"Fella" wrote in message
...
124 wrote:
The following questions are for subjectivists. When you close your
eyes, does the sound from your audio system decrease in quality? If
the quality drops, why does it drop? What is it about having to see
the device that improves the sound?
--124
When in near or total ecstasy I find myself often closing my eyes.. This
happens sometimes during .... well .... and sometimes during listening to
my audio system. And no, closing my eyes does not in any way degrade the
sound quality I perceive from my system, on the contrary, loosing the
sight of everything makes you fall further into the deep, dark valleys and
majestic hills and shining decorations and larger-then-life ornamentations
of the musical soundstage.. 
In fact the borg dogma that knowing what's doing the playing and thus
making up imaginary traits to the sound in light of that knowledge is
spesifically based on "knowledge" and not just sight, I think.
Dogma is that which is not supposed to be challenged, there is no such
"dogma" regarding ABX. There is however reams of data about human beings
that shows that when they know what they are listening to, their biases kick
in and they "hear" traits that don't show up when they can't see the
faceplates. You should know this better than anyone, since you have
excperienced it firsthand.
If it was all about simply sight then blind people (and they do have more
acute hearing don't they) would be ideal candidates for double blind
testing!
Maybe not. Try this:
http://personal.ecu.edu/wuenschk/Sen...mpensation.htm
A couople of excerpts: You have probably heard the opinion that blind
people develop better senses of touch and hearing to compensate for their
lack of vision. If you consult with knowledgeable persons you may be told
that this is just a myth. For example, the class notes (PSYC 442Y5Y) of
Professor Sandra Trehub at the University of Toronto recently included the
following statement: "Despite widespread beliefs that blind people have
better hearing (and more sensitive touch) than sighted people (the myth of
sensory compensation), there is no evidence that this is the case. In fact,
vision helps us integrate information across modalities (e.g., providing
information about what we are hearing or touching). Thus, the absence of
vision may lead to poor performance on many non-visual tasks. Nevertheless,
experience and practice can allow blind children and adults to use their
intact senses effectively so that they seem to have greater sensitivity in
hearing and touch than sighted individuals"
(
http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psy/c...lindfeb29.html). When I
most recently tried to re-access this page, I found that this page and her
home page returned 404 (File Not Found) error messages, but she is still
listed as on the faculty. Please do pay special attention to the last
sentence in this quote -- blind persons may learn to use their intact senses
more effectively, even though those senses are no more sensitive than those
of sighted persons.
And this: There is, however, recent evidence that persons blind from birth
may, in fact, have different perceptual capabilities which enable them to
compensate, somewhat, for their lack of vision. Note that I used the term
"perceptual," not "sensory." When we study sensation, we study the means by
which organisms become aware of those energies and substances their bodies
and brains can detect. For example, when I take a sip of a good, single-malt
Scotch, what is it that causes me to have that pleasant experience as I roll
the Scotch around my mouth and then swallow it? Without doubt, there are
several sensory systems involved in this experience, involving sensory
organs in my mouth and in my nose. When we study perception, we study how
sensory information is interpreted. It is generally assumed that this
interpretation takes place in the brain rather than in the peripheral
sensory organs, but, in fact, the sensory organs themselves already be
extracting "information" from the raw sensory data before delivering it to
the brain. That said, I should add that the distinction between "sensation"
and "perception" is fuzzy at its boundary.