[Arny Krueger]

I ran into this quote, relates to some of my recent comments about what I've
been reading from Jourdain about the perception of music"

jj grumpy old skeptic wrote in
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=31803

Basically, at each of the three classical stages of memory, you lose a LOT
of information (partial loudness, short-term
feature, long-term auditory object), and since you can GUIDE what you
remember, it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON
during the listening."

Two very important points:

(1) Comparisons based on long term listening by definition don't consider
all kinds of small differences.

(2) Comparisons based on long term listening accentuate the effects of the
listener's biases.

[Peter Wieck]

On Nov 20, 12:17*pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
I ran into this quote, relates to some of my recent comments about what I've
been reading from Jourdain about the perception of music"

jj grumpy old skeptic wrote in
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=31803
Basically, at each of the three classical stages of memory, you lose a LOT
of information (partial loudness, short-term
feature, long-term auditory object), and since you can GUIDE what you
remember, it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON
during the listening."

Two very important points:

(1) Comparisons based on long term listening by definition don't consider
all kinds of small differences.

(2) Comparisons based on long term listening accentuate the effects of the
listener's biases.

Uh, two "very important comments":

(1) No Sh*t.

(2) So what?

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[Eeyore]

Arny Krueger wrote:

I ran into this quote, relates to some of my recent comments about what I've
been reading from Jourdain about the perception of music"

jj grumpy old skeptic wrote in
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=31803

Basically, at each of the three classical stages of memory, you lose a LOT
of information (partial loudness, short-term
feature, long-term auditory object), and since you can GUIDE what you
remember, it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON
during the listening."

Two very important points:

(1) Comparisons based on long term listening by definition don't consider
all kinds of small differences.

(2) Comparisons based on long term listening accentuate the effects of the
listener's biases.

Long term listening will (depending on SPL) affect your hearing and most likely
influence your ears' frequency response for one thing.

But if you REALLY want your music to sound good, just take some cannabis
beforehand. It's all in the brain you see. The ear is NOT an accurate measuring
instrument. Even your MOOD will affect your preception of music.

Graham

[Steven Sullivan]

Eeyore wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:

I ran into this quote, relates to some of my recent comments about what I've
been reading from Jourdain about the perception of music"

jj grumpy old skeptic wrote in
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=31803

Basically, at each of the three classical stages of memory, you lose a LOT
of information (partial loudness, short-term
feature, long-term auditory object), and since you can GUIDE what you
remember, it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON
during the listening."

Two very important points:

(1) Comparisons based on long term listening by definition don't consider
all kinds of small differences.

(2) Comparisons based on long term listening accentuate the effects of the
listener's biases.

Long term listening will (depending on SPL) affect your hearing and most likely
influence your ears' frequency response for one thing.

certainly ...but it's the 'audiophile' contingent that is positing that only
long term listening' gives the listener a sense of the 'real' sound.




--
-S
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can
seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit
the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have
woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life -- Leo Tolstoy

[[email protected]]

In this context, in particular with regard to jj's comment, the
following passage from Zielinski et al., "On Some Biases Encountered
in Modern Audio Quality Listening Tests-A Review", JAES Vol. 56, Issue
6, pp. 427-451; June 2008 is of interest:

"The third criterion, related to the selection of program material, is
the consistency of characteristics. If the duration of a given excerpt
is long, say more than 30 seconds, it is likely that its timbral and
spatial characteristics will vary in time. If these variations are
large, the listeners may find it difficult to "average" the quality
over time, and consequently some random errors are likely to occur in
the data (see [21] for an example). Therefore short, consistent, and
perhaps looped excerpts are beneficial in this respect.

There is another problem related to using long, time- varying stimuli,
which potentially can give rise to a systematic error. As mentioned,
listeners face problems when evaluating the audio quality of long
program material. It was observed that listeners are not reliable at
"averaging" quality as it changes over the duration of the whole
excerpt, and their judgments are biased toward the quality of that
part of the recording that is auditioned last (the end of the
recording if the recording is not looped). This psychological effect
is related to the dominance of short-term memory over long-term memory
and is often referred to as a recency effect, as the assessors tend to
be biased toward recent events. For example, Gros et al. [22]
conducted a study evaluating telephone speech quality and observed a
systematic shift in scores due to the recency effect of a magnitude of
up to 23% of the total range of the scale. Moreover, the recency
effect was studied extensively by Aldridge et al. in the context of
picture quality evaluation [23j. This phenomenon is sometimes referred
to as a forgiveness effect as the assessors tend to "forgive"
occasional imperfections in the quality, provided that the final part
of the evaluated excerpt is unimpaired. For example, in the study
conducted by Seferidis et al. [24] it was observed that for some
stimuli the recency effect biased the results of the subjective
evaluation by almost 50%.

There are three solutions to reduce the magnitude of the recency
effect. The first, which is commonly used in audio listening tests,
involves using short and consistent recordings in terms of their audio
quality. The second solution is to randomize the temporal distribution
of distortions for the same stimuli and use several profiles for the
same levels of quality. Unfortunately this solution is expensive since
it requires more stimuli and hence leads to a longer overall duration
of the test. The third solution, which is sometimes employed in
picture and multimedia quality evaluation experiments, involves a so-
called continuous evaluation of quality. Instead of assessing the
quality of a stimulus once, normally after its presentation, the
participants are instructed to evaluate the quality of stimuli in a
continuous manner during their presentation [25], [26].

On 20 nov, 18:17, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
jj grumpy old skeptic wrote:
it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON
during the listening."

[Arny Krueger]

wrote in message

In this context, in particular with regard to jj's
comment, the following passage from Zielinski et al., "On
Some Biases Encountered in Modern Audio Quality Listening
Tests-A Review", JAES Vol. 56, Issue 6, pp. 427-451; June
2008 is of interest:

This paper can be freely downloaded from

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/soundrec/ias.../Zielinski.pdf

"The third criterion, related to the selection of program
material, is the consistency of characteristics. If the
duration of a given excerpt is long, say more than 30
seconds, it is likely that its timbral and spatial
characteristics will vary in time. If these variations
are large, the listeners may find it difficult to
"average" the quality over time, and consequently some
random errors are likely to occur in the data (see [21]
for an example). Therefore short, consistent, and perhaps
looped excerpts are beneficial in this respect.
"

A complementary fact is that our memory for concrete musical sounds is on
the order of from 1 to 10 seconds, with most people being most effective
around 2 seconds. After 2 seconds or so, our memory of musical sounds is
abstract, and most details of the sound are no longer remembered. Small
details that can be compared within our memory for concrete sounds must
appear within a few seconds of each other, or detailed variations will not
be heard as effectively and reliably.

"
There are three solutions to reduce the magnitude of the
recency effect. The first, which is commonly used in
audio listening tests, involves using short and
consistent recordings in terms of their audio quality.
"

I've taken immeasurably large amounts of abuse from people who deny the
validity of listening tests composed of short segments of music. It's really
about their ignorance of how human perception works. The very act of taking
a number of DBTs can be a quick but brutal lesson about what works, and what
doesn't. Since sighted evaluations are often inherently invalid, they lead
to a lot of totally bogus, but tightly held urban legends. These urban
legends favor people who are trying to sell audio gear without regard to
whether or not it actually sounds better when compared to some kind of
reference, as opposed to perceived differences that need not be reliable or
even based on hearing.

On 20 nov, 18:17, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

Two very important points:

(1) Comparisons based on long term listening by definition don't
consider
all kinds of small differences.

(2) Comparisons based on long term listening accentuate the effects of
the
listener's biases.

jj grumpy old skeptic wrote:

it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND
WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON during the listening."

[Steven Sullivan]

Arny Krueger wrote:
wrote in message

In this context, in particular with regard to jj's
comment, the following passage from Zielinski et al., "On
Some Biases Encountered in Modern Audio Quality Listening
Tests-A Review", JAES Vol. 56, Issue 6, pp. 427-451; June
2008 is of interest:

This paper can be freely downloaded from

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/soundrec/ias.../Zielinski.pdf

That must be a different version, since it does not contain the
text quoted by Mr. Rampelmann (including the paragraph below)



"The third criterion, related to the selection of program
material, is the consistency of characteristics. If the
duration of a given excerpt is long, say more than 30
seconds, it is likely that its timbral and spatial
characteristics will vary in time. If these variations
are large, the listeners may find it difficult to
"average" the quality over time, and consequently some
random errors are likely to occur in the data (see [21]
for an example). Therefore short, consistent, and perhaps
looped excerpts are beneficial in this respect.
"


--
-S
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can
seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit
the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have
woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life -- Leo Tolstoy