery. Illusions in general are crafted input that exploits a real aspect of a sensory system to make one perceive something for which there is no real input. Swapping your cables from plain to directional is just make-belief and fantasy.
Most optical illusions exploit that fact that your brain tries incredibly hard to make sense of the input and will commonly override that which is physcially seen by the eye.
It is usually the case that after you're done ABXing something, that you continue to hear differences, or you can't hear what you once did just like a person who can't ever un-see the vase or the faces?
Like I said, they're not comparable like that. A more accurate comparison would that, once you noticed a very faint stain on a rough white wall, you continue to see it, because you know that it is there.
What is comparable to illusion is when you continue to see the stain even after it's removed, because you've convinced yourself that it's there.
Ever seen a mirage on a hot stretch of payment? That's your eyes being fooled.
A mirage is not an optical illusion. It would be foolery if one believed that the image is actually there, but the bent light is a very real and physical effect, and you see it because the light's there to be seen.
Furthermore our eyes and brains reconstruce an apparantly real and highly detailed three dimensional view of the world around us, but that's almost a complete hallucination. Actually we can see only a tiny part of our visual field in any detail at all. So we are in fact being fooled by our vision nearly continuously.
True, that. Another reason why audio and visuals cannot be compared in any simple way.
Well, you are talking about resolution, not illusions. The eyes detect light - vibrations at many many gigaherts (terahertz?) whereas ears detect sound a generally less than 15khz tops. Lower frequency, lower resolution for equal aperture. Law of physics you know, and the apature of the ears is not much more than the aperture of the eyes. Furthermore the physical limits of the eyes as far as resolution goes in much greater than the ears. We can out-do the limits of our ears fairly easily, but we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
Hold up. The Hz of light has absolutely nothing to do with this, and the eye performs much worse in terms of resolution.
Your eyes detect three specific frequencies (with rolloff) at varying intensities and your brain constructs colour from all the myriad combinations of these three + intensity levels.
The optical resolution is roughly comparable to a picture several thousand pixels to each side, but the effective resolution drops off sharply away from the center of the retina, and it's a mistake to talk of the eye's resolution as one does for a monitor or camera. The edges of your vision have greater temporal resolution though, and the general "sample rate" of the eyes varies greatly depending on whether the changes are brightness, colour, movement etc.
Any illusion of fluid motion is complete at around ~60-70fps for sharp images (games) and ~25 for inherently motion-blurred images (recorded film). This is much, much lower than the ear, which (for most people) only
begins to respond at 30Hz, and then reaches all the way up to 17,000Hz and often beyond.
The dynamic range of any one sight per primary colour under optimal conditions is a little over 8-bit (green a bit more, blue a bit less), but as the iris changes almost constantly depending on where it's focused, the total dynamic range is much, much greater.
The ear is a wide-band frequency analyzer with an enormous inherent range in both frequency and amplitude.
Just because you haven't heard doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Wine tastings are commonly done double blind and in fact most of the "taste" of the wine is precisely in the smell of it.
+1
The crux of the matter is subtlety.
My impression is that most people can see the difference (slight though it is) between 720p and 1080p/i
It's quite the difference, actually, when viewed intently.
However, as I said earlier, your brain is better adapted to primarily extract information from visual data, and 1080p adds barely any real information compared to 720p. There are exceptions, however. 1080p is still a pretty big difference pixel-wise, and some of my sport-loving friends commented on being able to recognize individuals in overview shots.
Contrast with DVD, where I was unable to recognize an actor once because the resolution was too low and he was too far away.
and they don't confuse one fabric for another by feel.
They most certainly do.
we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
Doesn't it depend on how far you are from the display? But I'm thinking you mean something else here, maybe?
Apple would have you believe their retina display does
The Retina display is around 320dpi. It's not really out-doing the eyes, but it's close enough. You'd need 1000dpi reproduction to make out the pixels on a 320dpi image, such as print.
I think you're mixing up the dpi on print with the ppi (pixels per inch) on digital displays.
I don't know if you saw this, but this (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/) is a pretty good and amusing dissection of Steve Job's claim for the "retina" display.
The Retina display is around 320dpi. It's not really out-doing the eyes, but it's close enough. You'd need 1000dpi reproduction to make out the pixels on a 320dpi image, such as print.
I think you're mixing up the dpi on print with the ppi (pixels per inch) on digital displays.
I don't know if you saw this, but this (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/) is a pretty good and amusing dissection of Steve Job's claim for the "retina" display.
I'm not mixing it up, but maybe my comment wasn't clearly written.
The Retina display, when viewed at normal distances, has practically indistinguishable pixels. But so did the old display, and so does my CRT monitor at home. Now, why I still have a CRT is another debate entirely, but the point is that, if I were to take a 300dpi image, and print it at 100% scale, using a printer that puts ink on paper at 1200dpi, Each pixel of that image would be 4x4 printer dots. You would have no trouble making out the pixels as clean squares then, even at a semi-close look.
A pixel image* reproduced at 100% scale on a 326dpi display looks perfectly non-pixelly, because:
a) the pixels are (probably) lined up, so there's no aliasing or other distortion.
b) the pixels of the monitor blur together a little, making each individual pixel hard(er) to distinguish.
Point b) is very important, as it's the reason my (effectively) 120dpi main monitor looks normal instead of blocky, and also the reason that visual antialiasing works at all.
That link is nice, though. As they say;
Cool story, bro.
Sorry, but we should be talking about pixels per inch (PPI). DPI is more suitable for printers' and analog displays' use, and does not correlate to pixels in absolute terms. If you take a 300 PPI image and print it, the amount of dots-per-inch to resolve it will vary relative to what's in the picture, and probably stuff like how many ink colors your're using, etc. But that's beside the point. Nobody brought up print DPI.
DPI (print) and PPI are often confused in the photography world too. When talking about digital displays, often PPI is what you wanna use.
BTW, as an aside, I have the new iPod Touch with the retina display, and have compared it with both the previous iPhone and the previous iPod Touch, and damn the others do look pixelated even at "regular" distance.
Reading this post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=494426 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55055&view=findpost&p=494426) got me thinking.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled?
Because they were evolved to keep us alive out in the woods and fields, and not evolved to ace ABX tests of lossy compressors or sort power amps by their sound quality.
Sorry, but we should be talking about pixels per inch (PPI). DPI is more suitable for printers' and analog displays' use, and does not correlate to pixels in absolute terms.
I know this, but I've never been in a situation where distinguishing between "pixel" and "dot" served a practical purpose. They mean exactly the same; it's just that dot is commonly used in print and pixel is commonly used in display tech and digital imagery.
BTW, as an aside, I have the new iPod Touch with the retina display, and have compared it with both the previous iPhone and the previous iPod Touch, and damn the others do look pixelated even at "regular" distance.
I've seen it, and it's quite asweome. Fun to get up close to the display and actually see more*. It has almost as many pixels as my main monitor! It was nearly enough to make me want to get one. I was narrowly rescued by the notion that I have no practical use for it.
*) except that this means that those details are invisible under normal circumstances, so what's the point of designing raster images for that? It has its use in vector rendering, of course, such as, to take a wild example, font glyphs. But we're getting a little OT here.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled? I haven't heard of any ABXing on sight, smell or touch issues. My impression is that most people can see the difference (slight though it is) between 720p and 1080p/i and they don't confuse one fabric for another by feel.
Perhaps you should ask "Why are we so foolish?"
Life, or our perception of life, is severely affected by expectation bias. Career aspirations, marriage, relationships, things we buy, things we want, etc are all skewed from mental constructs, desires, and expectations.
All our senses are affected by this. It's easy to dislike or like something based on branding or marketing. Some people rave about the taste of organic or "natural" foods even though these terms can be mostly marketing. People can like the touch of something (e.g. leather) just because it's expensive. I've seen people change their minds about the good looks of some of the new Hyundai cars when they realize it's a Hyundai and not a luxury brand. Smell is also frequently used to fool customers, such as pumping smells of bread or baking into stores to make people hungry, inducing them to buy more stuff.
There are few perceptions in life that are not skewed because of our expectations desire. Right of the top of my head, I'd say a cure for a disease is one of the few things in life where you actually get out of it what you wanted to get.
Beyond that however...
The eyes detect light - vibrations at many many gigaherts (terahertz?) whereas ears detect sound a generally less than 15khz tops. Lower frequency, lower resolution for equal aperture. Law of physics you know, and the apature of the ears is not much more than the aperture of the eyes.
While I do agree with the overall sentiment, this bit isn't relevant. Frequency/wavelength and aperture determine the maximum angular resolution behind the lens (for diffractive processes). So in the case of light, it determines the smallest detail you could resolve at a given distance with a perfect eye lens, perfectly "calibrated" eye etc etc. In the case of sound, your eardrum doesn't really have a spatial resolving ability (in the sense that your outer ear isn't acting as a diffractive lens in the same way as the lenses in your eyes), so the frequency is not relevant in this sense.
It's true that if you were to use echolocation this sort of considerations would come into play.
I've never been in a situation where distinguishing between "pixel" and "dot" served a practical purpose. They mean exactly the same; it's just that dot is commonly used in print and pixel is commonly used in display tech and digital imagery.
A pixel is an exact color at an exact brigthness. (ocean blue)
A dot is a single-color (and in print, at a single brightness) (cyan).
Conclusion: You need several dots to represent a pixel.
About vision: The nearer we put the display to our eyes, the higher the requirement of PPIs for such display. It's a question of physics. A common cinema display is viewed between 10 to 60meters (it really depends on display size), Television is used to be viewed betwen 3 to 5 meters (depending on size), PC displays between 50 to 80cm, Mobile phones between 20 and 40 cm.
Looking at any other distance, is like using amplification to hear the SNR of some audio equipment.
first post
Have you ever tried to pause a H.263/H.264 video of a lower bitrate? I bet you can't see many of the artifacts in motion but you will clearly see them on a paused video. They've been exploiting this since interlaced video (or even earlier with all the TV predecessors).
Then there are some illegal wine "ingredients" which improve the taste cheaply. They add caffeine into soft drinks to make you like it more (basically by drugging you), improving the subjectively perceived taste but hardly the real one... etc.
Reading this post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=494426 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55055&view=findpost&p=494426) got me thinking.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled? I haven't heard of any ABXing on sight, smell or touch issues. My impression is that most people can see the difference (slight though it is) between 720p and 1080p/i and they don't confuse one fabric for another by feel.
Any sensory evaluation must be done by a DBT. Wine tasting is done blind, video quality is done blind, smell is so difficult to test and different between people it's even worse to test, and touch is done via technologies that are equal to a blind test.
Your assumption that ear-brain is easily foold is right. So is any other sensory modality.
Please go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and read the slide deck titled "why you hear what you hear". The same data reducton that occurs in the audio sensoria happens just the same n video, except that even more reduction from input to output occurs. There is an "audio vs. video" talk that will also show you some of the issues.
Please, do not make claims based on the fallacy of incredulity and/or ignorance (i.e. "I haven't heard"). I have indeed heard, read, and executed such tests in both audio and video domains, and participated in dbt wine tastnigs. Major wine contests are nearly all blind at this point, so this is hardly a unique experience, not that I judge such contests...
Of course, I do auditory perception research for a living, and have papers and professional awards relating to both audio and video, which might help in the "informed" catagory.
If I seem brusk, well, I've seen mistakes like this enough times that I've given up counting.
Sorry, but we should be talking about pixels per inch (PPI). DPI is more suitable for printers' and analog displays' use, and does not correlate to pixels in absolute terms. If you take a 300 PPI image and print it, the amount of dots-per-inch to resolve it will vary relative to what's in the picture, and probably stuff like how many ink colors your're using, etc. But that's beside the point. Nobody brought up print DPI.
DPI (print) and PPI are often confused in the photography world too. When talking about digital displays, often PPI is what you wanna use.
BTW, as an aside, I have the new iPod Touch with the retina display, and have compared it with both the previous iPhone and the previous iPod Touch, and damn the others do look pixelated even at "regular" distance.
You mean pixels per degree/minute/second.
Reading this post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=494426 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55055&view=findpost&p=494426) got me thinking.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled?
Because they were evolved to keep us alive out in the woods and fields, and not evolved to ace ABX tests of lossy compressors or sort power amps by their sound quality.
And it's complex, full sensory integration that kept us alive.
We WILL do that sort of thing, doesn't matter if you're trying or not.
You mean pixels per degree/minute/second.
I'm pretty sure it's pixels per inch... I think you're talking about the resolution of a capture device, maybe? I was talking about the pixel density of a digital display like the LCD "retina" display on the iPhone.
You mean pixels per degree/minute/second.
I'm pretty sure it's pixels per inch... I think you're talking about the resolution of a capture device, maybe? I was talking about the pixel density of a digital display like the LCD "retina" display on the iPhone.
I believe Woodinville means that PPI
alone is meaningless.
Is the iPhone 4 a "retina display" from 1"? (no)
Is my 14" VGA monitor a "retina display" from 1 mile? (yes)
PPI + viewing distance is meaningful when discussing perception, but instead of bringing two units to the discussion table we should just talk about PPD.
PPI + viewing distance is meaningful when discussing perception, but instead of bringing two units to the discussion table we should just talk about PPD.
You're right, of course, and that's what I was wondering myself in my first post in this thread, regarding Ed's statement that sparked this conversation:
we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
We kinda got sidetracked, so yes, I did mean PPI for that sidetracked discussion, but I agree that distance should be considered for the on-topic discussion.
Reading this post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=494426 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55055&view=findpost&p=494426) got me thinking.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled? I haven't heard of any ABXing on sight, smell or touch issues. My impression is that most people can see the difference (slight though it is) between 720p and 1080p/i and they don't confuse one fabric for another by feel.
Any sensory evaluation must be done by a DBT. Wine tasting is done blind, video quality is done blind, smell is so difficult to test and different between people it's even worse to test, and touch is done via technologies that are equal to a blind test.
Your assumption that ear-brain is easily foold is right. So is any other sensory modality.
Please go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and read the slide deck titled "why you hear what you hear". The same data reducton that occurs in the audio sensoria happens just the same n video, except that even more reduction from input to output occurs. There is an "audio vs. video" talk that will also show you some of the issues.
Please, do not make claims based on the fallacy of incredulity and/or ignorance (i.e. "I haven't heard"). I have indeed heard, read, and executed such tests in both audio and video domains, and participated in dbt wine tastnigs. Major wine contests are nearly all blind at this point, so this is hardly a unique experience, not that I judge such contests...
Of course, I do auditory perception research for a living, and have papers and professional awards relating to both audio and video, which might help in the "informed" catagory.
If I seem brusk, well, I've seen mistakes like this enough times that I've given up counting.
When i said that i "haven't heard", i meant only that. What i meant to state was "i have not heard of any tests done on this sort of thing, so my current assumption is thus. Is that correct?" I stated it poorly. I don't have the experience that you all do regarding scientific knowledge and i'm eagerly asking questions like this to gain more of a knowledge base while doing my own educating on the side. I was not making a claim based on what i had not experienced.
Besides i admitted that i was wrong way back in post #7.
I'm finding this all fascinating. Thanks all!
Hey Bearcat - I'll just add magicians as another example of other senses being fooled. Comfortable livings are made off that.
I kind of suspect that your question might have a bit to do with the social phenomenon of "audiophiles" which might be a bit special.
Are there winophools?
Are there websites full of people endlessly worming away from the validity of blind wine testing?
I haven't checked ---- Just curious.
Furthermore the physical limits of the eyes as far as resolution goes in much greater than the ears.
We can out-do the limits of our ears fairly easily, but we have as yet precisely NO electronic display equipment that can out-do the limits of the eyes, so far as I know.
Apple would have you believe their retina display does
The Retina display is around 320dpi. It's not really out-doing the eyes, but it's close enough. You'd need 1000dpi reproduction to make out the pixels on a 320dpi image, such as print.
Resolution is only one parameter. There's also contrast, and then there's the eye's 3D ability which no electronic display can provide convincingly.
Hey Bearcat - I'll just add magicians as another example of other senses being fooled. Comfortable livings are made off that.
I kind of suspect that your question might have a bit to do with the social phenomenon of "audiophiles" which might be a bit special.
Are there winophools?
Are there websites full of people endlessly worming away from the validity of blind wine testing?
I haven't checked ---- Just curious.
yeah, that's what i'm speaking of. I bet there are places like HA for wine tasters. I know there are for cyclists (against spending $500 on a saddle to shave off a few ounces).
At first i read " I'll just add musicians as another example of other senses being fooled." (No one really knows how much we suck?)
Hey Bearcat - I'll just add magicians as another example of other senses being fooled. Comfortable livings are made off that.
I kind of suspect that your question might have a bit to do with the social phenomenon of "audiophiles" which might be a bit special.
Are there winophools?
Oh yes. I won't name names.
Are there websites full of people endlessly worming away from the validity of blind wine testing?
I haven't checked ---- Just curious.
Not as many.
I was not making a claim based on what i had not experienced.
My apologies. I'm afraid I've seen lead-in questions like this that went in quite a different direction.
Human perception is "interesting" to say the least. Just the fact you discard 99.999% of what you see and hear, and you can GUIDE what you discard, alone, makes perception, shall we say, tricky.
You mean pixels per degree/minute/second.
I'm pretty sure it's pixels per inch... I think you're talking about the resolution of a capture device, maybe? I was talking about the pixel density of a digital display like the LCD "retina" display on the iPhone.
I believe Woodinville means that PPI alone is meaningless.
Is the iPhone 4 a "retina display" from 1"? (no)
Is my 14" VGA monitor a "retina display" from 1 mile? (yes)
PPI + viewing distance is meaningful when discussing perception, but instead of bringing two units to the discussion table we should just talk about PPD.
Generally one talks about resolution in terms of angle subtended, that way the result is independent of viewing distance. In that case if the pixels subtend less then 1 arcminute, then they probably cannot be resolved at all.
Reading this post http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=494426 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=55055&view=findpost&p=494426) got me thinking.
Why are is our ears-brain connection so easily fooled?
Because they were evolved to keep us alive out in the woods and fields, and not evolved to ace ABX tests of lossy compressors or sort power amps by their sound quality.
Exactly!
Our brain and perception seems targeted at one aim relevant to this discussion: given "noisy" sensory inputs and limited storage capacity, how do I make the most sense out of the world around me, so as not to be eaten by predators, so as to have offspring, so as to have food myself?
This is far from the scientific inquiries into physics and philosophy etc. Many optical/audiological illusions can be explained on this basis, how do you make the most sense out of a limited set of sensors/knowledge?
I find it puzzling that so many people have belief in shamans, religious leaders, Uri Geller and more despite (to mee) the lack of good evidence. I think that the solution must be that during evolution, those that believed in such things could function better in a tribe, and those sceptics would tend to be excluded from social groups, meaning they had to face the sable-tooth tiger all by themselves. Perhaps we are biologically wired (and Darwinistically selected) to believe whatever "authorities" tell us to be true, no matter how unbelievable it seems?
-k
The Retina display, when viewed at normal distances, has practically indistinguishable pixels. But so did the old display, and so does my CRT monitor at home. Now, why I still have a CRT is another debate entirely, but the point is that, if I were to take a 300dpi image, and print it at 100% scale, using a printer that puts ink on paper at 1200dpi, Each pixel of that image would be 4x4 printer dots. You would have no trouble making out the pixels as clean squares then, even at a semi-close look.
Limitations of printer technology "D/A-conversion". I dont see that it is relevant here?
A pixel image* reproduced at 100% scale on a 326dpi display looks perfectly non-pixelly, because:
a) the pixels are (probably) lined up, so there's no aliasing or other distortion.
On the contrary, I believe the more "lined up" the pixels are, the more visible aliasing would be. Having randomized pixel sites would be far better for real-life pictures.
Synthetic text may be another story, as the content to some degree is shaped to suit the display.
b) the pixels of the monitor blur together a little, making each individual pixel hard(er) to distinguish.
LCD displays do very little blurring, and glossy ones even less, I believe. Basically, they can be described as red-green-blue rectangles.
Point b) is very important, as it's the reason my (effectively) 120dpi main monitor looks normal instead of blocky, and also the reason that visual antialiasing works at all.
While audio adheres to Nyquist quite stictly, it is less adhered to in imagery. A camera should have a spatial (and temporal) windowed sinx/x filter, but it never does. Any resampling in the digital domain should be done using a similar filter (it sometimes is). The display device should have another sinx/x filter (it never does). So aliasing is always present to some degree in digital images (temporally in analog film as well).
-k
The Retina display is around 320dpi. It's not really out-doing the eyes, but it's close enough. You'd need 1000dpi reproduction to make out the pixels on a 320dpi image, such as print.
Resolution is only one parameter. There's also contrast, and then there's the eye's 3D ability which no electronic display can provide convincingly.
That's entirely true. But as far as bit-depth and resolution goes, we're pretty much set.
I'm not sure you'd even want contrast to match what the eye (plus iris) can take, or whether that's even practical, because it seems it would have the minimum requirements of being used in an entirely dark environment, and be capable of emitting nearly as much light as the sun (relative to distance, of course). Just maxing my monitor's brightness when I'm watching a movie or playing a game provides plenty of intensity in my experience. High-gamut monitors aren't a problem technologically— just add more juice to the backlight*, but real HDR images based on floating point values never gained any traction in part because such images are impossible to record at once and can only be produced for real by 3D rendering software.
3D is being worked on.
*) my monitor has enough brightness to literally become painful to my eyes in this brightly-lit office environment. Enough to be
felt, in fact. I keep it down, obviously. It's currently less white than the sheets of paper next to me.
a printer that puts ink on paper at 1200dpi, Each pixel of that image would be 4x4 printer dots. You would have no trouble making out the pixels as clean squares then, even at a semi-close look.
Limitations of printer technology "D/A-conversion". I dont see that it is relevant here?
Relevance goes to illustrating the superior display resolution of print, allowing one to output (significantly-)lower-resolution images' pixels as crisp squares, even when these image's pixels would blend together nicely on its intended display (a monitor; a Retina display).
A pixel image* reproduced at 100% scale on a 326dpi display looks perfectly non-pixelly, because:
a) the pixels are (probably) lined up, so there's no aliasing or other distortion.
On the contrary, I believe the more "lined up" the pixels are, the more visible aliasing would be.
If so, then the aliasing is in the original image, and there's nothing you can do about that. Am I mistaken when you seem to also suggest the inverse? Meaning, that misalignment might improve image quality? That doesn't happen. Misaligned or oddly scaled input causes either
more aliasing (which is always worse than the original) or prompts resampling in some form (also worse because blurry).
In other words, if your input is crap, don't count on the output device to correct it in a reasonable way, because it won't.
Having randomized pixel sites would be far better for real-life pictures.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Are you referring to pre-applying some noise to an original image before reducing bit depth, to retain more quality than without noise?
Randomly displacing pixels can only reduce image quality for current resolutions, and on resolutions beyond our vision it would cause slight blurring.
b) the pixels of the monitor blur together a little, making each individual pixel hard(er) to distinguish.
LCD displays do very little blurring, and glossy ones even less, I believe. Basically, they can be described as red-green-blue rectangles.
They blur together because your eyes have a hard time resolving each pixel of a photograph individually, even at the resolutions of an ordinary LCD.
Point b) is very important, as it's the reason my (effectively) 120dpi main monitor looks normal instead of blocky, and also the reason that visual antialiasing works at all.
While audio adheres to Nyquist quite stictly, it is less adhered to in imagery. A camera should have a spatial (and temporal) windowed sinx/x filter, but it never does. Any resampling in the digital domain should be done using a similar filter (it sometimes is). The display device should have another sinx/x filter (it never does). So aliasing is always present to some degree in digital images (temporally in analog film as well).
I'm not sure why you're bringing up Nyquist in relation to that quote of mine. It's not about reproducing a certain image on a certain display device (like the checkerboard image on Wikipedia's article on antialias), it's about the dot pitch of the display device being small enough to ensure the pixels blend together a little, which is necessary for antialiasing to really work as intended. Decrease the dot pitch even further to the point where the eye can hardly see a single dot, and you won't have to antialias at all— the eye takes care it by itself as it simply can't resolve the details.
Why did we develop such easily fooled hearing devices? I wonder if it's just humans that are so easily fooled audibly.
Bearcat
If your dog could speak, the first thing he'd tell you is to "ditch those lousy MP3s." (The only humans currently doing so are Sterophile journos in their editorial rants.)
I think he'd be pissed about 96 and 192 kHz sample rates.
Our senses and cognition deliver to us us a filtered and subjective version of reality. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
As to which sense is potentially the most transparent, a quick glance at the literature indicates that the auditory nerves operate at about 600 Kb (both ears) vs. 1.5 Mb for PCM stereo audio. We're losing only half the available auditory information in our ears. The optic nerves are reported to operate at 17.5 Mb vs. 2.9 Gb for 1080p. By this measure, less than 1% of the visual information available to our eyes reaches our brain.
What are your standards of accuracy for making this claim? In terms of audio, just exactly how "insanely accurate" are our ears in terms of distortion, frequency response, dynamic range, etc.?
Given the underlying technology, the ~120dB dynamic range is pretty amazing.
Even "masking" is only a flaw if you want to be a spectrum analyser. In terms of a useful time/frequency analysis trade-off, the ear does well for the tasks we need it for, and masking doesn't get in the way.
While I wouldn't rate my ears for distortion (lousy) or frequency response (getting slowly worse), the ear/brain combination is still better at auditory scene analysis (e.g. picking out one person talking from a crowd of others) than most computers (though they're catching up). The binaural processing is pretty clever too. Inter-aural time delay detection is quite easily modelled, but the way we process (decode) our own HRTFs into spatial information is quite smart.
Cheers,
David.
Comparing human senses to digital bandwidth is just a little crazy.
Really? Given we can actually estimate the bitrate of the auditory nerve (which is underestimated at 600 kb/s by the way, I think that rather badly ignores the time cues. I'd settle for a couple of megabytes) we'v eshown you can.
Now, can you explain why you make this absolute statement with nothing mroe than untestable fluff for an argument? How about some science?
They aren't claims, it's common sense. Go outside without sunglasses and come inside and everything will seem really dark for a few minutes. What, the ears won't act the same way?
Nope, they won't. Ears, unless you've done them damage, adapt in 50 to 200 milliseconds.
The eye takes 15 minutes to do a full Perkinze shift.
The eye's adaptation is very different in mechanics, and is much, much slower than the ear.
It is a mistake to compare the eye to the ear in anything short of the CNS, the peripheral mechanisms are extremely different in almost every fashion.
go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and look at 'audio vs. video' for some information on this issue.
Yeah, go to a club or concert and afterwards tell me if your hearing is 100% back to normal within 50 to 200 milliseconds. People need to get real and quit relying on mathematics and science to try to explain reality.
That's not the kind of adjustment we're talking about here. That's more akin to having a picture of the back of your eye taken at an opthamologist's office, where you can see spots for a good 15 minutes or more, not going outside in the sun.
Concert noise is often beyond the threshold of safety (*does a quick google search to back that up to his satisfaction*), so you're not talking about the same tolerances at all. I wish i had paid attention to that 20 years ago)
Bearcat
They aren't claims, it's common sense. Go outside without sunglasses and come inside and everything will seem really dark for a few minutes. What, the ears won't act the same way?
Nope, they won't. Ears, unless you've done them damage, adapt in 50 to 200 milliseconds.
This begs the question how loud does sound have to be in order to do damage, whether temporary or permanent?
According to U.S. Government sources, ear damage can be caused by sounds in excess of a mere 85 dB.
U. S. National Institute Of Health Hearing Loss Article (http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/noise.asp)
Whadoya think JJ, is this article for real, does it need some more interpretation, or is is alarmist bunk?
They aren't claims, it's common sense. Go outside without sunglasses and come inside and everything will seem really dark for a few minutes. What, the ears won't act the same way?
Nope, they won't. Ears, unless you've done them damage, adapt in 50 to 200 milliseconds.
This begs the question how loud does sound have to be in order to do damage, whether temporary or permanent?
According to U.S. Government sources, ear damage can be caused by sounds in excess of a mere 85 dB.
U. S. National Institute Of Health Hearing Loss Article (http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/noise.asp)
Whadoya think JJ, is this article for real, does it need some more interpretation, or is is alarmist bunk?
I think the 85dB level is reasonable. There are some frequency domain issues to address, and 'A weighting' is not one of them.
But 85dB is not unreasonable as a point that causes temporary threshold shift, which is in fact harm, at least of a temporary nature.
This begs the question how loud does sound have to be in order to do damage, whether temporary or permanent?
According to U.S. Government sources, ear damage can be caused by sounds in excess of a mere 85 dB.
U. S. National Institute Of Health Hearing Loss Article (http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/noise.asp)
Whadoya think JJ, is this article for real, does it need some more interpretation, or is is alarmist bunk?
It would only beg the question if you were posing a circular argument, such that your premise included your claim of truth. Classic example: God exists because God wrote the Bible and the Bible tells us he does." It does *suggest* the question however. See? We philosophical people can be as anal as you scientist types (and the misuse of that phrase is a pet-peeve of mine).
That link was the first one i found in my Googling. I have mild tinnitus that i don't know the cause of (it gets worse and better on some days and is almost completely gone on others) . I do know that the clattering of plates is louder now than before i had it and slightly painful. I have read that the ringing is caused by feedback, like from a microphone. Your brain turns up the volume too loud to compensate and you get feedback. Of course i read that in a Stereophile years ago so i don't know how accurate it is. If ears are damaged, and then the volume is turned up in certain ranges, do they adapt more slowly and thus are more prone to damage the next time they encounter too high a noise level?
This begs the question how loud does sound have to be in order to do damage, whether temporary or permanent?
According to U.S. Government sources, ear damage can be caused by sounds in excess of a mere 85 dB.
U. S. National Institute Of Health Hearing Loss Article (http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/noise.asp)
Whadoya think JJ, is this article for real, does it need some more interpretation, or is is alarmist bunk?
I believe that industry limits of 85dB have been set with the goal that industry workers should be able to work for 40 years, 8 hours a day, in that kind of noise, and still have enough remaining hearing to be able to follow a conversation?
-k
I believe that industry limits of 85dB have been set with the goal that industry workers should be able to work for 40 years, 8 hours a day, in that kind of noise, and still have enough remaining hearing to be able to follow a conversation?
I think it comes from a classic study (repeated by several others) of hearing loss in Jute Weavers. They had several thousand subjects (IIRC) and plotted noise exposure level vs exposure time vs hearing loss - because (usefully) different areas of the factory had different noise levels, and different people had worked there for different lengths of time, and no one had ever protected their hearing.
Results: there's a wide variation between individual subjects (just like some people manage to smoke and not have it kill them), but on average longer exposure causes more hearing loss, and higher levels cause more hearing loss. The graph of these results makes it obvious why the current limits were chosen - you can see the lines flatten out at the chosen limits. IIRC over a working lifetime, 85dB won't make "any" difference. 120dB+ makes a difference very quickly.
One criticism is that the standard audiometric tests used only go out to 8kHz. I suspect that most HA readers would be a bit upset if they only maintained their hearing out to 8kHz, and started losing frequencies above that!
Sorry I can't find the graph to post - I had a paper copy 10 years ago, but...
Cheers,
David.
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
You may look up natural noises and their respective dB levels. Take off your headphones and listen to that particular noise. I think direct comparison should be quite easy by putting the headphones on and off. I sometimes do this to check that I'm listening at sane levels, it gets even easier with open headphones (you don't have to take them off).
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
If you measure the voltage across the terminals of your headphones and apply that to their rated sensitivity, you have some kind of an estimate. If you adjust that by considering the spectral content of the music and the frequency response of the headphones, the quality of your estimate will probably improve.
Acoustical measurements of headphones and earphone are not a simple thing, and their relevance to what actually happens when they are placed on anybody's head is far from exact. Our heads, pinnae (affect heaphones only) and ear canals are all different and they all affect how headphones and earphones work.
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
dB meters aren't that expensive (at least here in the US, about $20). Wouldn't sticking one between the cans work? Besides, it's a good tool for any audioph.. i mean music lover to have anyhow.
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
dB meters aren't that expensive (at least here in the US, about $20). Wouldn't sticking one between the cans work? Besides, it's a good tool for any audioph.. i mean music lover to have anyhow.
You really ought to use a headphone coupler to do this.
dB meters aren't that expensive (at least here in the US, about $20). Wouldn't sticking one between the cans work? Besides, it's a good tool for any audioph.. i mean music lover to have anyhow.
I thought of that, but sound level diminishes significantly even when I pull the earmuffs away by a centimeter or two, so I doubt I'd get any sort of realistic data from that. I have access to one via some sound guys I know, but I'm not sure they'd let me borrow the thing anyway.
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
You may look up natural noises and their respective dB levels. Take off your headphones and listen to that particular noise. I think direct comparison should be quite easy by putting the headphones on and off. I sometimes do this to check that I'm listening at sane levels, it gets even easier with open headphones (you don't have to take them off).
You mean look up something like a car driving by, and then playing a sound of a car driving by and matching levels manually? I'm not sure how that could be done reliably unless one had a perfect recording of the sound as it occurred there and then.
Unfortunately, I lack any reasonable equipment to experiment seriously with this, both acoustically and electronically. I don't even have a microphone. The ones in my phone and pocket camera don't count.
I noticed the SPL article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure) at Wikipedia has a set of examples, and they gave me a nice ballpark estimate. According to it, a "Washing machine, dish washer" weighs in at 50-53 dB. I consider mine fairly loud, and I certainly don't play music at that kind of volume— even though freerange sound behaves differently than the enclosed sound of heaphones; to me mostly in how speakers begin to become intrusively loud/harsh after an hour or two regardless of circumstances experienced so far.
So. Well. I guess I'm satisfied in that I probably never reach even close to 85dB with my headphones, and I'm not going to acquire all manner of tools just to quiet one vague worry of mine, but it would have been nice to put a real number on it. Maybe in the future.
I don't suppose the "if it's uncomfortable, turn it down" rule is wise, is it?
I don't suppose the "if it's uncomfortable, turn it down" rule is wise, is it?
It's potentially dangerous in that you may find yourself having temporary threshold shift that reduces loudness, leading you to turn it up, ...
But if it IS uncomfortable, turn it down now.
No, I meant to look up how loud a car driving by usually is and compare it to whatever stuff you're listening to at your chosen volume. If the music is significantly louder, you might have to turn down the volume.
No, I meant to look up how loud a car driving by usually is and compare it to whatever stuff you're listening to at your chosen volume. If the music is significantly louder, you might have to turn down the volume.
Alright. Well, I did that, and you can read above what passes for my "experimental results". I looked up pages that all had some lists of common dB levels for various sources, and I find that I listen certainly no louder than 65dB, probably a lot lower. Some passages that don't qualify as quiet still let through a little bit of mouse clicks, but clicky sounds tend to punch through a lot.
I could sharpen the experiment by hauling my amp and computer to the kitchen while I'm running a basketful of laundry, but eh.
I'll give it some more thought later.
...or just spend 15 euros on an SPL meter. I'm pretty sure my dishwasher is far louder than 53dB; perhaps in the mid-60s, if not higher.
The problem with that wikipedia article is that there are not enough examples to give you a good idea how loud 85dB is.
Why resort to such sophisticated measures? If your music is not louder than most sounds you hear during your everyday life, it's very likely it won't damage your hearing (or those sounds would have damaged your hearing already).
or those sounds would have damaged your hearing already
Assuming that you couldn't otherwise avoid those sounds, in which case listening to music above them is worse than just being exposed to them. Unless you're using something that also reduces environmental noise at the same time, I'm not buying what you're trying to sell.
Anyhow, I think he was looking for something more objective.
Woodinville already presented the important points, which I believe are worth repeating...
You need to turn the music down the very moment you feel any discomfort or else you will get used to the volume because your threshold will shift.
The SPL of earphones needs to be measured with a coupler that matches the volume (as in displacement) of an ear canal. This displacement causes a resonance which means that what hits your eardrum is actually made louder.
Anyhow, I think he was looking for something more objective.
By this point, it's more a fun what if than a real concern, but yeah, real measurements trump vague assessments.
You need to turn the music down the very moment you feel any discomfort or else you will get used to the volume because your threshold will shift.
Definitely no worries about that bit.
That's all helpful Ed, and what you say is true. I think i was unclear. What i was wondering is why our ears are so readily fooled by our positive expectations.. You can't give someone chocolate cream pie, tell them it's cherry cream pie and fool them. You can't give someone slightly grayed eye glasses, tell them "these are awesomely dark sunglasses" and have them think the bright summer day is suddenly dim and comfortable. I'm excluding hypnosis situations..
However, you *can* easily fool most people in to thinking that two cables sound different if they are different gauges,
In the pie and the glasses example, the two are obviously different. If you gave the original vs a 32 kb/s MP3, they would also notice. In the case of the cables, there's no difference, so people pick the one thay *think* should sound better. Give someone two identical glasses of wine, but tell him that one is a $10 bottle and the other is a $100 bottle. I'm fairly sure these experiments have been done before.
I find it puzzling that so many people have belief in shamans, religious leaders, Uri Geller and more despite (to mee) the lack of good evidence. I think that the solution must be that during evolution, those that believed in such things could function better in a tribe, and those sceptics would tend to be excluded from social groups, meaning they had to face the sable-tooth tiger all by themselves. Perhaps we are biologically wired (and Darwinistically selected) to believe whatever "authorities" tell us to be true, no matter how unbelievable it seems?
-k
I do as well. And I've concluded that, within limits, we have. After all, our parents, and the elders of the tribe, survived to pass on their lore. So that lore has strong survival value, and departing from it -- deciding to see if cobras are friendlier than we've been told, for example -- can be decidedly hazardous. For this reason, I think we evolved to have a bias towards accepting the teachings of the adults around us. The contrary evolutionary imperative would be the need to change and adapt to new circumstances -- a water hole drying up, say, or a new invention. So we have some capacity to do that, too, but it's a limited one, and doesn't seem to be shared equally by all members of society, in that some seem more disposed to question the established order and accept change than others.
The McGurk Effect - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw)
The McGurk Effect - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw)
Yawn (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=84764)
The McGurk Effect - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypd5txtGdGw)
Yawn (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=84764)
sorry its a habit of mine, im a "creature of habit"
fyi, some sunday reading: the outcome of a large blind test on wines
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-13072745 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-13072745)
Chris
I find it puzzling that so many people have belief in shamans, religious leaders, Uri Geller and more despite (to mee) the lack of good evidence. I think that the solution must be that during evolution, those that believed in such things could function better in a tribe, and those sceptics would tend to be excluded from social groups, meaning they had to face the sable-tooth tiger all by themselves. Perhaps we are biologically wired (and Darwinistically selected) to believe whatever "authorities" tell us to be true, no matter how unbelievable it seems?
-k
I do as well. And I've concluded that, within limits, we have. After all, our parents, and the elders of the tribe, survived to pass on their lore. So that lore has strong survival value, and departing from it -- deciding to see if cobras are friendlier than we've been told, for example -- can be decidedly hazardous. For this reason, I think we evolved to have a bias towards accepting the teachings of the adults around us. The contrary evolutionary imperative would be the need to change and adapt to new circumstances -- a water hole drying up, say, or a new invention. So we have some capacity to do that, too, but it's a limited one, and doesn't seem to be shared equally by all members of society, in that some seem more disposed to question the established order and accept change than others.
Lets go back in time: And 2 prehumans walk through the jungle. They hear a sound. One of them thinks the sound comes from a scary entity (maybe a predator, or godlike creature) and he turns around. The other things nothing of it walks on and gets eaten by a saber tooth tiger. So the more gullible person survives.
Lets go back in time: And 2 prehumans walk through the jungle. They hear a sound. One of them thinks the sound comes from a scary entity (maybe a predator, or godlike creature) and he turns around. The other things nothing of it walks on and gets eaten by a saber tooth tiger. So the more gullible person survives.
well, the 1st one could be polite enough to warn the 2nd one...
Lets go back in time: And 2 prehumans walk through the jungle. They hear a sound. One of them thinks the sound comes from a scary entity (maybe a predator, or godlike creature) and he turns around. The other things nothing of it walks on and gets eaten by a saber tooth tiger. So the more gullible person survives.
This is another way of saying that the more risk adverse are more likely to survive, at least to a point. If you are too risk adverse you'll never step out of the cave to find food and starve to death.
If humans weren't risk adverse, insurance would never sell for a profit.
In a forum context you can take advantage of human risk adversity by making the golden ear choice seem to be the more risky choice. This won't help with the guy who already spent his money, because for him the risk adverse position is to claim an audible benefit. But the person who is contemplating the new purchase sees thing exactly the opposite. He won't say that he isn't going to buy to avoid conflict, but odds are his money stays in his wallet.
The title of this thread is extremely incorrect and presumptive, and the OP is completely inaccurate. Vision and other senses are just as much confounded by hearing and/or each other.
http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Vi...e35f4213396db1d (http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Viewer/?peid=97d16681790e45bd978e35f4213396db1d) at least for a while, is a talk on auditory perception. If you go to the time of about 28 minutes on for a few minutes, you'll see why. The same slide (208 of 230 for no reason I understand in the header) is true of vision, as well.
If you go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and look at "audio vs. video" you will see more on that subject, but sans talk.
The title of this thread is extremely incorrect and presumptive, and the OP is completely inaccurate. Vision and other senses are just as much confounded by hearing and/or each other.
http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Vi...e35f4213396db1d (http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Viewer/?peid=97d16681790e45bd978e35f4213396db1d) at least for a while, is a talk on auditory perception. If you go to the time of about 28 minutes on for a few minutes, you'll see why. The same slide (208 of 230 for no reason I understand in the header) is true of vision, as well.
If you go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and look at "audio vs. video" you will see more on that subject, but sans talk.
JJ, if we could only get the technical quality of the recordings of your talks up to the level of the technical quality of their contents... This is especially frusttrating to me because I the same thing with far better results about once a week, using cheap equipment and in a tougher context.
The title of this thread is extremely incorrect and presumptive, and the OP is completely inaccurate. Vision and other senses are just as much confounded by hearing and/or each other.
http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Vi...e35f4213396db1d (http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Viewer/?peid=97d16681790e45bd978e35f4213396db1d) at least for a while, is a talk on auditory perception. If you go to the time of about 28 minutes on for a few minutes, you'll see why. The same slide (208 of 230 for no reason I understand in the header) is true of vision, as well.
If you go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and look at "audio vs. video" you will see more on that subject, but sans talk.
JJ, if we could only get the technical quality of the recordings of your talks up to the level of the technical quality of their contents... This is especially frusttrating to me because I the same thing with far better results about once a week, using cheap equipment and in a tougher context.
Well, I do the talks. They do the recordings.