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In article , says...

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:40:31 GMT, "Lorin David Schultz"
wrote:

Between room reflections and the directional characteristics of the
speaker, the sound obviously changes significantly when you move around.
You're right Paul, the brain usually compensates for that. Not always
though.

A lot depends on one's state of attention. For example, going from my
dining room into the music/HT/listening room, I am quite aware of the
change in acoustic (and gratefully so in view of the efforts expended
there) as it affects normal conversation. However, there is no
difficulty in identifying voices despite the shift in timbre during
the transition. While continuing the discussion, we all become
completely unaware of that effect. This adaptation is useful and, in
most ways, common to all our senses. It is when we concentrate of
particular aspects of a sensory event that we can somewhat deter the
adaptation.


I understand what you're saying, that if you're not paying any attention (such
as background music at a restaurant while you're having a conversation), you
will be able to recall very few details about what was playing in the
background, but in fact stimulatory delusion occurs most readily when 'over'
concentrating on it. You can see Jesus in the tortilla only if you concentrate
enough to fill in the gaps of the image, and imagine the blot as a whole image.
I think this is how I often end up making mixes that sound terrible the next
day. I keep trying to listen more 'carefully', analogous to squinting the
eyes, and start imagining frequencies being more offensive or less pronounced
than they actually are, and compensating for this, only to listen back to the
mix the next day with fresh, non-squinting ears, and it sounds all wrong. But
this doesn't happen to me as much as it used to, now that I've come to grips
with the mechanism in play.