Stainless Steel Rat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> No, I meant psychoacoustic, the subjective experience of audio vs. the
> scientific measurement of sound by various devices (definition courtesy of
> <URL:http://www.sfu.ca/sca/Manuals/ZAAPf/p/psychoacoustic.html>).

URL Contents:

  "The subjective experience of audio versus the scientific measurement
   of sound by various devices.  For example, the frequency of a signal
   may not change but we may perceive pitch changes if the amplitude
   changes."

> I stand by my statement: you believe that you will hear a difference,
> therefore you hear a difference, even when there is none.

Your confusion lies in thinking that the Subjective Experience of
Audio, as studied in the field of psychoacoustics, has anything to do
with what the subject believes. Psychoacoustic phenomena are ones that
prestage conciousness. For example, the way pitch is perceived to vary
with amplitude, or the masking effect, or the nature of critical
bands, are all general principles of the human nervous system. That's
why you can build audio coders (e.g. ATRAC, MP3) that reduce data
based upon Psychoacoustic principles and have them work for everyone.

This is not to say that the specific parameters and thresholds of
these phenomena cannot vary from individual to individual, but that
the variation has nothing to do with what they believe, only with what
nature has blessed them with.

I think the word you are looking for is "Placebo Effect", wherein what
a person actually experiences is effected by what he believes he will
experience. It is because of the placebo effect that subjective
experiments must be conducted in a double blind fashion, so as not to
leak information about the true experimental conditions to the subject.

Rick

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