opaqueice;351963 Wrote: > But that's more or less precisely the format that was used here! > [...] > That's an oft-repeated audiophile canard, and it's just false. Have > you ever [...]
You are right that you have control and can listen to each sample as long as you want. But that is not the way it is done: samples are mostly 10-20 seconds long and intervals between two samples are often 0.5-1 second. This is all based on some early determination about human memory etc. which I can't find on the net quickly enough to quote here (edit: found it, see last quote below in this post). But I do find many test-results in forums like hydrogen audio's where two result are often within the same minute. The test in Japan were different because they listened to the whole piece of music (it was 200 seconds). > I find that totally incomprehensible [...] So what on earth could you > possibly mean? All blind tests up until this one in Japan were trying to find out if humans can -hear- sounds of high frequencies. This was the scope for which the tests were designed. But it turns out that this scope was wrong because we indeed can't hear the difference but we can -experience- it and our brain registers it! When you read the whole article you will find that the biggest differences are found as the samples play longer. Switching quickly between samples, which is what most testers do (habitual) because it's easy to do, invalidates the test. Furthermore, as explained in the research article, conventional abx testing is based on a questionaire where the tester notes his/her findings. They did not record the brain-activity of the tester. > That's making precisely the assumption > [...] > If that's their argument, it's logically contradictory. I'm afraid that my English isn't good enough because I can't follow you here. What they measured was "no difference" between "silence" and "high pass only". This proves that the equipment used did not experience interference by the high-pass signals. > I'm a professional scientist. Anyone who has followed the progress of > [...] > Many university departments refuse funding from corporations entirely, > for precisely that reason. I wonder what you are questioning: the method used, the funding for this research or the objectivity/honesty of the researchers but I guess you have doubts on all. So, let's see: The method of looking at ones brain-activity during listening. You can't seriously doubt that your brain is involved when listening music so it must be the detection methods itself. Well, they used EEG and PET methods; both are proven and both are massively used in every hospital worldwide. Also, by using two different methods and finding a strong correlation between the two is an established method for confirming valid measurements. The research was funded by the Japan Ministry of Education, the International Scientific Research Program and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science through the Research for the Future Program. I see no commercial involvement here but you will probably counter with something like "the minister is in Pioneer's pocket" so please prove it in that case. Last is the honesty of the researchers. Did you look at who was involved? This was not a laboratory doing this like so many "funny" research projects that you compare it to (tabacco industry etc) but there are 10 researchers from 10 organizations, none of them commercial. Do you really think that all of them collaborated in presenting a lie? How can you live your life if you truly believe that? Also, you state that research is only "right" after some time and many other experiments that confirm the original one. So, the guy that first stated that the world wasn't flat was indeed a fraud? The world was still flat at that point in time? I believe that he was right all along but people didn't believe him at first. They didn't believe him because they didn't understand his proof. They didn't understand his proof because they didn't understand the methods he used to come to his findings. But, I *do* understand EEG and PET and believe that they actually show what's happening in brains and I *do* understand the proof of this experiment that demonstrates elevated levels of brain activity when 20-100 kHz harmonics are added to the music, and I understand the measures they took to confirm their data is correct and agree with them, so I accept their findings until someone proves that they are wrong. Nobody can truly state that they are wrong until someone proves that. > If he designed the speaker he was paid by Pioneer, and may well > [...] That's about as clear a conflict of interest as you can get. And he paid off the other 9 researchers to lie and throw away their careers and all 10 organizations to support this with their names? It will only take little time before others would find out it's a big lie so what's to gain? Do you think that nobody is gonna verify their results? And you think that "normal" researchers help commercial businesses with research and design without charging for that? Or that they never work for commercial projects at all? They don't have a choice because their employer will sign contracts anyway. Every university will do that. > Don't be ridiculous. Almost all scientific research is carried out by > [...] > as far from a "wild accusation" as you can get. wow... please elaborate on that first part; list some examples of research findings that were wrong and conducted by these big collaborations. Also, you again write that the current findings go -against- previous results. They do not. They confirm the previous results: "nobody" can hear above 20 kHz. What they found was a missing link that many (professionals) thought was there but couldn't put their fingers on. It turned out that they were looking at the wrong spot: the ear, instead of the brain. This research definitely doesn't go against any previous research. Also, they don't claim that the brain responds to the high freq. harmonics, they demonstrate it and verified it with another method of measurement. Both methods used, plus all the statistic calculations are established methods, not new claims. > As for previous research on this - it was done, and it's even referred > to in the paper (Muraoka et al. 1978; Plenge et al. 1979). I'm sure > there's more - the technology to do this kind of research has existed > for many years. You didn't read it all or you left the important part out here or just play dumb to get me going, which I don't mind. Let me quote some too but first about the technology used: EEG's were first used for medical diagnoses in 1936. For PET it's the late 70's. But neither of these methods was used for research on human perception of sound before. Microphones with flat response up to 100 kHz, the pre-amps, ADC's that encode up to 100 kHz, digital filtering and the DAC's and speakers that support flat response up to 100 kHz are very recent and didn't exist in the 70's. now the quotes: "Although recently there have been several attempts to explore the psychological effect of inaudible HFCs on sound perception using a digital audio format with a higher sampling rate of 96 kHz (Theiss and Hawksford 1997; Yamamoto 1996; Yoshikawa et al. 1995, 1997), none of these studies has convincingly explained the biological mechanism of the phenomenon. This may reflect in part the limitations of the conventional audio engineering approach for determining sound quality, which is solely based on a subjective evaluation obtained via questionnaires." next one: "In the present study, therefore, we addressed this issue by using quantifiable and reproducible measurements of brain activity. To measure human physiological responses to HFCs, we selected two noninvasive techniques: analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) and positron emission tomography (PET) measurements of the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). [...] Combining these two techniques with psychological assessments, we provide evidence herein that inaudible high-frequency sounds have a significant effect on humans." and: "The fact that we used an entire piece of natural music lasting 200 s as sound stimuli instead of short fragments of sounds might explain the discrepancy between our findings and those of previous studies carried out around 1980 to determine the format for digital audio CDs (e.g., Muraoka et al. 1978; Plenge et al. 1979), which concluded that the presence of sounds containing a frequency range above 15 kHz was not recognized as making a difference in sound quality. The CCIR (1978), and the current International Telecommunication Union-Radio communication sector (ITU-R 1997), have recommended that sound samples used for the comparison of sound quality should not last longer than 15-20 s (CCIR 1978; ITU-R 1997), and that intervals between sound samples should be about 0.5-1 s (CCIR 1978) because of short-term human memory limitations. Most of the previous psychological experiments, including the studies by Muraoka et al. (1978) and Plenge et al. (1979), were carried out using, essentially, the sound presentation method recommended by the CCIR. We also examined the psychological evaluation using the same material and sound presentation system as was used for the present study, but followed the presentation method recommended by the CCIR, and confirmed that the results were in agreement with the studies by Muraoka et al. (1978) and Plenge et al. (1979)." Your turn, Mr. O. But don't forget the foundation of your statements this time ;-) ciao! Nick. -- DeVerm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DeVerm's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18104 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=53345 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
