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Posted by Romy the Cat on
07-24-2008
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Running further away from Slav’s and Austrian’s “expressed sound” in music, walking across the Brucknerian soft monochromic fields I found myself lately to have very different interests in the sound that I am after. Well, I know how to make good sound, let not to be too modest – whoever was in my listening room last year and hit the “good electricity period” know that I am not just running my mouth. However this sound has own hated by me Mahlerian expressiveness. It just depicts all possible existing the recording moments in their most desirable way, the desirable in trims of listening experiences. I admit that it is an accomplishment itself but during the last year six month my interests shifted in different direction.
I almost seen myself if not a conductor of the music the I play but at least a coordinator and organizer- ether way I see myself as a person who utilizing my audio methods is responsible for how music would be played in my room. Playing music on my audio lately shifted on two major segments – live music from FM and playing my CD/LP. In term of audio the live FM gave me mostly the “music of Mahlerian expressiveness”. I do very little to think about “conducting” or organizing this music. I take that sound “as is”. However, the other my listening- from my CD/LP is a maters of totally different intention – this music I listen with very deep and purposeful intention and while I do so I am looking for other meaning of Sound and Audio expressiveness.
The CD/LP that I listen are practically never the Mahlerian colorful music but mostly the recordings from 20s to end very end of 40s, with 1939-49 being the most interning years. I would like to live aside all aspects of good conductors sand phenomenal players and to look only at the pure audio elements of sound. Good, how good is it! I do feel that in sound of heavy saturated tapes of Koussevitzky and Furtwängler orchestras lives more “information” then in well-bread sound to better orchestras of today. This is not only attributing to the great contactors and their given interpretations but rather an argument that their Audio Sound was more potent.
I have a lot of ideas on the subject and one of them is a concept of “Rational Masking” or something that I call more generally as “Implied Sound”. The “Rational Masking” is a situation when audio element intentionally blurs specific aspect of audio presentation, implying that there are hidden elements out there. That yanks listening perception and it is incredibly powerful and tool as it teases listening awareness, forcing it to become from a passive consumer of event to an active collaborator of event. Remember how attractive and swallowable a naked woman looks in her panties and how less exiting she might look completely naked? The “Implied Sound” works in the same way. Surely, to implement within a playback an active “Rational Masking” mechanism is incredibly difficult but we have where to learn – the recordings from 40s.
This is very much not another idiotic thread about resolution vs. musicality. The “Implied Sound” has no relation to ether of them. There is however an interesting catche in there. The “Rational Masking” mechanism might be “engaged” but there is also a mechanism of “fantasies catalysis” and some other sides of audio do have some control over it. Did I say too much or too little? You decide… Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Posted by Paul S on
07-25-2008
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For several years I wrote a ongoing monthly editorial about poetry (The Art of Poetry). No nutshell version is available, but Romy''s post reminds me that much of it dealt with just the active aspect of Dialog that is discussed here. IMO this is exactly what sets Art apart from product, that it resists "consumption" and yields itself only through conscious interaction. Likely, this is exactly why Art is less "popular" than entertainment, and likely this explains why most hi-fi delivers other than Art, which is ultimately to say, other than Music. Of course if the system is designed/used for consumption, it won't "work" for Music. And it only seems rational that if the aims during set-up were nothing more than entertainment, then the artistic capability and/or content is quite likely to be either limited or nil.
For me, the top of the FM experience - the live performance - is germane to this discussion in that FM is somewhat "off" in terms of what most of us think of as "sonics". At the same time, FM, like some of the "limited" early recordings, yet manages to capture and convey the "vital" aspects of Music in a way or ways that do not preclude Dialog.
The "Life" in a musical work is somehow both extremely fragile and unbelievably tough. It can obviously survive an incredible amount of manipulation to be re-born in the mind of the active Listener; but this is not to say that anything of significance will happen in the mind of someone who is only marginally conscious.
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by drdna on
07-25-2008
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The idea that Romy brings up is a very interesting way of looking at the audio reproduction of music, by raising questions about human response to situations in which we are compelled to actively participate in the audio process. Old live recordings are a blaring example, but this is probably an active process to some degree in all listening.
It has of course been well demonstrated that people provided with a test audio signal of various harmonics will "hear" the fundamental because the brain will "fill in the gap." Likewise this happens every day as soon as we open our eyes, as the brain "fills in the gap" of the blind spot of the retina.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/cuius/idle/percept/blindspot.htm
As I see it, the concept of Active Implied Sound is that the brain will add (and perhaps subtract) missing bits to create a "better" sound. This idea is complementary to something I brought up a while back, my view of the audio reproduction equipment as having additive and subtractive distortions/variances from the original signal. That is, all audio systems will add some distortion/noise not present in the original signal: the additive error. All audio systems fail to fully reproduce the original signal; the part that is missing is the subtractive error.
The concept of Implied Sound completes a piece in the puzzle of why people have different musical preferences.
By applying this concept, we can create a spectrum of human responses to music. Looking at two polar examples:
1. The listener with a preference for euphony. This person's brain deals poorly with audio "blind spots"/subtractive error and cannot fill in the gap as well. Conversely, this listener's brain may be better able to process additive error. Consequently, this listener is more willing to accept distortions and colorations in audio, so long as more of the original signal is also transmitted intact along with any added distortions.
2. The listener with a preference for dry, analytical sound. This person's brain is very good with subtractive error or not very good with additive error. They cannot process colorations well, but can fill in the missing gaps in musical signals well. Thus, they prefer audio with more subtractive error: audio which has minimal added distortions, even if this means more of the original signal is truncated as well.
The implication of this is that ALL listeners may truly seeking the same subjective experience. When we listen to some other audiophile's system and think they must have potatoes for ears, it may turn out that they are not actually morons! This disparity in the subjective listening experience may simply reflect the variable neurophysiology of our individual brains.
The last component of the audio chain is not the loudspeaker or even the room. It is the brain. Perhaps what we have been doing in creating so many different types of audio components is simply trying to match our brains to the rest of the audio chain, the same way you might try to match impedence for optimal power transfer.
Does this mean may need to rethink our disdain for the "audiophool?"
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
07-25-2008
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Well, surely everything might be explained, or more precisely to say justified, by the presumptions that all listeners practicing audio may seeking subjective experiences that reflect variable neurophysiology of various individual brains. I would not agree with it. I argue that absolutely dominating majorly of listeners practicing audio deal with accidental results that do not reflect their I individuals intentions and this audio do not reflect the specifies of the neurophysiologic demands. Audio people in masses are just a pack of sheeps that were given a generic herbivorous mass and taught a stupid cult of fraternities. Observing and cataloging differences and identifying what one like or not is very much not the same then establishing specific and defined demand and perusing them…
Anyhow it is not the subject of the thread. In the subject I would like to point out that my initial post was a second layer. We spend a lot of efforts in audio the shape the “expressed sound” – something that represents the “auditable” but we not spend a whole a lot of efforts to deal with something that I call the “Shadow Audio”, or with something that the human response. The industry is under presumption that only music itself is something that is responsible for human response but I disagree. The industry claim it they are ignorant, uninformed, limited and because their objectives and interests do not go further then saleable commodities. In realty human response and moderation of listing perception shell be the only thing that distincts regular hi-fi audio from high-end audio aims. The Cat
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Posted by el`Ol on
07-26-2008
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 drdna wrote: |
1. The listener with a preference for euphony. This person's brain deals poorly with audio "blind spots"/subtractive error and cannot fill in the gap as well. Conversely, this listener's brain may be better able to process additive error. Consequently, this listener is more willing to accept distortions and colorations in audio, so long as more of the original signal is also transmitted intact along with any added distortions.
2. The listener with a preference for dry, analytical sound. This person's brain is very good with subtractive error or not very good with additive error. They cannot process colorations well, but can fill in the missing gaps in musical signals well. Thus, they prefer audio with more subtractive error: audio which has minimal added distortions, even if this means more of the original signal is truncated as well.
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At the University of Heidelberg they found an other aspect that distinguishes two kinds of listeners. They called them the fundamental listeners and the overtone listeners. It refers to perception of rising vs. falling tone intervals. They established a test that also found its way into the aditional CD of a German hifi magazine. It consisted of a number of artificially created sounds where the fundamental was not present. Instead they consisted of a formant lying at higher overtones. In every sound example (consisting of two following tones) if the virtual fundamental was rising the formant was falling vice versa. The result was that if a fundamential listener percept the interval as rising the overtone listener percept it as falling vice versa. The hifi magazine did an online evaluation to determine the hifi equipment the two kind of listers prefered.
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Posted by Paul S on
07-26-2008
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Re-reading Romy's posts I find myself thinking of the great old black and white films and the way I have responded to them over the years. I don't see this as a perfect analogy because in everyday life the "visual language" tends to dominate and even obscure the "audible language", and this makes straight comparisons difficult, if not impossible.
Still, I think the analogy has merit in the sense that there are even "technical" reasons why black and white can rivet the brain, just as older "shadowed" recordings. FWIW, I have even experienced the peculiar benefits of the shadow effect with spoken word, as opposed to music.
One of my favorite things in language is when words "morph" over time to wind up meaning both one thing and +/- the opposite. Example: "adumbrate", which variously means both to shadow and to bring to light.
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
07-26-2008
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| el`Ol wrote: | | At the University of Heidelberg they found an other aspect that distinguishes two kinds of listeners. They called them the fundamental listeners and the overtone listeners. It refers to perception of rising vs. falling tone intervals. They established a test that also found its way into the aditional CD of a German hifi magazine. It consisted of a number of artificially created sounds where the fundamental was not present. Instead they consisted of a formant lying at higher overtones. In every sound example (consisting of two following tones) if the virtual fundamental was rising the formant was falling vice versa. The result was that if a fundamential listener percept the interval as rising the overtone listener percept it as falling vice versa. The hifi magazine did an online evaluation to determine the hifi equipment the two kind of listers prefered. |
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Extremely interesting! Are they natural or acquired capacities? Is any place where is it possible to read about it in English?
| Paul S wrote: | | Re-reading Romy's posts I find myself thinking of the great old black and white films and the way I have responded to them over the years. |
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From my point of view it is a very good association. The memoires about the none-existing colors of Casablanca are more powerful than the actual colors of the "Come and see" The Cat
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Posted by Antonio J. on
07-27-2008
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some months ago. It was posted at AA about a year ago or so. I keep the "solutions" if someone interested wants to know his scoring and how much of a "fundamentalist" or "overtonist" is.
The only interesting thing about it is how being one or the other can shape your music and audio preferences, but anyone who's a regular poster of this site and has some little "ear training" will notice how every pair of sounds is "shaped" and would score as fundamentals or overtones listener at his will. At least that was my case.
I presented this test to some acquaintancies and funnily enough, the ones preferring rock over other music styles, people who like punchy bass and bright treble -JBL and Grado kind of sound- were all synthetic listeners, which means they listen more to the fundamentals than the overtones.
Rgrds
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Posted by el`Ol on
07-27-2008
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I ask myself wheter someone who belongs to drdna´s group 2 has to belong to it in optics as well. I still have my Sony Trinitron TV and I find it sad that Agfa positive films and Ilford positive papers are no longer available. On the other hand, is it strange that I am a pure fundamental listener? Maybe I don´t want to have my black&white music polluted by too much colour.
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Posted by tuga on
07-27-2008
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el'OL wrote:
"I ask myself wheter someone who belongs to drdna´s group 2 has to belong to it in optics as well. I still have my Sony Trinitron TV and I find it sad that Agfa positive films and Ilford positive papers are no longer available. On the other hand, is it strange that I am a pure fundamental listener? Maybe I don´t want to have my black&white music polluted by too much colour."
Could it be that we tune our audio in a way that relates to our perception of tone?
I once saw a documentary where some women were given, to smell, sweaty t-shirts of different men and they all chose the male that was the most antibody complementary...
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Posted by Paul S on
07-27-2008
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Perhaps there are several working definitions of the term "taste" floating around here? I think of "taste" as it applies in this thread as pertaining to or presupposing a certain level of cultivation that is both broad and dep (or, not); "evolved", if you will (or, not).
The experiments with overtones are facinating stuff, all right, but I agree with Antonio that at a certain level of personal refinement it becomes a matter of either/or, more of a Rorschach test than something written into one's genetic code.
Lots of ink has been spilled, and many interesting and (situationally) valid points raised by very bright and well-spoken Deconstructionists (most of whom were educated via Classical pedagogy, BTW...) who try to suggest that all viewpoints are "valid" or "equal", etc., ad nauseum. But if one believes that, why browse here?
I think the crux of the idea of "taste" here necessarily includes both the ideas of discernment of differences and a reading of same that is both hierarchical and dialectical as part of the process.
To so much as speak of or merely call to mind "The Shadow Effect" is already way beyond the ethos/vortex of mere consumption, and IMO it is also beyond the sort of metering/meting-out of participation awards that simply encourages not just cultural melding but also richly serves corporate interests in conditioning the "Market" to whatever the Hell might happen to be offered next.
Paul S
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Posted by tuga on
07-27-2008
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In Portugal we have a saying that goes:
"You mustn't discuss taste", to which I always add, "of course not, you must cultivate it"... Or, as Manuel Alvarez Bravo used to say, a work of art has as many "layers" as your cultural baggage.
I think the market focuses on fashion and refined taste is what prevents you from being caught up in it.
Cheers,
Tuga
(I wish I had a better way with words...)
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
07-27-2008
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I am not quite sure where this conversation going, I lost it. What however I would like to add to my initial post is that in contexts of audio site all those conversations are worthless until they have a tangible renderation in audio practice – would it be a set of listening exercises that moderate human response and the level of sonic “implyness” or would it be asset of the audio tool that do the same….
Rgs, Romy the Cat
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Posted by drdna on
07-27-2008
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Simply put, this concept has more to do with tangible results than most other things we talk about. At least, potentially. In the same way that a person might go to the ophthalmologist and get a pair of prescription eyeglasses to see clearly (when they might otherwise have nearsightedness, astigmatism, double vision, etc.) -- here is the potential that we might have some tangible well-defined hearing tests and parameters, resulting in being able to say, "Ok, listen to this audio circuit/design" to have a clear and realistic sound for you.
It does go against the grain of our usual discussions here. We are a small group of essentially self-selected listeners who are very likely to have very similar neurophysiological responses, and we prefer very similar audio set-ups (e.g., SET topology amplifiers, multi-horn electrodynamic loudspeakers, etc.) Imagine a club for nearsightedness: "Fellow myopic -20.0 diopter members, I have been struggling with images not being as crisp and recently dealt with this by using saline cleaning solution (I chose Bausch & Lomb brand) to polish my glasses. I had a noticeable improvement in the definition of the images. Further I polished both the inside and outside of the lens depending on the dirtiness, which is essential for truly balanced vision. I call this DSEP (dedicated single edge polishing) and the old method of just wiping the outside is much inferior." 
So, certianly this thread does not do a lot for us personally, but it does advance our understanding maybe of audio and sound in general. Perhaps we understand more about why different people hear different things, choose different sudio systems. Ultimately, it will likely generate some interesting and helpful information, like the moon landing led to everyone having home computers and now the internet. 
Regards, Adrian
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Posted by drdna on
07-28-2008
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To take this test, do we score based on the number of instances we hear ascending tone? Or is there a solutions key of some sort?
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Posted by Antonio J. on
07-29-2008
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You can get the file with a table and explanation to interpret the results from here. You'll see that depending on your choice of the sound going up or down in frequency, the table assigns a B or an U to your result for each test tone and gives you a formula to calculate your score.
Had you any trouble to get the results file, just tell me, I think I keep a copy in my PC which I could forward to you, or could post the text with the evaluation procedure in here, hadn't Romy any inconvenience.
Rgrds
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Posted by tuga on
07-29-2008
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drdna,
I had written the key in a previous post but the wesite isn't mac friendly.
I have attached it as an image file.
Cheers,
Tuga
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Posted by Antonio J. on
07-29-2008
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for the sounds being made up of a fundamental and overtones going in opposite directions. You'd need to know if the X are for the fundamentals, so you'd be a "fundamentals listener" if having many "correct" answers, or if the X mark the overtones, in which case you'd be an "overtones listener" in case your choices match that key. I think the file in the link I provided offers a better understanding of each individual results.
Rgrds
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Posted by tuga on
07-29-2008
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| Antonio J. wrote: | | for the sounds being made up of a fundamental and overtones going in opposite directions. You'd need to know if the X are for the fundamentals, so you'd be a "fundamentals listener" if having many "correct" answers, or if the X mark the overtones, in which case you'd be an "overtones listener" in case your choices match that key. I think the file in the link I provided offers a better understanding of each individual results.<BR><BR>Rgrds |
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Antonio,
Your link isn't working.
As for the key I had said before that:
| tuga wrote: | | <BR>"The more your results agree with this list, the more you are a fundamental tone hearer. If your result is the exact inverse of the above, you are a pure overtone hearer."<BR> |
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Saludos,
Tuga
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Posted by Antonio J. on
07-29-2008
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I've known that the website is on maintenance works, it should open as expected later today or maybe tomorrow. In any case once stated the X are marking the "pure fundamental hearer" choice, the results using the key chart you provided are the same.
I wonder if anyone in this site has answered the test and found any correlation between his results and his "sound preferences", or has an experience similar to mine.
Rgrds
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Posted by drdna on
07-30-2008
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Hi Antonio,
This was a very interesting test; thanks for the key. My n=2 self-test concurs with your results. I scored as a pure overtone listener, and I listen to primarily classical and jazz music.
However, is it possible that you are confused about the key? My girlfriend, who is a professional musician, took the test to humor me. She also scored perfectly as a pure overtone listener. However, when I informed her of this she diagreed strongly, saying:
"I think you have your answers mixed up. When I listened to all those chords, in each case the fundamental was going in the opposite direction rest of the tone cluster. You didn't tell me what to do, so I gave my answers based on the direction of the fundamental. I think you are confused."
Is she correct or was she just being drunk and argumentative?
Regards,
Adrian
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Posted by Antonio J. on
07-30-2008
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so I'm not sure if it's correct following the sound files or not. I got both files, the tones and the key, from the same website I posted earlier, so I suppose they did it right.
As soon as I started the test and noticed how it was designed, the overtones going in one direction while the fundamental was in the opposite, and that I clearly was able to differentiate them, I stopped writing down the answers. I decided that it was impossible for the test to determine my kind of "natural hearing". There was no point to make the test "properly" since you're not supposed to do it right or wrong, you should hear just one sound going up or going down, and I was hearing the two, so I could choose being a pure fundamental, a pure overtone or a mix of both hearer. Not the purpose of the test.
As I see it, it's designed to know how you're hearing, and you're supposed to answer following your instinct perceiving the sound, as a whole, going up or down. If I was hearing its parts going both ways... Funnily enough the acquaintancies that passed the test answered without noticing its design and really feeling that there was a whole tone. Some of them were "audiophiles" supposed to differentiate minute changes in the sound of a system hehehehehe.
I suppose that had I passed this test ten or more years ago, I'd have replied following my natural hearing, which I guess is more of a fundamental hearer than of an overtones hearer, but I can't be sure. Did you notice any natural tendency of yours to hear more the overtones, or you just decided to answer paying attention just to them?
Rgrds
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Posted by rowuk on
07-29-2012
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fiogf49gjkf0d I think that there is an additional "musical" factor in older recordings. The recording engineers were often not technical people, rather had strong musical background themselves. I believe that they did have a different goal based on the tools that they had at their disposal.
The purchase of recordings was a special thing before we were flooded with media. Conductors offered readings that had the spontaneity of live concerts. There was no editing possibility, the musicians had their shot and it was the job of the engineer to preserve it.
Harvey Fletcher (of Fletcher-Munson fame) wrote his "Symposium on Wire Transmission of Symphonic Music and its Reproduction in Auditory Perspective" in 1934. The limits of human hearing, dynamic range and geometric perspective (imaging) were quantified. Hardware decisions were made to "transport" an original event somewhere else. This was pioneering at its best. One phrase sticks with me in conjunction with the coupling of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. (27. April 1933) for this experiment:
"Judging from the expression of those who heard this concert, the development of this system has opened many new possibilities for the reproduction and transmission of music that will create even a greater emotional appeal than that obtained when listening to the music coming directly from the orchestra through the air".
Yes, the engineers had a message for us. They had a bigger goal than reaching markets. They were focussed on capturing/preserving the moment and the musical intentions of the conductor. I am not sure that from their perspective it was "implied". We just do not know what the conductor wrote into the engineers copy of the score!
I have spent much time with the older microphones. They are like musical instuments with very special character. The engineer had to know how to "play" these instruments, and many fell in love with the special ones that fit their concept.
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