[Arny Krueger]

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message


"Musical Minds," the season premiere of "Nova" on PBS, is
based on the neurologist Oliver Sacks's most recent book,
"Musicophilia."

It's an interesting watch, but not nearly as informative about human
perception as "This Is Your Brain on Music"

I've promoted this book on newsgroups in order to
challenge routine thinking about music and it's
permeation of our being.

There are actually few if any challenges to well-informed thinking about
music in "Musicophilia." Read it, for fun. However it is mostly just
anecdotes, not science.

My agenda in doing so is to
suggest that music affects us in deep and profound wayes,
is to some degree hardwired into our being, and is much
more psychologically complex than is often acknowledged.

My agenda is being well-informed by science, but I'm not against freak shows
like the ones that fill "Musicophilia." I do appreciate the fact that the
book shows how music can improve the lives of people who have severe
abnormalities to shoulder.

I do so because I continue to believe that the commonly
held belief that soundwaves=music

This sort of thinking does permeate the high end audio community where few
seem to distinguish between hearing and perceiving. If hearing were as
simple as they seem to think it is, then there would be no need for
bias-controlled tests.

and music reproduction
can be treated, tested, and measured objectively simply
as a matter of physics and/or electronics, somehow misses
the boat.

Actually, that is a different boat, but one that can be correlated with
perception if you are up on your science.

As one example, I continue to feel that we
humans somehow perceive the low cut-off frequency and
subsequent pre-ringing of the CD standard as "unnatural"
and as a result,

This is a false claim. A brick wall filter low pass can be implemented in
such a way that it has pre-ringing, post-ringing, or a mixture of the two.

Harry's claim that low pass filters necessarily cause pre-ringing is simply
false.

In fact, pre-ringing is a consequence of linear phase filtering, which many
DAC builders have gone to because of baseless fears about high frequency
phase shift. The irony is that the frequency at which the ringing happens
is so high and the ringing is of a low enough amplitude that any reasonable
choice turns out to be sonically benign.

suffer diminished emotional involvement
in the music being played.

There can be diminished emotional involvement due to playing CDs since they
have a low cost to obtain and play, If you want real emotional involvement
with a ritual of playing music, you want vinyl with all of its costs and
inconveniences. OTOH, if you want to listen to music as opposed to being a
slave of useless technology, then the CD and other digital forms are exactly
what you want.

I honestly believe that the
resultant lack of attention and beginning of music as
"background" dates to the introduction of the CD and
predates MTV and the hyperactive, multitasking lifestyles
so evident today.

That's a minority opinion. Most people understand that we haven't been in a
sound-only entertainment economy since the popularization of the video tape,
which predates the CD, but only by a little. It used to be technically
impossible to have high quality mobile audio in the days of tubes and 15"
woofers.

I could be wrong of course (and when INTJs are wrong they
are often wrong in a grand way) but I will risk that by
saying that I think someday this POV will be vindicated
by science. INTJs do after all also have the ability to
connect often-obscure dots that others miss.

The problem here is the effect of completely wrong beliefs, such as the one
I just pointed out about low pass filters causing pre-ringing. In fact a low
pass filter can have pre-ringing, ringing split in any proportion around the
impulse or post ringing. You can even have no ringing at all. It's all a
matter of what you want, and what you want to sacrifice.

The whole issue of ringing due to brick-wall filters is generally moot for
overkill sampling frequencies such as those used with the common CD.
However, certain kinds of audio (usually speech) are downsampled to low
frequencies within the audio band, such as 10 KHz. When your artifacts are
at clearly audible frequencies like 5 KHz, then the secondary properties of
the filter including ringing, can have audible consequences.

In any case, agree or not, read the book and watch the TV
show. You will be amazed at what you learn.

I suggest reading "This Is Your Brain on Music" if you want to understand
the mechanisms of music enjoyment, instead of focusing on only those cases
where things get messy and there's an interesting, but not necessarily
insight-providing story to tell.