I think that is mostly in the brain. It seems that as we get older, we are able to compensate for lost measured input, and still hear significant differences. I have known people in their '70's, who had a better sound system than I did, (or do at the moment). They could hear the difference as well.
Taste might be the much the same. A young person, or a person not given a chance to try the best tasting food and drink, might not believe that it is all that important.
I'll never forget that motorcycle gang guy drink the cheapest red wine with gusto next to me, 40 years ago, when I was almost gagging on the same thing. (I had just returned from Europe and its wines, and had lost my early reference tasting point). I think that it can be the same in audio.
Taste might be the much the same. A young person, or a person not given a chance to try the best tasting food and drink, might not believe that it is all that important.
I'll never forget that motorcycle gang guy drink the cheapest red wine with gusto next to me, 40 years ago, when I was almost gagging on the same thing. (I had just returned from Europe and its wines, and had lost my early reference tasting point). I think that it can be the same in audio.
GRollins said:
Golden ears are developed through years of experience and effort, lets just say the passion to understand what one is hearing.
Sorry, they don't appear after building an amp and evaluating it using a Rotel CD player and a set of top of the line Polk audio speakers (that's a joke son).
There must be a hundred variables to experiment with. By learning to understanding their effects, you learn to hear through to what you are actually listening to. It's much easier if your just trying to make the music you like sound better...
Regards, Mike,
noise & distortion components from the last 100 posts or so split off...
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110632
dave
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110632
dave
john curl said:
It is, overwhelmingly. Read for instance: "This is your brain on music" from Daniel Levitin. Think about it: You don't really 'hear' the movements of those cilia or basal membrane. If you think about it, the sound appears to be 'just' inside your head.
There is a lot of processing going on between those cilia movements and the final end product that you percieve. That processing involves throwing away stuff that you currently are not focussed on, combining with sounds from earlier memories but that is currently not present, and integrating it with sight, tactile and a host of other inputs.
In that light, any opinion that you really hear accurately what's out there right now seems pretty absurd.
BTW We missed you at BAF, John. Really.
Jan Didden
In my case I heard literally hundreds of pieces of equipment back when I was in retail. Slow summer days were ideal for listening because there were few customers and you could take all the time in the world to try things. Quite educational, even though some of the lessons took time to sink in, such as the correlation between high feedback and upper midrange glare. Patience and a lot of pieces of audio gear can tell you quite a bit. Follow that with a trip to the symphony and you've got something you can work with.
Grey
Grey
perception of music
Some of us performed for years (or even decades)b4 becoming rabid audio fanatics, so we have a bit of a different persepective. Having played reed instruments in a number of venues in my younger days, I'm often surprised at the disconnect between musicians' perceptions of reproduced music and those who are consumers only.
Quite a few highly talented musicians I've had as friends over the years are amazed at the quality of my audio equipment, with comments like "that sounds better than a live performance, etc.", which never made much sense to me. They then want me to build them a system, which I do.
I attribute this difference to the observation that musicians listen to the performance of the music, as opposed to the quality of the reproduction.... a matter of whether what they hear meets they're mental image of how the music should be performed. This in stark contrast to the "goldn ear" audiophile approach of how accurate the music is reproduced (or performed, if a live venue). I myself am conflicted at live concerts; often I want to go to the sound booth and tell them to re-mike the lead guitar, or turn down the percussion, etc... (to the dismay of my wife, who pretty much is there because I drag her along or to see the performance).
->Mike Bettinger...
Interesting on the Mosque... I recall now the organ in the pit was at the Byrd Theater in the West end... i think an organist named Eddie used to perform prior to a movie with the Wurlitzer rising out of the pit with all stops open playing some Sousa march, or Saint Saens, etc...quite a show!
John L.
Some of us performed for years (or even decades)b4 becoming rabid audio fanatics, so we have a bit of a different persepective. Having played reed instruments in a number of venues in my younger days, I'm often surprised at the disconnect between musicians' perceptions of reproduced music and those who are consumers only.
Quite a few highly talented musicians I've had as friends over the years are amazed at the quality of my audio equipment, with comments like "that sounds better than a live performance, etc.", which never made much sense to me. They then want me to build them a system, which I do.
I attribute this difference to the observation that musicians listen to the performance of the music, as opposed to the quality of the reproduction.... a matter of whether what they hear meets they're mental image of how the music should be performed. This in stark contrast to the "goldn ear" audiophile approach of how accurate the music is reproduced (or performed, if a live venue). I myself am conflicted at live concerts; often I want to go to the sound booth and tell them to re-mike the lead guitar, or turn down the percussion, etc... (to the dismay of my wife, who pretty much is there because I drag her along or to see the performance).
->Mike Bettinger...
Interesting on the Mosque... I recall now the organ in the pit was at the Byrd Theater in the West end... i think an organist named Eddie used to perform prior to a movie with the Wurlitzer rising out of the pit with all stops open playing some Sousa march, or Saint Saens, etc...quite a show!
John L.
I'm a musician myself, but I've never cited it as having a major influence on my hearing. It's been my experience that very few musicians have particularly acute hearing in the stereo reproduction sense. As a general rule there have only been two areas where I've noticed anything:
--Sensitivity to pitch. In a musician, this is critical. If your instrument is out of tune it's like fingernails on a blackboard. As far as stereo goes, however, you're pretty much at the mercy of the recording. (A large percentage of recordings aren't at the proper pitch.) There's not much you can do about it, so you learn to live with it. The days of obnoxious wow and flutter are pretty much over, so pitch constancy isn't too much of a problem in decent turntables. CDs are pretty stable, so they're not a problem. Reel to reel tape is dead, as are cassette and eight-track (believe it or not, there were still some trying to get decent sound out of eight track tapes in the late '70s--never understood it myself), so they don't count. Radio is just LP, CD, tape, once-removed...doesn't count.
--Tone. Musicians put great amounts of time, effort, and money into getting the tone they want. If it's butchered in a recording, they're unhappy. Oddly, this one is pretty rare as far as a complaint. I only had one customer who was really up against the wall trying to get the tone right.
Image is a non-starter. Musicians don't get an audience's perspective on things. In fact, the sound on stage is wildly different from what's heard out in the hall. What comes off the recording is pretty much an alien experience in that sense.
Dynamics. You'd think musicians would kill themselves trying to get the dynamics right on their stereos. Not so. It's pretty much an audiophile thing. Go figure.
Volume. All over the map. Rock musicians want it loud. Classical, jazz and such don't readily classify.
Distortion, per se. Never comes up. Ever. The only time it's an issue is if you've got a rock critter who runs his system into clipping--but anything sounds like crap if it's clipping.
There is one thing that a lot of musicians have that most non-musicians don't, and that's the ability to latch onto a single instrument and follow it--mentally blocking out all others--through an entire passage. An absolutely essential skill for jazz and rock where you might need to jam, reacting to other musicians' unpredictable whims. Somewhat less of a need for classical where you're following the sheet music and listening to other primarily for the rhythm (well, okay, there's this fella up in front waving his arms in the air, but what does he know?).
All in all, my personal experience as a musician, and my experience in sales lead me to believe that it's not as big a benefit as you might think. The one thing musicians bring to the table is a love of music...except for the ones who do it for ego or money, but those are different matters entirely.
Grey
--Sensitivity to pitch. In a musician, this is critical. If your instrument is out of tune it's like fingernails on a blackboard. As far as stereo goes, however, you're pretty much at the mercy of the recording. (A large percentage of recordings aren't at the proper pitch.) There's not much you can do about it, so you learn to live with it. The days of obnoxious wow and flutter are pretty much over, so pitch constancy isn't too much of a problem in decent turntables. CDs are pretty stable, so they're not a problem. Reel to reel tape is dead, as are cassette and eight-track (believe it or not, there were still some trying to get decent sound out of eight track tapes in the late '70s--never understood it myself), so they don't count. Radio is just LP, CD, tape, once-removed...doesn't count.
--Tone. Musicians put great amounts of time, effort, and money into getting the tone they want. If it's butchered in a recording, they're unhappy. Oddly, this one is pretty rare as far as a complaint. I only had one customer who was really up against the wall trying to get the tone right.
Image is a non-starter. Musicians don't get an audience's perspective on things. In fact, the sound on stage is wildly different from what's heard out in the hall. What comes off the recording is pretty much an alien experience in that sense.
Dynamics. You'd think musicians would kill themselves trying to get the dynamics right on their stereos. Not so. It's pretty much an audiophile thing. Go figure.
Volume. All over the map. Rock musicians want it loud. Classical, jazz and such don't readily classify.
Distortion, per se. Never comes up. Ever. The only time it's an issue is if you've got a rock critter who runs his system into clipping--but anything sounds like crap if it's clipping.
There is one thing that a lot of musicians have that most non-musicians don't, and that's the ability to latch onto a single instrument and follow it--mentally blocking out all others--through an entire passage. An absolutely essential skill for jazz and rock where you might need to jam, reacting to other musicians' unpredictable whims. Somewhat less of a need for classical where you're following the sheet music and listening to other primarily for the rhythm (well, okay, there's this fella up in front waving his arms in the air, but what does he know?).
All in all, my personal experience as a musician, and my experience in sales lead me to believe that it's not as big a benefit as you might think. The one thing musicians bring to the table is a love of music...except for the ones who do it for ego or money, but those are different matters entirely.
Grey
stoolpigeon said:
Something along the lines of making an emperical and listening decision..and then marking off the solder at each measurment point, and then for that specific solder junction, always use that exact amount,exact temperature, and working time. This is for EACH solder junction on the given board. So much for that resistor leg. So much for that transistor (T0 220-202-92-03, etc).
Always use the same solder, and size. Always ask that the solder be the made same, or buy from a place that makes it exactly the way you want it. Inquire of their manufacturing process and their impurity levels and ask that they adhere to them exactly. A good solder manufaucturer WILL do that. This generally means you are buying from the same point as the space and aerospace industry.
Basically, control every aspect of the implementation, then the sold units have the best chance of sounding as good as the lab 'finished-work example'.
For example, a hair too much of, or the WRONG solder on a silver connection, or interconnect connection, can make the difference between a screechy and unbearable interconnect and a good one. If you find a pure silver interconnect sounds bad, then it might be due to the solder involved. It happens quite often.
The materials in the solder make or break the sonic quality, and can account for a goodly amount of the sound of the given item. If it is a large power amp, for example, the solder alone might account for being like the extra sonic burden of listening to a 10-15-20 foot long wire of that given solder (superimposed uon the sound of everything else that makes the amp sound like it does)...and the molecular considerations can be all over the map, unless you take care in it's use. Try to break it down to single cause analysis. Like soldering two identical but physically sepearte complex circuits ..two different ways. You will hear the difference.
I've done similar myself, but not at the manufacturing level.
Musicians are not good judges of high fidelity reproduction. They can get so much vital info from just a good table radio, that it has amazed me, on occasion. Still, musicians are really into the sound quality of their instrument, go figure. I would guess that it might be what their expectation is from their actual playing the instrument, compared to listening to someone else playing. Then, they seem to be able to 'fill in' the missing fidelity.
Many moons ago, when I was still significantly involved in competitive athletics and coaching, I attended a fascinating sports science lecture by a neurologist on how to improve performance by coordinating training methodology to maximize the rate of neurological adaptation.
The gist of his talk was that there are two levels of concious cognitive function: stepped and mapped. Stepped function occurs when the brain performs a task that it is unfamiliar with, such that each sub-process within the function must be conciously performed as an individual task. Mapped function occurs when the brain performs a task it is intimitely familiar with, so that the individual sub-processes are performed without concious awareness. If a stepped function is performed with sufficient frequecy, the brain begins to adapt by creating a neurological map of the sub-processes. After about 10,000 repetitions of the same stepped function, the brain has fully developed the map, and the whole process is now cognitively recognized as a single task, with the sub-processes performed automatically by the "programmed" map. This has been studied in depth using MRI and CAT scans which not only show that a map executes as a single burst of co-ordinated neuron activity as compared to a series of steps, but that maps reside in a difference region of the brain entirely.
A good analogy would be the difference between how a two-year old ties shoes compared to how an adult performs it. The two year old must concentrate on each movement of the laces. For us adults, try to actually think your way through each motion of tying your shoes, and you may be surprised by how frustratingly difficult a process it is.
Further, there is a limit to the number of tasks the brain can conciuosly concentrate on simultaneously. If every task must be performed as a stepped function, then the rate at which tasks can be performed is pretty slow. However, the more that tasks can be performed as mapped functions, the concentration requirement is lessened and more can be performed simultaneously.
I mention this to add to the golden ear / tongue / etc. conversation, because that is where these concepts come from. The more music you listen to (or wine you drink) the more the process of listening (tasting) moves from stepped to mapped, allowing the brain to analyze properties of the sound (flavour) more rapidly and efficiently.
It is not the case that an inexperienced listener can't hear what a golden ear can hear, but instead that a golden ear can listen for many more aspects of a sounds property simultaneously. This does, however, make it more likely that a golden ear will catch a subtly nuanced difference.
--------------
On a completely different note, I wanted to ask about the asymmetrical slew rate issue. My first thought is that as long as the slew rate at any point in the transfer curve is greater than the slew rate of the signal being processed, it should not create an audible artifact. But on further consideration I begin to wonder about the case where the asymmetry has a sharp transistion at crossover, and whether this will create a transient instability in a circuit when transiting.
If I am completely lost in the woods, just call me Red RidingHood and point me towards the nearest wolf.
Cheers, Terry
The gist of his talk was that there are two levels of concious cognitive function: stepped and mapped. Stepped function occurs when the brain performs a task that it is unfamiliar with, such that each sub-process within the function must be conciously performed as an individual task. Mapped function occurs when the brain performs a task it is intimitely familiar with, so that the individual sub-processes are performed without concious awareness. If a stepped function is performed with sufficient frequecy, the brain begins to adapt by creating a neurological map of the sub-processes. After about 10,000 repetitions of the same stepped function, the brain has fully developed the map, and the whole process is now cognitively recognized as a single task, with the sub-processes performed automatically by the "programmed" map. This has been studied in depth using MRI and CAT scans which not only show that a map executes as a single burst of co-ordinated neuron activity as compared to a series of steps, but that maps reside in a difference region of the brain entirely.
A good analogy would be the difference between how a two-year old ties shoes compared to how an adult performs it. The two year old must concentrate on each movement of the laces. For us adults, try to actually think your way through each motion of tying your shoes, and you may be surprised by how frustratingly difficult a process it is.
Further, there is a limit to the number of tasks the brain can conciuosly concentrate on simultaneously. If every task must be performed as a stepped function, then the rate at which tasks can be performed is pretty slow. However, the more that tasks can be performed as mapped functions, the concentration requirement is lessened and more can be performed simultaneously.
I mention this to add to the golden ear / tongue / etc. conversation, because that is where these concepts come from. The more music you listen to (or wine you drink) the more the process of listening (tasting) moves from stepped to mapped, allowing the brain to analyze properties of the sound (flavour) more rapidly and efficiently.
It is not the case that an inexperienced listener can't hear what a golden ear can hear, but instead that a golden ear can listen for many more aspects of a sounds property simultaneously. This does, however, make it more likely that a golden ear will catch a subtly nuanced difference.
--------------
On a completely different note, I wanted to ask about the asymmetrical slew rate issue. My first thought is that as long as the slew rate at any point in the transfer curve is greater than the slew rate of the signal being processed, it should not create an audible artifact. But on further consideration I begin to wonder about the case where the asymmetry has a sharp transistion at crossover, and whether this will create a transient instability in a circuit when transiting.
If I am completely lost in the woods, just call me Red RidingHood and point me towards the nearest wolf.
Cheers, Terry
john curl said:
John, you slipped in your post while I was composing, but your note is a great example of neurological map function at work. The musicians have extensive neurological maps that execute automatically with respect to musical composition and tone that they have become programmed as to how it should sound.
I don't think it's as simple as 'just' training or innate aptitude or physiological differences or experience. I expect that they all come into play to some greater or lesser degree. Some we have control over, such as educating our ears, and others we don't, such as possible physiological differences.
I suppose I should go ahead and point out the obvious--if you have a closed mind, you're not going to hear a damned thing. I know my views on music reproduction changed dramatically once I got over the idea that I knew it all. Wouldn't go back to that for all the tea in China.
Grey
I suppose I should go ahead and point out the obvious--if you have a closed mind, you're not going to hear a damned thing. I know my views on music reproduction changed dramatically once I got over the idea that I knew it all. Wouldn't go back to that for all the tea in China.
Grey
Terry, asymmetric slew rate is a potential problem, but it is separate from xover distortion or the low frequency transfer function. In this case, it is just the fact that the second stage driver has twice the peak current available to charge the 10pf compensation cap in one direction, compared to the other direction. The slew rate, overall, is a little low, by todays standards of GOOD op amps, but most audio equipment uses even SLOWER IC's, even today.
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