I do not mean that  I "hear" less of a difference. What I mean is that the differences that I hear during analytical mode don't mean as much to me at that moment compared to when I listen to the music for enjoyment. When enjoying the music sometimes I think that I am tired of the song that I am listening to or feel bored but get more emotional or even cry when listening to the original. The analogy is exactly like listening to music in a different mental state. try listening when you are drunk and sober. The experience is different. Just like listening when you are analyzing isnt as  emotional as listening deeply to the soul of the music. At the time you are listening emotionally, you are not pinpointing the artifacts. The music speaks for itself. Sort of like placebo but this time it is not expectation bias, Its just the way it is whether or not I know which source cd is playing. To ramble even more, Its just like listening to music with different stereo systems. one is a more emotional experience, one is dull and boring. I hope you got what I meant. Its audiophile hocus pocus at work

I recall, we have had successful abx tests even here at ha in the high end area. The guy, who abxed 1 trial each morning, when his ears were fresh.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=336189"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I presented some time ago thier results about testing possible differences between  16/48, 24/48, 24/96 music.
It was shown, that with some probability 24/48 is betetr than 16/48. [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=336189"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

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To tell you the truth, I cannot understand how someone could read and understand the two papers I linked to in the following thread and still be convinced that DBT can be the final word on music reproduction. In any event, it is a very interesting field of science that I suspect is not well known to many HA members:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=321782
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I have not read them. It seems that they deal with the effect of unconcious stimuli. Your point would be that sounds unconciously perceived might affect our perception of music.

But I don't see how this could explain the disparition of all "audiophile effects" under blind listening conditions. The unconcious stimuli don't disappear when the test is blind, so why should their effects disappear ?
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It's not that any information disappears. The problem is that the ABX paradigm relies on cognitive processes that might not be directly affected by subtle differences between two presented stimuli, but other aspects of the listening experience might be. Because of the increased effort required of perceptual processes, due to compressed information that must be resolved, listening experiences might have an uncomfortable element associated with them that uncompressed stimulus perception doesn't. An ABX paradigm might not be able to tap into that very well, if at all (because the effort is perceptual, not in a decision processs). But there are other methodologies that could measure whatever processing differences might exist.
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Seems to be a lack of understanding of something fundamental here: if you encode something to a lossy format it *does* lose information, it's not "compressed" at all. You've actually thrown away a lot of information! How do you know that the auditory system doesn't find it *easier* to decode since there's less "data"?

The reason compressed data requires more effort on the part of whatever computational system is perceiving it, is because more inferential processing is required. If you are missing data in a signal, some mechanism in your brain must essentially interpolate, from the signal, the missing information.
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Seems to be a lack of understanding of something fundamental here: if you encode something to a lossy format it *does* lose information, it's not "compressed" at all. You've actually thrown away a lot of information! How do you know that the auditory system doesn't find it *easier* to decode since there's less "data"?

Lossless and lossy compression schemes are just that, compression. It is in this sense that I mean that an mp3 file, for example, is compressed..

The question of whether perceptual systems have an easier or harder time resolving stimuli that are impoverished (relative to a complementary uncompressed stimulus) is an empirical one that has been addressed in a variety of ways in perception research (mostly vision). I've been talking about ways to address this specifically with audio lossy schemes, and I'm presenting an idea regarding how this effect might not be addressed fully with an ABX paradigm that relies on decision tasks. A reaction time paradigm might be better suited to study the processing differences listeners likely experience.

The reason compressed data requires more effort on the part of whatever computational system is perceiving it, is because more inferential processing is required. If you are missing data in a signal, some mechanism in your brain must essentially interpolate, from the signal, the missing information.
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I recall, we have had successful abx tests even here at ha in the high end area. The guy, who abxed 1 trial each morning, when his ears were fresh.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It was not here, but in another english forum. It was a 16 bits truncated vs 16 bits dihered test. I recall the sample being guitar only, with little dynamics, and no fade-out.
It was an interesting success.
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The reason compressed data requires more effort on the part of whatever computational system is perceiving it, is because more inferential processing is required. If you are missing data in a signal, some mechanism in your brain must essentially interpolate, from the signal, the missing information.
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Why? How can our brain even tell there is something missing? And why MUST it interpolate this data?

These are again merely assumptions on your part.
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Why does it not necessarily apply? Because the purpose of lossy audio compression is to throw away unperceivable parts of the audio. So if the sensors aren't missing anything, then why should it make any difference?

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Why? How can our brain even tell there is something missing? And why MUST it interpolate this data?

These are again merely assumptions on your part.
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It's not that our brains "know" there is something missing, it's that relative to a less noisy signal, the brain has to do more work in order to generate the best representation of the sound it can.

So we aren't wired to detect "non-events" over events in general. For predator detection, yes...but not for something like, for example, detecting cheaters in a card game!
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Sorry, this is not even true. I would like you to show me how you calculate that an 128 kbps mp3 has 90% less information (define information too please) than the original PCM data. Then show me that our auditory system must derive more from a decoded mp3 than from the original PCM AND explain exactly what it is that is being derived. If anything, it seems to me the opposite must be true and working with less data is also is less fatiguing
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Seems to be a lack of understanding of something fundamental here: if you encode something to a lossy format it *does* lose information, it's not "compressed" at all.
...
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I recall, we have had successful abx tests even here at ha in the high end area. The guy, who abxed 1 trial each morning, when his ears were fresh.
You don't need special software,
instead of software you need then a helper person, who burns a CD with first 2 files as references, AB, you know, which is which, and then other tracks as several X in random order, but the helper writes somewhere down, which is which.
Then you can play with this cd, and if you think, you are finished, the helper can reveal you the results.




I like the University of Music in Detmold, Germany.
How they carry out abx tests in diploma thesis.
And that they write directly in thier papers against te marketing hypes, now they revealed, no perceivable difference between DSD and 192/24 PCM.

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Seems to be a lack of understanding of something fundamental here: if you encode something to a lossy format it *does* lose information, it's not "compressed" at all. You've actually thrown away a lot of information! How do you know that the auditory system doesn't find it *easier* to decode since there's less "data"?

Lossless and lossy compression schemes are just that, compression. It is in this sense that I mean that an mp3 file, for example, is compressed..

The question of whether perceptual systems have an easier or harder time resolving stimuli that are impoverished (relative to a complementary uncompressed stimulus) is an empirical one that has been addressed in a variety of ways in perception research (mostly vision).

I've been talking about ways to address this specifically with audio lossy schemes, and I'm presenting an idea regarding how this effect might not be addressed fully with an ABX paradigm that relies on decision tasks. A reaction time paradigm might be better suited to study the processing differences listeners likely experience.

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Why? How can our brain even tell there is something missing? And why MUST it interpolate this data?

These are again merely assumptions on your part.
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It's not that our brains "know" there is something missing, it's that relative to a less noisy signal, the brain has to do more work in order to generate the best representation of the sound it can.

Now you are saying something completely different. I don't see how our brain would try to represent anything else than what it is perceiving. I don't see how a wave form produced by an mp3 decoder is conceptually different from one might encounter in other situations. But ok, I will wait for studies.
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But I don't think it would hurt for a slightly more flexible attitude to prevail (and it would certainly reduce the possibility of many egg covered faces in the future).[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=336381"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

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So we aren't wired to detect "non-events" over events in general. For predator detection, yes...but not for something like, for example, detecting cheaters in a card game!
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Really, now, would you like to show your evidence?

The evidence that partial loudness differences are overdetected has been in for years.

All auditory stimulii start out as a set of partial loudnesses, as expressed as pulse position modulation in the auditory nerves.

If you're right, this would require a complete revision of the entire understanding of how the human auditory system works.  Have you this revision prepared yet?
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It doesn't "make up" anything, it detects, in a very lossy and mathematically imperfect fashion, whatever is there. Since that's a lossy fashion, sometimes it imagines that things are there when they aren't, but that's not "making up the missing information" at all.

People can easily parse sentences with 'degraded' content, such as sentences where 'the the' appears, as well as other typos involving *missing* words or data.
Has it been determined what level of degradation has to be reached before the *time* it takes to parse a sentence is affected? If two tasks take an effectively indistinguishable amount of time for the same person, then one cannot be said to be more 'difficult' than another, can it? The only other measure of 'difficulty' I could imagine would be something like, the number of neurons engaged, or the amount of blood flow involved.

You haven't demonstrated that it's even an *issue* for lossy schemes. Horses before carts, please.

Ans since we seem still to be in the realm of the suppositional, suppose perception is a matter of stimuli crossing sensory and cognitive *thresholds*. It could be that as long as the 'lossy' (lossy only in comparison to the original stimulus) stimulus still crosses the right thresholds, it's all the same to the brain.
This would mean that the 'best' 'lossy' representations' are simply those that are *good enough* -- and they don't require any more 'effort' to process.

So, if we're adding noise to a signal that someone is trying to interpret, it's pretty obvious that it's going to require more processing. Do you find it easier to understand speech in a crowded bar or a quiet room? This is why they put up acoustic panels in auditoriums; too much reverberation acts like noise and makes speech more difficult to understand. This isn't really debatable.

What is in question is whether or not noise that is below the threshold where you can actually hear it still has an effect on processing, and what research is showing over and over is that whether or not something is directly perceived has very little to do with the underlying processing. The brain is processing the sounds into a "reality" for your conscious mind to act on, and does not want to bother you with unimportant details that might distract you. What if every stimuli registered by your senses was consciously perceived!!

Imagine walking blindfolded into a large room with sound reflective walls. You instantly become aware of the rough dimensions of the room, but you don't hear every echo of every footstep. A blind person would be able to "hear" in much greater detail, and in fact claim to be able to almost "see" the room. This is the kind of thing that the subconscious mind is constantly doing for us in the background, and what finally gets presented to our conscious mind is rather independent of what processing was required to achieve it. I admit that without at least a working knowledge of the literature, this may seem counterintuitive.

opinions, and the free and lively interchange of ideas is what this board is all about. But I don't think it would hurt for a slightly more flexible attitude to prevail (and it would certainly reduce the possibility of many egg covered faces in the future).

Have a good weekend! 

What's surprising is that this can be a relatively high level of noise (which is why these lossy codecs work so well). You can easily do a test where you subtract an original music signal from its encoded version. You might be surprised how much noise is added.

So, if we're adding noise to a signal that someone is trying to interpret, it's pretty obvious that it's going to require more processing.

Do you find it easier to understand speech in a crowded bar or a quiet room? This is why they put up acoustic panels in auditoriums; too much reverberation acts like noise and makes speech more difficult to understand. This isn't really debatable.

What is in question is whether or not noise that is below the threshold where you can actually hear it still has an effect on processing, and what research is showing over and over is that whether or not something is directly perceived has very little to do with the underlying processing. ...  Just because other processing is unconscious does not mean it's any less taxing, and the brain will always attempt to minimize it.

It sounds counterintuitive that my brain would have to work harder on a lossy compressed signal than on the original. Also note that duff and you are not helping each other, because you say the brain needs to work harder to filter out the noise, and duff says the brain needs to work harder to somehow interpolate the signal and thus creating info.

This is also what isn't debated. Audible differences lie within the scope of an ABX-test.

When people start using phrases like "It goes without saying" and "uncontroversial" I always immediately start asking myself: "Is that so?".

Frankly, I find it surprising that I need to convince people that degraded signals require more effort to process. This is not the speculative element of the idea. But I understand that our use of the term "effort" is not one people ordinarily consider. I will provide examples of research demonstrating this soon.
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Frankly, I find it surprising that I need to convince people that degraded signals require more effort to process. This is not the speculative element of the idea. But I understand that our use of the term "effort" is not one people ordinarily consider. I will provide examples of research demonstrating this soon.
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Because they arent 'degraded' - they are changed and filtered. They arent 'messier', maybe they are notably artificial in respects but - if you are used to refering to the necessarily perceptibly subtle changes allowed by lossy encoding, with perjorative terms as degrade and elsewhere 'impoverished' you'll have a problem with seeing them fairly. That a perceptibly subtle change can be 'strong' or 'powerful' doesnt mean its 'noisy' just different. Im open to the idea there are unconcious differences in their perception, and maybe some unconcious stresses to watch out for in psychoacoustics, but different sound doesnt have to be messier sound.
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