Is Auditory perception a learned process or innate?

Auditory Perception question

  • Is auditory perception innate?

    Votes: 3 25.0%
  • Is auditory perception learned?

    Votes: 9 75.0%

  • Total voters
    12

jkeny

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Given all the talk about Toole /Olive/Harmon measurements, reviewers, subjectivity, etc. I wanted to get a sampling of people's viewpoints about auditory perception.
What I mean by auditory perception is not the physical mechanism of hearing but the neurological processing mechanisms of this perception.

I was going to start a poll to ask two easy questions & maybe discuss some issues leading from the answers:
1. - Are we born with our auditory perception ?
2. - Is our auditory perception learned/formed due to our exposure to the real world?

But I think the poll results would be overwhelmingly in favour of 2, right?

The recent threads showing the Harmon blind tests demonstrate that there is almost universal agreement in a preference for one aspect of speaker sound - the speaker with no frequency anomalies & off-axis sound which has as close to on-axis sound is the preferred speaker (I may have stated this awkwardly so forgive). Now Toole says this of this research & blind testing - I'll paraphrase it into my own words - we all (or whatever high percentage you want) seem to have the ability to settle on the same speaker preference choice & pretty much the same preference rankings in the speakers under test. I think he states that it's because we have an innate ability to recognise accuracy? I don't agree exactly - I think the more correct statement is -we have an exceptional sensitivity to things that are not giving us the correct auditory cues that match to our knowledge & expectation of how audio behaves in the real world. In this particular case the off-axis sound have the same spectrum as the direct sound & will give a realistic reflection from room boundaries.

So what is actually at play here is that we pretty much all have the same internal map or rule base/knowledge of how audio works in the real world & this is our reference for how realistic an illusion is produced by our playback systems. The closer the match to this internal auditory map or rule base, the more realistic the illusion generated by the reproduced sound.

So, here's my quandary - this building of the internal auditory map/rulebase is generated through our contact with the real world & learning how audio operates in this world where all sorts of cognitive biases rule & operate - yet we are constantly told that auditory perception is fickle/untrustworthy/variable, etc. How can it be that we all(?) build the same internal auditory map given this variability?

Edit: Hell I left the poll in place - everybody is doing one it seems! :)
 
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cooljazz

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Mar 21, 2012
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My perspective...

I have the luxury (??) of changing audio as part of my daily job. EI...I fold, spindle and mutilate to my choosing. I have been able to observe and question others over several decades now as to if they hear certain things, or not. What I have learned is that some aspects of the audio some can be very sensitive to and yet many don't hear these things at all. I can make what I feel to be substantial changes, repeatable, known quantities, and yet often nothing is noted by others while I know very well it's changed substantially.

How does this relate to our listening systems and rooms with high quality expectations? Well...driver compression, freq response anomalies, masking effects during louder passages, intermods during busy parts or at higher listening levels.

So I believe we have some listening abilities that are very advanced...things from everyday life that we learn from our very youngest days. But once we move far enough from the real world, our mind starts to fill in the blanks trying to make sense of things...mostly time wise. And at some point we move away from the real world and into electronic reproduction. Once there, then I think many things move into an area where learned ability to "hear" the anomalies becomes important if you are to identify issues.

Some experienced audio people pick up immediately on things that other good listeners won't in a million years pick up on. Well...maybe through comparison or contrast it may come to the consciously observable level. So I can believe that the "training" can move a person further along the listening curve and able to pick up on certain types of audio problems.

CJ
 

amirm

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Hi John. You are asking a scientific question to which I don't know the answer to. So don't know how to vote.

So for my contribution, I will quote Dr. Toole directly that you reference:

"Descriptors like pleasantness and preference must therefore be considered
as ranking in importance with accuracy and fi delity. This may seem like a dangerous
path to take, risking the corruption of all that is revered in the purity of
an original live performance. Fortunately, it turns out that when given the
opportunity to judge without bias, human listeners are excellent detectors of
artifacts and distortions; they are remarkably trustworthy guardians of what is
good. Having only a vague concept of what might be correct, listeners recognize
what is wrong. An absence of problems becomes a measure of excellence. By
the end of this book, we will see that technical excellence turns out to be a high
correlate of both perceived accuracy and emotional gratification, and most of us
can recognize it when we hear it.


What Dr. Toole is saying is that normally we would have a reference to judge fidelity. "This is the original, this is the sample under test. Are they they same or is there degradation?" In consumer audio, this opportunity is taken away from us. At no time do we know anything about what the talent heard when the music was created. Was there stereo image supposed to be this wide or not? How about amount of bass? Mid-range? Brightness? Focus/Imaging? So the most fundamental basis upon which a scientific decision has to be made on fidelity is stolen away from us.

In theory then, this says we are lost in the woods. Without a reference, then any answer is as correct as any other. You can say bass that is 5 db is higher than what I think, and both by definition would have to be accepted as having equality validity. There is no judge and jury to adjudicate.

But in a remarkable turn of events, somehow, some way, when presented with two different presentation of some musical experience, we seem to pick one type of sound. Importantly, most of us agree on what that is. According to above, without reference, this should be impossible. Dr. Toole tries to explain why it works. That is the absence of what is wrong. When I took the test, this is what stood out just the same for me personally. Excessive bass was just that: too much and hence I would score something down. Anemic voices that were not full range did the same.

So while we cannot judge one thing by itself, when comparing it to an alternatively most of us seem to agree on what is right. It is a paradox in my mind. I don't know how it works so well this way so hence the reason I can't answer your question.

It is however something to be cherished. It says that if you tested two different products that sound very different, and picked one to have higher fidelity, then there is high likelihood that the rest of us may agree the same way. This substantially increase the value of sharing user experiences online and subjective reviews.

Now for this to work, the differential must only be the sound produced and nothing because when it comes to valuing other aspects of a product from the way it looks, feels, etc., we don't share similar experiences or else, we would all wear the same clothes. :D
 

jkeny

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Thanks CJ,
I'm of the opinion that all our perceptions operate in the same fundamental way - we are working with limited physical mechanisms - the sense organs & the brain & we learn to use these to give us the best approximation of the physical world that serves our needs. We use many tricks/techniques/shortcuts to overcome the limitations of these organs & surprisingly we all arrive at the same perceptual models of the world. This is not about our senses being accurate - if it was we would have evolved to have more acute perceptions. Our eyes wouldn't have a blind spot, for instance. I don't think we just "fill in the blanks" when we move away from the real world, I think this is a technique we use all the time - our auditory perception is constantly attempting an analysis & looking for the "best-fit" model. So when we are trying to follow a conversation in a noisy room full of chattering voices, we are analysing the various jumble of sounds & picking out the stream we want to follow from among the melee of similar sounds. We will often tilt our heads & often look at the person's mouthing to add more information to the on-going analysis.

I agree that as we get further away from reality, like in the audio playback "illusion" we can be even more at sea - particularly when we get to digital audio where anomalies can be a very different kind to the anomalies produced by analogue reproduction. Hence my conclusion that the less "inherent auditory rules" that are broken, the more realistic we judge the illusion to be.

You are also correct that we can learn (& probably do so constantly) to identify "new anomalies" that we maybe haven't encountered before. But one aspect of auditory processing is that we can only hold focus on a small number of auditory objects at a point in time - we don't have the whole soundfield in our attention. Hence we can easily be "deaf"to certain elements in a soundfield if we are not focussed on it/aware of it.
 

esldude

New Member
I'll duplicate a post of mine on the other thread.

One thing related to some of your comments is how we can adapt to inaccurate sound until we ignore it or even come to think it correct over time. So a question is if someone listening for years on inaccurate speakers they have grown used to would have the same preference as most other people? I believe many would answer no. Some research that might lead to one to think the answer instead is yes involved height and directional perception. Researchers tested people's perception of height in sound. Then inserted molds into the pinna to alter the shape which altered height perception. At first upon retesting height perception was erratic and inaccurate. After many hours of wearing the ear inserts the brain apparently learned how to process the new sound cues, and height perception improved. In more hours it eventually equalled the original perceptual accuracy. Things sounded 'normal' and perceptions were accurate despite the flawed input.

So when people buy and cater to speakers, how much of their performance is really fixed and how much is the owner's brain adapting?

Getting back to my original question about whether owners of inaccurate speakers will have the same preference in a Harman type comparison. Researchers removed the molds and retested. Unlike when molds were first inserted, everyone's perception was immediately correct and accurate. There was no period of hours learning it back the old way. That leads me to think even owners of inaccurate speakers would recognize and prefer results similar to everyone else. I know it isn't a direct fit, but it support the idea somewhat.

The test not performed is putting the molded inserts back into the ear a few days later if the testees would also immediately have accurate perception with that or whether another dozen hours would be needed to acclimate again. My guess, is the brain developed a new pattern along with the natural one, and would recognize the old inserts which would allow it to have accurate perception immediately without relearning. But it is only a guess.
 
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jkeny

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Feb 9, 2012
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Hi John. You are asking a scientific question to which I don't know the answer to. So don't know how to vote.

So for my contribution, I will quote Dr. Toole directly that you reference:

"Descriptors like pleasantness and preference must therefore be considered
as ranking in importance with accuracy and fi delity. This may seem like a dangerous
path to take, risking the corruption of all that is revered in the purity of
an original live performance. Fortunately, it turns out that when given the
opportunity to judge without bias, human listeners are excellent detectors of
artifacts and distortions; they are remarkably trustworthy guardians of what is
good. Having only a vague concept of what might be correct, listeners recognize
what is wrong. An absence of problems becomes a measure of excellence. By
the end of this book, we will see that technical excellence turns out to be a high
correlate of both perceived accuracy and emotional gratification, and most of us
can recognize it when we hear it.


What Dr. Toole is saying is that normally we would have a reference to judge fidelity. "This is the original, this is the sample under test. Are they they same or is there degradation?" In consumer audio, this opportunity is taken away from us. At no time do we know anything about what the talent heard when the music was created. Was there stereo image supposed to be this wide or not? How about amount of bass? Mid-range? Brightness? Focus/Imaging? So the most fundamental basis upon which a scientific decision has to be made on fidelity is stolen away from us.

In theory then, this says we are lost in the woods. Without a reference, then any answer is as correct as any other. You can say bass that is 5 db is higher than what I think, and both by definition would have to be accepted as having equality validity. There is no judge and jury to adjudicate.

But in a remarkable turn of events, somehow, some way, when presented with two different presentation of some musical experience, we seem to pick one type of sound. Importantly, most of us agree on what that is. According to above, without reference, this should be impossible. Dr. Toole tries to explain why it works. That is the absence of what is wrong. When I took the test, this is what stood out just the same for me personally. Excessive bass was just that: too much and hence I would score something down. Anemic voices that were not full range did the same.

So while we cannot judge one thing by itself, when comparing it to an alternatively most of us seem to agree on what is right. It is a paradox in my mind. I don't know how it works so well this way so hence the reason I can't answer your question.

It is however something to be cherished. It says that if you tested two different products that sound very different, and picked one to have higher fidelity, then there is high likelihood that the rest of us may agree the same way. This substantially increase the value of sharing user experiences online and subjective reviews.

Now for this to work, the differential must only be the sound produced and nothing because when it comes to valuing other aspects of a product from the way it looks, feels, etc., we don't share similar experiences or else, we would all wear the same clothes. :D

It's not really a scientific question - it was a question about our sense of perception & what people "feel" is correct. Maybe it can be answered from our experience rather than trying to be scientific about it?

However, I have highlighted what I believe is a logical misstep in your post - in order to judge "what is wrong" we have to have a reference - if we didn't then some people would prefer the extra bass, some the emphasised mids, etc & we wouldn't be seeing a coalescing of the ranking of preferences that we see for these speakers. This "reference" has to be our internal model of how sound "should" behave in the real world. It might become more apparent when faced with side by side comparisons but it nonetheless operates on the basis of some internal model that we all use as our guide.

Again I go back to the fact that we are listening to an "illusion" & there are many things wrong with this illusion that we already make allowances for & are willing to be seduced into believing but some illusions are better than others simply because they tick more of the boxes of our inherent (subconsciously learned) auditory rules.

Again, I go back to the quandry I expressed - how can we all develop the same internal auditory map if our auditory perception is so prone to cognitive bias?
 
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jkeny

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I'll duplicate a post of mine on the other thread.

One thing related to some of your comments is how we can adapt to inaccurate sound until we ignore it or even come to think it correct over time. So a question is if someone listening for years on inaccurate speakers they have grown used to would have the same preference as most other people? I believe many would answer no. Some research that might lead to one to think the answer instead is yes involved height and directional perception. Researchers tested people's perception of height in sound. Then inserted molds into the out ear to alter the shape which altered height perception. At first upon retesting height perception was erratic and inaccurate. After many hours of wearing the ear inserts the brain apparently learned how to process the new sound cues, and height perception improved. In more hours it eventually equalled the original perceptual accuracy. Things sounded 'normal' and perceptions were accurate despite the flawed input.
Yes, a good point. Often we don't realise something is wrong until it is changed or the fault removed. But again, I have to go back to the fact that it is an illusion we are buying into so we suspend a lot of what we expect from a real world audio event & settle for something less real. This is where the individual differences arise - just how much do we each settle for & in what way. There is no doubt, for instance, that loudspeakers are the biggest offenders when it come to distortion but yet we are able to hear through this & recognise much smaller distortion further upstream, quiet easily.

So when people buy and cater to speakers, how much of their performance is really fixed and how much is the owner's brain adapting?

Getting back to my original question about whether owners of inaccurate speakers will have the same preference in a Harman type comparison. Researchers removed the molds and retested. Unlike when molds were first inserted, everyone's perception was immeddiately correct and accurate. There was no period of hours learning it back the old way. That leads me to think even owners of inaccurate speakers would recognize and prefer results similar to everyone else. I know it isn't a direct fit, but it support the idea somewhat.
But one thing that strikes me - would we not have seen the effects of this pre-conditioning with "bad speakers" in the Harmon test - would they not have been more varied as a result? For instance, I believe students showed the same preference as everybody else, no?


The test not performed is putting the molded inserts back into the ear a few days later if the testees would also immediately have accurate perception with that or whether another dozen hours would be needed to acclimate again. My guess, is the brain developed a new pattern along with the natural one, and would recognize the old inserts which would allow it to have accurate perception immediately without relearning. But it is only a guess.
I like your suggestion for a second experiment & also have a wish that it had been done! I suspect you are correct in your guess, too.

Again, I go back to the quandry I expressed - how can we all develop the same internal auditory map if our auditory perception is so prone to cognitive bias?
 
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esldude

New Member
Again, I go back to the quandry I expressed - how can we all develop the same internal auditory map if our auditory perception is so prone to cognitive bias?

Two different concepts there I think. Auditory perception without much bias while cognitive bias is related to seeing or knowing things before hand or even just believing them whether true or not.

Removing the bias would be expected to uncover the auditory map without the bias. Plus in most daily uses of your hearing the sights and other biases do match what is happening so the bias isn't contrary to perception. Under artificial conditions of sound reproduction that is a quite unnatural condition to start with.
 

Phelonious Ponk

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I think most audio perception is rooted in survival, so a product of evolution, not training. But that's just what I'd guess. I don't know.

Tim
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Two different concepts there I think. Auditory perception without much bias while cognitive bias is related to seeing or knowing things before hand or even just believing them whether true or not.

Removing the bias would be expected to uncover the auditory map without the bias. Plus in most daily uses of your hearing the sights and other biases do match what is happening so the bias isn't contrary to perception. Under artificial conditions of sound reproduction that is a quite unnatural condition to start with.

In the jungle, you aren't biased by how pretty the tiger is, because by the time you see him, you're already dead.

Tim
 

jkeny

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Two different concepts there I think. Auditory perception without much bias while cognitive bias is related to seeing or knowing things before hand or even just believing them whether true or not.
Do you agree that we develop our auditory perception by contact with the real world? Our ears work in certain limited ways which we make best use of within the limitations of our brains auditory processing capabilities. So, given these two limitations we learn how to use these organs to interpret the auditory portion of the world. We don't do this learning blind, we do so sighted with all sorts of expectations & cognitive biases at play. Do you agree?

If you do the question is how do we all work through these cognitive biases & come to the same internal map?

Removing the bias would be expected to uncover the auditory map without the bias.
But we cannot remove ALL biases in a blind listening so I would amend your statement - we are not uncovering the auditory map, unadulterated. Anyway, that is beside the point - the question is how we develop the same auditory map given that we all suffer from many different cognitive biases at all times. If cognitive bias is such an overwhelmingly influencing factor in our auditory perception, surely this must be impossible?
Plus in most daily uses of your hearing the sights and other biases do match what is happening so the bias isn't contrary to perception.
OK, so you believe that over the long term any wrong perception as a result of bias will be naturally diminished & the correct perception emerge?
Under artificial conditions of sound reproduction that is a quite unnatural condition to start with.
Hmm, do you think our perceptions operate differently when listening to sound reproduction?
 

jkeny

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I think most audio perception is rooted in survival, so a product of evolution, not training. But that's just what I'd guess. I don't know.

Tim

Tim, agreed, all our sensory organs are a product of evolution & geared towards reproduction. But the question is more about how this auditory perception, which seems to be the same in most normal adults, is formed. We aren't born with a fully realised auditory perception - we have the underlying physiology to develop it & do so naturally by existing in the real world & learning how to interpret the signals that the ear sends to the brain. So we sunconsciously train ourselves in this way
 
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amirm

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However, I have highlighted what I believe is a logical misstep in your post - in order to judge "what is wrong" we have to have a reference - if we didn't then some people would prefer the extra bass, some the emphasised mids, etc & we wouldn't be seeing a coalescing of the ranking of preferences that we see for these speakers. This "reference" has to be our internal model of how sound "should" behave in the real world. It might become more apparent when faced with side by side comparisons but it nonetheless operates on the basis of some internal model that we all use as our guide.
That is what Dr. Tool explains and I described. How is it a misstep? Clearly we are using some internal model to say one loudspeaker is better than the other with no external reference.

Again I go back to the fact that we are listening to an "illusion" & there are many things wrong with this illusion that we already make allowances for & are willing to be seduced into believing but some illusions are better than others simply because they tick more of the boxes of our inherent (subconsciously learned) auditory rules.

Again, I go back to the quandry I expressed - how can we all develop the same internal auditory map if our auditory perception is so prone to cognitive bias?
When just presented with the sound, it has no choice but to judge on that basis. What bias are you speaking of?
 

jkeny

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That is what Dr. Tool explains and I described. How is it a misstep? Clearly we are using some internal model to say one loudspeaker is better than the other with no external reference.
Yes, sorry I highlighted the wrong part of your post but reading back on it I believe we are in agreement, anyway - there is an consistent internal model that we all share.

Again, I go back to the quandry I expressed - how can we all develop the same internal auditory map if our auditory perception is so prone to cognitive bias?
When just presented with the sound, it has no choice but to judge on that basis. What bias are you speaking of?
I'm talking about the biases that are at play when we are accumulating the auditory experiences that go into forming this internal map. We are exposed to all sorts of influences & biasing factors while interacting with the world which is where we accumulate these auditory experiences over time. Not least of which is vision

Now during this process we are all prone to cognitive biases simply because we are hearing these sounds in the real world along with using our visual perception. Such sightedness, it is maintained biases our auditory perception & we have no escape from this influence. So we should, according to this, be laying down an internal map which is somewhat skewed by these cognitive biases so ubiquitous during the learning stages of our auditory perception.

The quandry is why do we not all have somewhat different internal maps? Surely, our auditory perception would be influenced by these biases & our internal map reflect that influence - hence leading to different maps?
 

GaryProtein

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It can be learned, some people can do it innately and some people cannot learn it.

I think for myself, it was part innate and part learned. My ex-wife could never tell any difference at all. For my musician daughter, it was innate. When we were shopping for student quality instruments when she was about 7-8 years old and and I played different stereo equipment and/or put her in different listening positions and/or made slight changes in speaker positions and again when shopping for concert quality instruments when she was a teenager, she could eloquently describe the differences she heard.

She has assisted me in fine tuning my system.
 
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esldude

New Member
Hmm, do you think our perceptions operate differently when listening to sound reproduction?

I think I can give the best response to your questions mainly by answering only the last one. Sound reproduction in stereo was developed to mimic and take advantage of how our ear works to fool us. In the majority of our daily dealings we use our hearing in natural ways that match up with other sensory data like what we see or feel. There are exceptions, and they are notable because they are unusual. Echoing in a rocky canyon or underground cave for one example. Other more common examples are in artificial structures. But mostly in our daily use our perceptions match reality. In reproduction it decidedly does not.

We don't see the jazz trio we hear, even if they were behind us we could turn and look at them. In reproduction we cannot. So our other senses either don't track or can even cause us to be thrown off what is really being heard. Even in the natural world bias is not absent it simply doesn't usually disagree with reality nor is there a means in which it much matters.

Another example of senses developing in one environment and being off kilter in another is how you perceive motion in an airplane. Your sense of balance from your inner ear and your vision may not match at all. Without instruments in some maneuvering you will crash as your eyes, sense of balance and aerial motion all clash becoming not just useless, but dangerously wrong. Similarly the fact our hearing works fine in normal use doesn't automatically mean it can be trusted in artificial sound reproduction. Much less that in any of those environments it is repeatable and accurate in the way measurements are.
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Tim, agreed, all our sensory organs are a product of evolution & geared towards reproduction. But the question is more about how this auditory perception, which seems to be the same in most normal adults, is formed. We aren't born with a fully realised auditory perception - we have the underlying physiology to develop it & do so naturally by existing in the real world & learning how to interpret the signals that the ear sends to the brain. So we sunconsciously train ourselves in this way

I'm not talking about the organs, I'm talking about the ear/brain interface; perception. I believe somewhere along the line, before I can even remember it, my Dad probably told me "that sound" was a car horn, put a name on it, but then I recognized car horns, in all their variety, for what they were going forward. Didn't have to learn it, the tools were already there. I just had to be told what "that' was.

Of course you're welcome to disagree.

Tim
 

amirm

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I'm not talking about the organs, I'm talking about the ear/brain interface; perception. I believe somewhere along the line, before I can even remember it, my Dad probably told me "that sound" was a car horn, put a name on it, but then I recognized car horns, in all their variety, for what they were going forward. Didn't have to learn it, the tools were already there. I just had to be told what "that' was.

Of course you're welcome to disagree.

Tim

 

jkeny

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I think I can give the best response to your questions mainly by answering only the last one. Sound reproduction in stereo was developed to mimic and take advantage of how our ear works to fool us.
Agreed - to create a realistic auditory illusion
In the majority of our daily dealings we use our hearing in natural ways that match up with other sensory data like what we see or feel. There are exceptions, and they are notable because they are unusual. Echoing in a rocky canyon or underground cave for one example. Other more common examples are in artificial structures. But mostly in our daily use our perceptions match reality. In reproduction it decidedly does not.
I don't understand what you mean by "we use our hearing in natural ways that match up with our sensory data". If we have a cognitive bias, does it not effect our auditory perception in the "real world" the same as it does in audio reproduction? If I see a large instrument do I not expect a deeper tone emanating from it than a small instrument? Similarly with a large speaker reproducing music? Are we not equally affected by our expectations in both situations? So do I hear a deeper sound in both instances than is really being produced? Isn't the premise of cognitive bias that it influences our auditory perception & not that this applies only in audio reproduction situations? Does this not influence our stored auditory map & cause it to be inaccurate?

We don't see the jazz trio we hear, even if they were behind us we could turn and look at them. In reproduction we cannot. So our other senses either don't track or can even cause us to be thrown off what is really being heard. Even in the natural world bias is not absent it simply doesn't usually disagree with reality nor is there a means in which it much matters.
Hold on, I've always seen it said that bias influences our perception of what we hear, particularly sightedness - how can "a natural world bias doesn't disagree with reality" - a bias is a bias - it means that it is influencing what we perceive so therefore is changing our perception from what it would be without the bias.

Another example of senses developing in one environment and being off kilter in another is how you perceive motion in an airplane. Your sense of balance from your inner ear and your vision may not match at all. Without instruments in some maneuvering you will crash as your eyes, sense of balance and aerial motion all clash becoming not just useless, but dangerously wrong. Similarly the fact our hearing works fine in normal use doesn't automatically mean it can be trusted in artificial sound reproduction. Much less that in any of those environments it is repeatable and accurate in the way measurements are.
Yes but this is not due to anything other than the balance mechanism in the ears are picking up signals which the eyes are not agreeing with - it's the McGurk effect but with different senses at play.. I'm not sure the point you are making here?

None of what you said removes the biasing factors that are in operation during auditory perception & therefore must influence our internal map.

There is only one solution that I see which I already used in a reply to the same point you made in your previous post
Plus in most daily uses of your hearing the sights and other biases do match what is happening so the bias isn't contrary to perception.
over the long term any wrong perception as a result of bias will be naturally diminished & the correct perception emerge?
What I mean is that over the long term we seem to be able to tease out the correct perception from the various skews that the biases might be introducing.
 

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