Objectivists - what might be wrong with this label/viewpoint!!

[Robh3606]

Funnily enough, I find the objectivists to be the ones that most "object" to this notion of finding out the why - it might be why they are called "objectivists" ?

Hello Jkeny

Objectivists have no interest in how things work??? If it wasn't for the objectivists and the sciences they use as tools, instead of happily typing messages over the internet we would all be doing cave paintings instead.

Rob

 

[jkeny]

The above might just be an example of a false argument created by means of the gratuitous addition of irrelevant and even impossible requirements.

The claim was that some kind of change could be measured if it existed, which was responded to by a demand that the full provenance of the change, every note in the musical composition, an analysis and full simulation of the acoustics of the concert hall, full knowlege of the playing style of all of the musicians involved, all going back to the creation of the Universe etc., etc. be provided. ;-)

Exaggerated rubbish !

We can and do often avoid all of that senseless nit picking by determining whether or not the change could possibly be audible, no matter what its details are.

Take an amp or DAC with 0.001% THD. The threshold of distortion for nonlinear distortion no matter how egregiously audible under the most ideal circumstances for hearing it is more like 0.05%.

Therefore without too much exercise of great faith, we observe that 0.001% is 50 times less than 0.05% and thus reasonably expect it to be inaudible.

It is very easy to do a sighted evaluation where 0.000000000000000001% or less THD is detected with 100% reliability. The thresholds observed in DBTs are a little higher - pretty much agree with other generally accepted science.

I'll leave it to the readers to figure out which test is the one to believe. ;-)

Yep another objectivist whose only point is to object

 

[jkeny]

Hello Jkeny

Objectivists have no interest in how things work???

Just judging by the posts on this thread (if you call yourselves objectivists) then the answer is patently no!!!

If it wasn't for the objectivists and the sciences they use as tools, instead of happily typing messages over the internet we would all be doing cave paintings instead.

Rob

I think you miss the whole scientific principle of research & asking why in your answer.

 

[FrantzM]

Uhh??

Can our perception of hearing separately isolated & follow the oboe in an orchestral performance? Is this perception not as a result of the vibrations at the eardrums? According to you guys all is measurable - so show me all the collection of signals responsible for this perception of the oboe in the music's waveform & follow this auditory object through the performance of the piece.

Jkeny

I haven't seen it but this is routinely performed to detect signal much more complicated than any music...

The oboe has a known harmonic signature/distribution..
Within the musical signal , it is relatively simple to retrieve this harmonic signature


Such is performed in many things among them surveillance/spying to retrieve a conversation within the ambient noise. Let's not go too much OT but detection an estimation theory covers those bases. Following an oboe or any other instruments is not a huge deal these days even with a consumer-level PC and sound card..

Back to your point of view. if it can heard it can be measured. Whether we are measuring it is a different subject.

 

[jkeny]

Jkeny

I haven't seen it but this is routinely performed to detect signal much more complicated than any music...

Sorry but you will need to give me an example of what you are talking about

The oboe has a known harmonic signature/distribution..
Within the musical signal , it is relatively simple to retrieve this harmonic signature

Again, can you give any example of such a measurement having been done i.e showing the the exact signals that are specific to the oboe playing within a recording of an orchestra & showing this signal stream for the duration of the recording? So, in other words, if I played back this extracted signal I would hear just the oboe alone as it was played within the orchestra?

Such is performed in many things among them surveillance/spying to retrieve a conversation within the ambient noise. Let's not go too much OT but detection an estimation theory covers those bases. Following an oboe or any other instruments is not a huge deal these days even with a consumer-level PC and sound card..

I believe you if you can produce such simple to do examples of what I say - extract the dynamic oboe signal from a recording as above - not from a noise background (this is easily done with FFT analysis)

Back to your point of view. if it can heard it can be measured. Whether we are measuring it is a different subject.

Indeed, I'm in complete agreement that what I hear is in the signal but I don't see the measurements being able to show me what I hear or why I'm hearing a difference - let's say between DSD & PCM (yes, from the same file).

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Uhh??

Can our perception of hearing separately isolated & follow the oboe in an orchestral performance? Is this perception not as a result of the vibrations at the eardrums? According to you guys all is measurable - so show me all the collection of signals responsible for this perception of the oboe in the music's waveform & follow this auditory object through the performance of the piece.

I think it is a result of the processing of the vibrations present at the eardrums. If I understand you correctly, you're supposing that there is data in those vibrations that creates the human ability to isolate an instrument and follow it in an orchestral performance, something in those vibrations that allows you to focus upon "oboe." I suppose, instead, that the data to turn your attention to the oboe up and down is in your brain, not in the air movement at your ears.

Splitting hairs to some; critical to those trying to create more realistic sound reproduction.

Tim

 

[jkeny]

I think it is a result of the processing of the vibrations present at the eardrums.

Yes, that's how I read what I wrote - it's the result of the processing in the various parts of the brain of the vibrations that impinge on the ears

If I understand you correctly, you're supposing that there is data in those vibrations that creates the human ability to isolate an instrument and follow it in an orchestral performance, something in those vibrations that allows you to focus upon "oboe." I suppose, instead, that the data to turn your attention to the oboe up and down is in your brain, not in the air movement at your ears.

Of course, the Oboe performance is in the composite signal waveform that reaches the ear. How this is focussed upon as an auditory object separated out from other instruments & signals (other auditory objects) which occupy the same frequencies, amplitude, location, timing, etc. is as a result of the ability of the processing in the auditory cortex & elsewhere to correlate certain aspects of the sound which identify the oboe. This, at the moment, is thought to involve the signal's spatial location, timbre, temporal coherence, amplitude

Splitting hairs to some; critical to those trying to create more realistic sound reproduction.

Tim

No, sorry, not splitting hairs - I'm not sure what you are attempting to say? I'm saying that there are certain features in the waveform that the auditory perception analyses & compares from moment to moment which gives it the ability to group these aspects as the auditory object "oboe" - some of these seem to be spatial location, timbre, temporal coherence. Also we seem to be only capable of being attentive to one auditory object at a time but are able to immediately switch our focus to another auditory object almost instantly.

You seem to think that you are splitting some hairs but I'm not sure what hair it is? Are you suggesting that these elements don't exist in the waveform but rather that the brain itself does some trick which makes it appear we can follow the oboe? I'm really at a loss to understand what your point is - maybe you can clarify?

 

[esldude]

Uhh??

Can our perception of hearing separately isolated & follow the oboe in an orchestral performance? Is this perception not as a result of the vibrations at the eardrums? According to you guys all is measurable - so show me all the collection of signals responsible for this perception of the oboe in the music's waveform & follow this auditory object through the performance of the piece.

So you are going to go and confuse the issue after I pointed out exactly the confusion that is common.

Can our hearing perception isolate and follow an oboe? In the right circumstances it can. On the other hand, if you had the signals on the nerves leaving the brain you don't have isolated perception of an oboe at that point. The info is embedded within that signal, but at that point there is no little bit saying "hey oboe over there". We have the ability to measure whether that oboe is there or not in the sense the signal is different. We have the ability to see a difference so small the signals leaving the ear on nerves would not show a difference though our measurements do.

Isolating the oboe, and measuring the signal that contains that information are two different things. We can do one, and are learning to do the other. Unless the signal changes at the ear, the rest of the processing has nothing to work with.

 

[jkeny]

So you are going to go and confuse the issue after I pointed out exactly the confusion that is common.

Can our hearing perception isolate and follow an oboe? In the right circumstances it can.

Eh, in most circumstances it certainly can I can focus on any auditory object in the playback - drums one minute, bass guitar another, one singer in a duet, etc. - what are these right circumstances you mention?

On the other hand, if you had the signals on the nerves leaving the brain you don't have isolated perception of an oboe at that point.

Sorry, do you mean the signals leaving the ear, not the brain?

The info is embedded within that signal, but at that point there is no little bit saying "hey oboe over there". We have the ability to measure whether that oboe is there or not in the sense the signal is different.

You mean, given two recordings of exactly the same performance, one with oboe omitted, you can measure that the oboe is missing? I don't mean to be facetious but Wow!!

We have the ability to see a difference so small the signals leaving the ear on nerves would not show a difference though our measurements do.

Again, I believe that the poster is in awe of the abilities of the technology but a lack of perspective is evident.

Isolating the oboe, and measuring the signal that contains that information are two different things. We can do one, and are learning to do the other. Unless the signal changes at the ear, the rest of the processing has nothing to work with.

You've lost me?

 

[FrantzM]

Sorry but you will need to give me an example of what you are talking about

Again, can you give any example of such a measurement having been done i.e showing the the exact signals that are specific to the oboe playing within a recording of an orchestra & showing this signal stream for the duration of the recording? So, in other words, if I played back this extracted signal I would hear just the oboe alone as it was played within the orchestra?

I believe you if you can produce such simple to do examples of what I say - extract the dynamic oboe signal from a recording as above - not from a noise background (this is easily done with FFT analysis)

Indeed, I'm in complete agreement that what I hear is in the signal but I don't see the measurements being able to show me what I hear or why I'm hearing a difference - let's say between DSD & PCM (yes, from the same file).

I will have to dig but..

Here it goes...

You mentioned "noise".. Noise can be defined as any unwanted signal. In "real" detection, say in the case of a plane against the hozizon or aky background.. Noise is approximated with its probability distribution function. In the case of music especially if recorded there is no probability to deal with, which makes the problem of detection of a known signal rather easy. I would think without going too far that the various Karakoe software and plug-ins accomplish this routinely although they focus on the Human Voice a musical signal after all...

these links will help

The first one is just practical stuff that can be done with easily available audio software : (Adobe Audition, Izotop, etc)
Extracting or Isolating a Musical Element from a Finished Audio Mix

The second is another way to do the same more practical stuff

Extracting Vocals or instruments from a song


Now for meatier stuff as for example the spectral composition of an Oboe, a lengthy article , very scholarly and physical

OBOE

People like Bruce with hands-on experience with DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and software willbe clearer and more eloquent than I can even ever but the gist is that recovering a given instrument within the noise of an orchestra while not "easy" (a very subjective notion in this context) is performed rather simply by modern tools.

Please dig

 

[esldude]

Eh, in most circumstances it certainly can I can focus on any auditory object in the playback - drums one minute, bass guitar another, one singer in a duet, etc. - what are these right circumstances you mention? Sorry, do you mean the signals leaving the ear, not the brain? You mean, given two recordings of exactly the same performance, one with oboe omitted, you can measure that the oboe is missing? I don't mean to be facetious but Wow!! Again, I believe that the poster is in awe of the abilities of the technology but a lack of perspective is evident.


You've lost me?

Yes, I meant leaving the ear for the brain.

And yes if you could manage an identical performance with and without oboe the measurement could be made showing the signals differ.
Not sure why that is a Wow! piece of information to you.

You keep tripping over the key point as you did in your last sentence.

We can measure if two signals are different. We don't know so much about how that difference will be perceived by the human listening to two different signals. Is that really so hard to get? We can show a difference exists whether an oboe was there or not. We might not on basic measures be able to say, this is different because the oboe was gone (though with the more advanced DSP that too may already be possible....see FrantzM's links above). So measuring a difference and interpreting what the experience of that difference will be by a human listener are two different things.

 

[jkeny]

I said I was done here but, Jkeny read what a real pro engineer (objectivist may apply as well) says about measurements.

http://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/features-menu/general-interest-interviews-menu/455-searching-for-the-extreme-bruno-putzeys-of-mola-mola-hypex-and-grimm-audio-part-one

and I lifted this from the article so you or anyone else with a measurement issue can get to the point: ps, you might learn a new way to measure your dac dude!

BP: “Textbook theory” is very often just a shortcut. When people say something like “In theory, it should happen like this . . . ,” what they actually mean to say is, “In the very first approximation, on a basic level, this is how it should go.” That’s oversimplification, not theory. Real theory isn’t so simple. It is like you say: in theory, cables shouldn’t make any difference. Well, hang on. Does that imply that you’ve actually looked at all of the established textbook physics that explains exactly what happens within a cable? I don’t mean “new physics,” like microdiodes or what have you, because I do think that’s a load of crock -- but, really, all the things you know happen when you, for instance, intersperse two conductors with a dielectric between them. How will that behave, for instance, when you actually put it up in a listening room and subject it to the vibrations that are caused by the speakers -- the triboelectric effect? Or just ordinary electromagnetic noise pickup from nearby mains cables? All these things are entirely known by physics and fully understood by theory. But the people who say that “in theory” it shouldn’t matter, they just look at one small corner in one particular textbook, where it doesn’t mention all these other things. Usually, where theory and practice deviate, it just means that your theory hasn’t gotten into enough theoretical detail. So far, I have not yet bumped into anything in terms of audible differences that I, or anyone with me, could hear that did not at some point connect with established theory and known physics -- by which I mean ordinary street-level physics, none of your fancy quantum stuff. You really do not need to invent laws of physics from a parallel universe to explain things. And you don’t have to excuse yourself to say that theory does not connect with practice. If you look close enough, you will find [the connection]. If practice and theory seem to deviate, you better have a sharp look at your theory.
PR: There are parallels here to what we were talking about regarding measurements -- that when folks dismiss measurements and the ability to measure subjectively observable aural distinctions, they are simply not taking a full battery of appropriate, available measurements. When I spoke with Paul Barton [of PSB Speakers], he made a point about it being critical what you measure, how you measure, and then applying it against what we know about the ear/brain interface and how sound is perceived in real space. He informed me that he can largely tell how something is going to sound based on his interpretation of the full set of measurements, and that, similar to how Beethoven could write symphonies after he lost his hearing, Barton could continue to design speakers were he to lose his hearing, due to the exhaustive sets of measurements he takes and his 42 years of correlating those measurements with the resulting perceived sound.

BP: I agree. In fact, I very often have to invent new measurements on the fly when I suspect there might be something going on that doesn’t show up clearly on standard measurements. To give one example, you could take a DAC and do something very classical, like sweep the level of a sinusoidal signal from full scale to nothing, and then look to see how distortion changes with signal level. You might find some minuscule squiggles at lower levels and shrug them off as measurement errors, like, “OK, that is just the machine not correctly measuring noise.” But I got suspicious at some point and said, “Hang on, let me try to find explicitly whether something happens in the noise floor with the signal modulation, but then I have to do so without a signal present. How do you do that?” Well, you sweep a DC input to a DAC. You feed it a constant code, some small value, and measure the noise. Increase that code and repeat. Suddenly you’ll find that some of these D-to-A converters will do these frightening things, like the noise floor suddenly shooting up or an audible whistle actually just walking through the audioband as you sweep, going from supersonic down to zero and then back up. You have to be creative when you measure, not just do the standardized battery

Yes, I know this quote & have read it before. I respect Bruno's expertise & his tenacity in delving into this rather than stopping at standard measurements but I don't see anything in what he says which contradicts what I'm saying. I've highlighted some of the interviewer's question as the root of what I'm saying "applying it against what we know about the ear/brain interface and how sound is perceived in real space" Surely, as our knowledge of this ear/brain interface grows it has an impact on what we measure & what importance we attach to the level of what we measure?

His answer is interesting - firstly "there might be something going on that doesn’t show up clearly on standard measurements". Why did he suspect that there was something going on? Did he hear it? He goes on "some minuscule squiggles" that would by & large "shrug them off as measurement errors" It requires both a belief in what is being heard & a tenacity in following it up & trying to get a measurement which correlates to what is heard. BTW, this DC sweep is an old technique, not a new one & you an also see this same test being applied in the ESS talk by Mallinson where his team also did the same thing when audiophiles told them that they could reliably identify differences during the development of the ESS DAC - a noise floor modulation occurring at a certain signal level (which btw, they haven't fully rectified in their DAC)

Again, I come back to my point - as we learn more about how our auditory perception works, is it not wise to evaluate & change our measurements to better focus on the aspects that are important to our auditory perception? So far this thread has suggested that we know the limits of this which are clearly delineated by existing measurements & I'm suggesting that in fact we don't know these limits.

 

[jkeny]

Thanks Frantz, much obliged for the refs - I will dig.

 

[arnyk]

So, if you maintain that you can measure every change in audio then tell me how to measure & isolate the 2nd violin from the string section & follow it through the playing of the piece.

I will happily do that if you will only point out the electrical components of your Ciúnas DAC accomplish the same feat.

 

[jkeny]

Yes, I meant leaving the ear for the brain.

And yes if you could manage an identical performance with and without oboe the measurement could be made showing the signals differ.
Not sure why that is a Wow! piece of information to you.

It isn't a wow - I was being facetious with an apology for being so![/quote]

You keep tripping over the key point as you did in your last sentence.

We can measure if two signals are different. We don't know so much about how that difference will be perceived by the human listening to two different signals. Is that really so hard to get? We can show a difference exists whether an oboe was there or not. We might not on basic measures be able to say, this is different because the oboe was gone (though with the more advanced DSP that too may already be possible....see FrantzM's links above). So measuring a difference and interpreting what the experience of that difference will be by a human listener are two different things.

Yes, I know what you are claiming - that we can measure ANY difference between two pieces of audio & that's all that really matters - this, to me, is a blanket statement that I will try to address later.

I'm going digging as per Frantz's links & will return at some point, I'm sure

 

[jkeny]

I will happily do that if you will only point out the electrical components of your Ciúnas DAC accomplish the same feat.

Huh??? I don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You seem to think that you are splitting some hairs but I'm not sure what hair it is? Are you suggesting that these elements don't exist in the waveform but rather that the brain itself does some trick which makes it appear we can follow the oboe? I'm really at a loss to understand what your point is - maybe you can clarify?

Are you not holding up the human ability to filter audio perception and concentrate on one thing out of many as evidence that there is something in the waveform that is not measured? If I've got that much right, here's a clarification: I believe all of the information the brain needs to perceive "oboe" is there, and that the ability to focus on that particular instrument is all in the brain. No unmeasured, undiscovered data required. Frequency, amplitude...all the usual, measurable stuff is enough for the brain to work with.

Clearer?

Tim

PS: By the way, I seem to be able to perceptually isolate and follow more than one source at a time. I thought everyone could.

 

[jkeny]

I will have to dig but..

Here it goes...

You mentioned "noise".. Noise can be defined as any unwanted signal. In "real" detection, say in the case of a plane against the hozizon or aky background.. Noise is approximated with its probability distribution function. In the case of music especially if recorded there is no probability to deal with, which makes the problem of detection of a known signal rather easy. I would think without going too far that the various Karakoe software and plug-ins accomplish this routinely although they focus on the Human Voice a musical signal after all...

these links will help

The first one is just practical stuff that can be done with easily available audio software : (Adobe Audition, Izotop, etc)
Extracting or Isolating a Musical Element from a Finished Audio Mix

Read it up to " If you have an instrument which you want to delete from the mix, and its frequency range is not performing near your other audio elements" This is not what I'm talking about - we have the perceptual ability to separate out instruments that are close in frequency range & intermixed

The second is another way to do the same more practical stuff

Extracting Vocals or instruments from a song

And again special conditions are premised "Some software based on phase cancellation allows you to remove the vocals, or an instrument, from a mix as long as it is right in the center of the stereo field. This method works fine only in a few cases. In most others, it's fully ineffective because the delay and reverberation effects spread vocals across the whole stereo field." And another that fails "In fact, although the software is capable of detecting the different notes in a song, it cannot identify the timbre of the different instruments. For example, when the singer hits the exact same note as the guitar, Melodyne will detect only one note."

Now for meatier stuff as for example the spectral composition of an Oboe, a lengthy article , very scholarly and physical

OBOE

Yes, I'm aware that different instruments have different sonic signatures - the issue I'm addressing is how we can perceptually differentiate an OBOe's signature in a n audio stream in which various sonic mixes of the fundamentals & harmonics of other instruments are intermingled.

People like Bruce with hands-on experience with DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and software willbe clearer and more eloquent than I can even ever but the gist is that recovering a given instrument within the noise of an orchestra while not "easy" (a very subjective notion in this context) is performed rather simply by modern tools.

Please dig

I'm sure it would be interesting to hear Bruce's view on this.

 

[BlueFox]

We can friggen move atoms around to form a word if we want.

True, but how do we measure the difference between one object with random atoms and another with words?

Well?

Measurements are certainly useful. Audio gear that measures bad will sound bad. On the other hand, audio gear with the same measurements can possibly sound different. While our knowledge of electronics has allowed us to create interesting products, I believe we are still at the rudimentary level of understanding what is occurring. Especially, at the atomic level. My personal belief is that actions that take place at the atomic level can have audible effects. The problem is understanding what is happening at the atomic level, and learning how to measure it. Once we understand that then we can start to correlate it to audible effects.

 

[FrantzM]

John

Happy Holidays ...

I don't get your point. The oboe or whatever instruments has a known harmonics content, its timbre. We focus and hear it, if it were a software, exact same thing. it would focus on the known harmonics content and follow it .. That is what is done in Karakoe software to remove the voice and allow you to put yours or mine.. If you don't know what an oboe or a human voice is composed of or for a human, sounds like you can not distinguish it from the rest of the orchestra (Noise) ..Same with the software

If the note has a physical reality it will be heard by a mike or a software. BTW the same note doesn't mean the same harmonic content ... This not that hard to do ...