Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Hunt]

Hi,

I missed this discussion, being away for a short break.

A BBC radio reviewer of the film 'Avatar' said that when he came out  
of the film into Camden High Street, it seemed, curiously, not in 3D.


Film, TV and audio productions generally are not attempting to be  
real. Everything deemed superfluous is weeded out, creating a sort of  
hyper-reality.


Ciao,

Dave Hunt


Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 19:37:14 +0200
From: J?rn Nettingsmeier  
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious
    question)

On 05/31/2012 11:38 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:

On 31/05/2012 10:03, Dave Malham wrote:
..
Here, to any extent, I depart from Gibson. With sufficiently  
advanced
technology there comes a point at which the effort required to  
suspend
disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report  
on a
paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the  
authors were
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the  
"real

world" as actually being real when they come out of the games.


But surely that is more appropriately regarded as a
pathological/delusional mental state (and very possibly a dangerous
one), not a natural one representing some sort of technological  
nirvana.
There is a world of difference between entertaining and even  
immersing

in a fantasy as such (as in attending any Shakespeare play), and a
delusion leading to possibly dysfunctional behaviour in "the real
world". Shall we call this the "Matrix Syndrome"?


allow me to suspend the circling of wagons to offer a personal  
anecdote:

there is a strategy game that involves pushing rows of black and white
marbles around on (and ultimately off of) a hexagonal grid, i guess  
it's

called "abalone".

when i have played this game (and staring at the round and hexagonal
shapes intensely) for half an hour or so, and i look my opponent in  
the

face, my perception of that face has changed - it looks chiselled or
square-edged to me. looking at my own hands, their shape is unfamiliar
and slightly unpleasant. looking around the room, i'm acutely aware of
right angles all over the place and perceive them as unnatural.

this effect takes at least a minute to subside.

3D movies have a similar effect on me: unless they are totally
unbelievable, the skewed depth perception is accepted as "normal" over
the course of the movie, and when i leave the cinema, the real depth
perception is suddenly so remarkable that i become consciously  
aware of
depth cues which would normally be ignored as "nothing out of the  
ordinary".


despite these pathological mental states, my functioning in the real
world has not been affected (or so i'd like to believe). hence, i'm
confidently resuming the circling of wagons now.


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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Augustine Leudar]

Interesting - must be an aspect of the cocktail effect ...

On 2 June 2012 04:13, umashankar mantravadi  wrote:

>
> as a location sound mixer, i exploited the visual reinforcement of sound
> in many situations. if you are recording half a dozen people speaking, and
> the camera focus on one - provided the sound is in synch - the person in
> picture will sound louder, nearer the mic, than the others. it is a
> surprisingly strong effect, and one side benefit is you can check for synch
> very quickly using it. umashankar
>
> i have published my poems. read (or buy) at
> http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar
>  > Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 03:09:40 +0100
> > From: augustineleu...@gmail.com
>
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[umashankar mantravadi]

as a location sound mixer, i exploited the visual reinforcement of sound in 
many situations. if you are recording half a dozen people speaking, and the 
camera focus on one - provided the sound is in synch - the person in picture 
will sound louder, nearer the mic, than the others. it is a surprisingly strong 
effect, and one side benefit is you can check for synch very quickly using it. 
umashankar

i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar
 > Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 03:09:40 +0100
> From: augustineleu...@gmail.com
> To: sursound@music.vt.edu
> Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)
> 
>  I once had a piece played atspatial audio concert and some people came to
> visit. Afterwards one guy came up to me and said - the sound was right
> there - right there in front of my face ! Was it ambionics ? Im pretty sure
> he just heard what he expected or hoped to hear -  simply because he
> thought it was "ambisonics" and thats what he expected. I didnt get os
> dramatic an effect and I made it !
> I think a really good related example of this sort of thing  is WALLACH, H.
> (1940) The role of head movements and vestibular and visual cues in sound
> localization. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27, 339-368. which
> demonstrates that visual cues can completely overide audio cues when it
> comes to sound localisation.
> Im beginning to think that people often hear what they believe they are
> going to hear and that the context in which you put the sounds can be as
> important as the filtering etc you apply to the sounds.
> 
> 
> the argument essentially says that for something to appear real it has to
> > fit people's *pre-conception* of what is real, rather than fit what
> > actually is real. In other words, throw out veridicality (coincidence with
> > reality), instead try to satisfy people's belief of reality. This is an
> > other argument for questioning the extent to which physical modelling has
> > the capacity to create illusions of reality in sound.
> >
> > It is perfectly possible that a more accurate illusion is actually
> > perceived as less real than a less accurate one.
> >
> > Etienne
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Augustine Leudar]

 I once had a piece played atspatial audio concert and some people came to
visit. Afterwards one guy came up to me and said - the sound was right
there - right there in front of my face ! Was it ambionics ? Im pretty sure
he just heard what he expected or hoped to hear -  simply because he
thought it was "ambisonics" and thats what he expected. I didnt get os
dramatic an effect and I made it !
I think a really good related example of this sort of thing  is WALLACH, H.
(1940) The role of head movements and vestibular and visual cues in sound
localization. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27, 339-368. which
demonstrates that visual cues can completely overide audio cues when it
comes to sound localisation.
Im beginning to think that people often hear what they believe they are
going to hear and that the context in which you put the sounds can be as
important as the filtering etc you apply to the sounds.


the argument essentially says that for something to appear real it has to
> fit people's *pre-conception* of what is real, rather than fit what
> actually is real. In other words, throw out veridicality (coincidence with
> reality), instead try to satisfy people's belief of reality. This is an
> other argument for questioning the extent to which physical modelling has
> the capacity to create illusions of reality in sound.
>
> It is perfectly possible that a more accurate illusion is actually
> perceived as less real than a less accurate one.
>
> Etienne
> -- next part --
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> https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20120601/e589e92b/attachment.html
> >
> ___
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> Sursound@music.vt.edu
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[etienne deleflie]

>
>
> The only reason it seems to me that the "hypothesis" has any meaning is
> that (one presumes) the environment being represented is one that is
> captivating but variously impossible, inaccessible or unaffordable; in
> which case neither the condition nor the assertion is testable. Chances
> are, 99.9% of people using a flight simulator will ~never~ experience the
> real thing, so they really have no basis on which to evaluate its
> authenticity, beyond the ~sense~ that it is in some way convincing, and is
> in some to-be-defined cognitive sense transparent. So perhaps that
> hypothesis is really trying to propose that an artificial environment in
> which one ~forgets~ one is in an artificial environment, is equal to the
> real environment it imitates.


this is the kind of argument argued in Gombrich's text on the visual arts
"Art and Illusion". There is evidence supporting this in the audition as
well. (I argue all this in my thesis).

the argument essentially says that for something to appear real it has to
fit people's *pre-conception* of what is real, rather than fit what
actually is real. In other words, throw out veridicality (coincidence with
reality), instead try to satisfy people's belief of reality. This is an
other argument for questioning the extent to which physical modelling has
the capacity to create illusions of reality in sound.

It is perfectly possible that a more accurate illusion is actually
perceived as less real than a less accurate one.

Etienne
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[etienne deleflie]

>
>
>>  Here, to any extent,  I depart from Gibson.  With sufficiently advanced
> technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend
> disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a
> paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were
> suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real
> world" as actually being real when they come out of the games. This
> suggests that even with the relatively poor systems we have at present
> (compared with what we know will be possible in future since it only needs
> evolution, not revolution, in the technology), the barrier to suspension
> has already become low.


can the researchers separate the effect -- psychological, social, or
otherwise -- of the game environment from the technology?

this is exactly what I was alluding to by saying that the 'suspension of
disbelief'  the 'last mile' if you like ... can be done, but it is not
technological. There has to be something else that acts as a *catalyst* for
the acceptance of the technological illusion.

Heim, an early commentator on virtual reality (1994), compared Wagner's
'total work of art' to VR. He said 2 interesting things ... the first is
that total believability in VR is perhaps a holy grail ... it is and may
perhaps forever be unattainable. The second is that 'Certain disadvantages
might also plague it where Wagnerian solutions might help'.

Etienne
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 05/31/2012 11:38 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:

On 31/05/2012 10:03, Dave Malham wrote:
..

Here, to any extent, I depart from Gibson. With sufficiently advanced
technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend
disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a
paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real
world" as actually being real when they come out of the games.


But surely that is more appropriately regarded as a
pathological/delusional mental state (and very possibly a dangerous
one), not a natural one representing some sort of technological nirvana.
There is a world of difference between entertaining and even immersing
in a fantasy as such (as in attending any Shakespeare play), and a
delusion leading to possibly dysfunctional behaviour in "the real
world". Shall we call this the "Matrix Syndrome"?


allow me to suspend the circling of wagons to offer a personal anecdote: 
there is a strategy game that involves pushing rows of black and white 
marbles around on (and ultimately off of) a hexagonal grid, i guess it's 
called "abalone".


when i have played this game (and staring at the round and hexagonal 
shapes intensely) for half an hour or so, and i look my opponent in the 
face, my perception of that face has changed - it looks chiselled or 
square-edged to me. looking at my own hands, their shape is unfamiliar 
and slightly unpleasant. looking around the room, i'm acutely aware of 
right angles all over the place and perceive them as unnatural.


this effect takes at least a minute to subside.

3D movies have a similar effect on me: unless they are totally 
unbelievable, the skewed depth perception is accepted as "normal" over 
the course of the movie, and when i leave the cinema, the real depth 
perception is suddenly so remarkable that i become consciously aware of 
depth cues which would normally be ignored as "nothing out of the ordinary".


despite these pathological mental states, my functioning in the real 
world has not been affected (or so i'd like to believe). hence, i'm 
confidently resuming the circling of wagons now.




--
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister (VDT)

http://stackingdwarves.net
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Peter Lennox]

Well, it seems to me that we're saying that we need the concept of "real 
enough..." - that is, if we're making an artificial environment that should 
present certain stimulus qualities to perception, we need to know a) what those 
qualities might be (hence the discussion on direction, distance etc) for a 
defined application, and how 'veridicality' (for those stimulus qualities) 
might be managed.
This is a different approach from the one where we might assume that, if we 
were to exactly replicate a set of signals to the appropriate organs of 
sensation, then we have inevitably replicated the perceptual experience as 
though for the original 'real' environment. This falls down in that, even if it 
were so that we actually could produce such signals, we still have the 'prior 
knowledge' that constitutes a very significant part of any momentary perception 
(Dreyfuss: "we're always already in a situation").

However, if all we're really after is 'willing suspension of disbelief' then 
the emphasis shifts away from sensory veridicality toward something else to do 
with 'narrative belief'.
People have known this in theatre and film for ages.

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology 
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk  


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Richard Dobson
Sent: 31 May 2012 13:31
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

On 31/05/2012 12:45, Peter Lennox wrote:
>
>
  sensation, inevitably a poor
> copy of reality. Whilst philosophers are entirely comfortable with
> such thought experiments, there is no obvious pragmatic way to
> investigate such speculations. By definition, if an artificial
> environment is detectable as such, then it is imperfectly executed
> and the hypothetical position has not been matched. On the other
> hand, if the artificial environment were perfectly rendered, there
> would be no way to prove its artificiality." [ my thesis, some years
> ago]
>

Sometimes language can make us think we are saying something more than 
we really are.  Purely as a logical statement in a language all this is 
saying is: if two environments are indistinguishable, they are 
indistinguishable.  We are simply replacing a condition with the same 
expression as an assertion, and then saying that proves the condition. 
"If 2==2, there is no way of distinguishing one integer from the other." 
Except perhaps if the person is told (or otherwise knows a priori, or if 
necessary is reminded) "this is the artificial environment".

The only reason it seems to me that the "hypothesis" has any meaning is 
that (one presumes) the environment being represented is one that is 
captivating but variously impossible, inaccessible or unaffordable; in 
which case neither the condition nor the assertion is testable. Chances 
are, 99.9% of people using a flight simulator will ~never~ experience 
the real thing, so they really have no basis on which to evaluate its 
authenticity, beyond the ~sense~ that it is in some way convincing, and 
is in some to-be-defined cognitive sense transparent. So perhaps that 
hypothesis is really trying to propose that an artificial environment in 
which one ~forgets~ one is in an artificial environment, is equal to the 
real environment it imitates. The variable is then not the environment 
but the forgetting. It would appear that some are easily persuaded. But 
turning the somewhat capricious and probably non-algorithmic human 
capacity to forget where one is seems at best an  unreliable basis for 
any sort of objective testable hypothesis.

Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Peter Lennox]

Hmm - yes, "so's a racing car" - especially F1. 
But the whole 'seat of the pants' thing - minute vibrations, feeling the back 
end 'going light', using a minute dip in the road to assist 'slingshot' round a 
corner, feeling the 'stickiness' of tyres change with temperature, wear, and 
whether you're on the racing line (where everyone else has deposited rubber) or 
not, feeling 'slipstream effects', brake fade and so on - I imagine all these 
are absolutely integral to squeezing every last drop out of a situation, and it 
is these that are hard to render coherently

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology 
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk  


-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Dave Malham
Sent: 31 May 2012 13:46
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

On 31 May 2012 12:52, Peter Lennox  wrote:
> Actually, there is something here, though I do wonder if it is pathological. 
> I've met people who told me that such-and-such a driving game was 
> fantastically realistic. I found it stilted, leaden and profoundly 
> unrealistic. I've even met people who, having 'virtually' driven a particular 
> race track, upon actually driving it, were actually surprised that their lap 
> performance in the real was inferior.
>

But on the other hand, was it better or worse than if they hadn't
played the game? Research has been reported showing that performance
of subjects in accomplishing tasks - especially those requiring
hand/eye coordination - is (significantly) better if they first work
in simulations than if they hadn't done so. This is, of course, very
worrying (or should be) for those who claim playing violent video
games has no effect in the "real" world.

> Of course, we do make good use of training simulators for pilots, and I 
> presume (hope) they are very much more 'realistic'. However, what they are 
> simulating is the cockpit of an aircraft which in itself constitutes a 
> partially mediated environment
>
Ah - but so's a racing car...
Dave
-- 

These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer

Dave Malham
Music Research Centre
Department of Music
The University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
Phone 01904 322448
Fax     01904 322450
'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Malham]

On 31 May 2012 12:52, Peter Lennox  wrote:
> Actually, there is something here, though I do wonder if it is pathological. 
> I've met people who told me that such-and-such a driving game was 
> fantastically realistic. I found it stilted, leaden and profoundly 
> unrealistic. I've even met people who, having 'virtually' driven a particular 
> race track, upon actually driving it, were actually surprised that their lap 
> performance in the real was inferior.
>

But on the other hand, was it better or worse than if they hadn't
played the game? Research has been reported showing that performance
of subjects in accomplishing tasks - especially those requiring
hand/eye coordination - is (significantly) better if they first work
in simulations than if they hadn't done so. This is, of course, very
worrying (or should be) for those who claim playing violent video
games has no effect in the "real" world.

> Of course, we do make good use of training simulators for pilots, and I 
> presume (hope) they are very much more 'realistic'. However, what they are 
> simulating is the cockpit of an aircraft which in itself constitutes a 
> partially mediated environment
>
Ah - but so's a racing car...
Dave
-- 

These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer

Dave Malham
Music Research Centre
Department of Music
The University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
Phone 01904 322448
Fax     01904 322450
'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Malham]

On 31 May 2012 12:45, Peter Lennox  wrote:
>
>

>
> This is The Matrix, anything written by Philip K Dick, and before that, Plato 
> in his Cave metaphor.
>
> It is essentially unprovable:
>

Aren't we having fun here? Of course, in one (very important) sense,
nothing other than a logical statement with no outside references can
be proved :-)

>
> "...If physically perfected artificial three-dimensional auditory 
> environments were feasible, would the artificial product be as entirely 
> realistic to perception as the real thing? If not, what ingredient is 
> missing?  If so, what would philosophically distinguish real and artificial? 
> Is such a distinction necessary?"
>
> "...By definition, if an artificial environment is detectable as such, then 
> it is imperfectly executed and the hypothetical position has not been 
> matched. On the other hand, if the artificial environment were perfectly 
> rendered, there would be no way to prove its artificiality." [ my thesis, 
> some years ago]
>

Hmm - an artificial environment might be still be so realistic as to
make those in it believe it which would mean it was not detectable to
them yet still be imperfectly executed in the sense that some outside
it could simply flip the 'off' switch, thus disproving itoh dear,
isn't that what those religions that believe in afterlives have been
telling us for years? On the other hand, when you get to
heaven/hell/limbo (in the Faustian sense), how could you believe in
that?

> So, maybe the whole point of making artificial environments is not that we 
> can perfect them, but that, in doing so, we come to understand more about the 
> perceptually relevant constituents of real environments. So it's the journey, 
> not the destination..?
> Peter Lennox
>

That is demonstrably the fun bit, even if it's unprovable.

Dave
-- 

These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer

Dave Malham
Music Research Centre
Department of Music
The University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
Phone 01904 322448
Fax     01904 322450
'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Richard Dobson]

On 31/05/2012 12:45, Peter Lennox wrote:




 sensation, inevitably a poor

copy of reality. Whilst philosophers are entirely comfortable with
such thought experiments, there is no obvious pragmatic way to
investigate such speculations. By definition, if an artificial
environment is detectable as such, then it is imperfectly executed
and the hypothetical position has not been matched. On the other
hand, if the artificial environment were perfectly rendered, there
would be no way to prove its artificiality." [ my thesis, some years
ago]



Sometimes language can make us think we are saying something more than 
we really are.  Purely as a logical statement in a language all this is 
saying is: if two environments are indistinguishable, they are 
indistinguishable.  We are simply replacing a condition with the same 
expression as an assertion, and then saying that proves the condition. 
"If 2==2, there is no way of distinguishing one integer from the other." 
Except perhaps if the person is told (or otherwise knows a priori, or if 
necessary is reminded) "this is the artificial environment".


The only reason it seems to me that the "hypothesis" has any meaning is 
that (one presumes) the environment being represented is one that is 
captivating but variously impossible, inaccessible or unaffordable; in 
which case neither the condition nor the assertion is testable. Chances 
are, 99.9% of people using a flight simulator will ~never~ experience 
the real thing, so they really have no basis on which to evaluate its 
authenticity, beyond the ~sense~ that it is in some way convincing, and 
is in some to-be-defined cognitive sense transparent. So perhaps that 
hypothesis is really trying to propose that an artificial environment in 
which one ~forgets~ one is in an artificial environment, is equal to the 
real environment it imitates. The variable is then not the environment 
but the forgetting. It would appear that some are easily persuaded. But 
turning the somewhat capricious and probably non-algorithmic human 
capacity to forget where one is seems at best an  unreliable basis for 
any sort of objective testable hypothesis.


Richard Dobson
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Peter Lennox]

Actually, there is something here, though I do wonder if it is pathological. 
I've met people who told me that such-and-such a driving game was fantastically 
realistic. I found it stilted, leaden and profoundly unrealistic. I've even met 
people who, having 'virtually' driven a particular race track, upon actually 
driving it, were actually surprised that their lap performance in the real was 
inferior.

Of course, we do make good use of training simulators for pilots, and I presume 
(hope) they are very much more 'realistic'. However, what they are simulating 
is the cockpit of an aircraft which in itself constitutes a partially mediated 
environment

Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology 
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
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-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of Dave Malham
Sent: 31 May 2012 11:19
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

As I understand itt the researchers were saying was that this was not really 
the case, however, as 
I'm not a psychologist, I may well be wrong. For me, the point was that nobody 
(except perhaps those 
with some pre-existing mental problem) would have had this problem when playing 
Dungeon via a 
teleprinter on a PDP-11 (second computer game I ever played, first being 
noughts and crosses:-)), 
but with modern systems  with near photo-realistic graphics, good sound, good 
physics, AI parsing 
and response engines,  inertial feedback and all the rest  it is becoming 
difficult to distinguish, 
especially if you are playing most of your waking life, as some are. 
Personally, I'd rather it was 
known as "Thirteenth Floor Syndrome" in honour of a way more sophisticated and 
intelligent cinematic 
exploration of the theme than those dreadful May-Tricks films, even though they 
did have far better 
CGI :-)

 Dave

On 31/05/2012 10:38, Richard Dobson wrote:
> On 31/05/2012 10:03, Dave Malham wrote:
> ..
>> Here, to any extent, I depart from Gibson. With sufficiently advanced
>> technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend
>> disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a
>> paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were
>> suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real
>> world" as actually being real when they come out of the games.
>
> But surely that is more appropriately regarded as a pathological/delusional 
> mental state (and very 
> possibly a dangerous one), not a natural one representing some sort of 
> technological nirvana. 
> There is a world of difference between entertaining and even immersing in a 
> fantasy as such (as in 
> attending any Shakespeare play), and a delusion leading to possibly 
> dysfunctional behaviour in 
> "the real world". Shall we call this the "Matrix Syndrome"?
>
> Richard Dobson
>
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Peter Lennox]

> Dave said:
"Here, to any extent,  I depart from Gibson.  With sufficiently advanced 
technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend 
disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a paper a 
few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were 
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real world" 
as actually being real when they come out of the games. This suggests that even 
with the relatively poor systems we have at present (compared with what we know 
will be possible in future since it only needs evolution, not revolution, in 
the technology), the barrier to suspension has already become low. Now I am not 
suggesting that we would be able to recreate exactly a particular person's 
experience of going to a particular concert - at least, without Total Recall 
type technology (and, despite the advances with fMRI technology we are a 
lng way off that) - but I do think we will be able to have a pretty good 
shot at giving someone the experience of going to that concert themselves"


This is The Matrix, anything written by Philip K Dick, and before that, Plato 
in his Cave metaphor.

It is essentially unprovable:


"...If physically perfected artificial three-dimensional auditory environments 
were feasible, would the artificial product be as entirely realistic to 
perception as the real thing? If not, what ingredient is missing?  If so, what 
would philosophically distinguish real and artificial? Is such a distinction 
necessary?"

"...Plato's metaphor for humans' grasp of reality as nothing more than shadows 
on a cave wall, being constrained by the limitations of what is available to 
sensation, is relevant today; especially for artificial environments. It is an 
early example of one strand of thinking about perception as mediated by 
sensation, inevitably a poor copy of reality. Whilst philosophers are entirely 
comfortable with such thought experiments, there is no obvious pragmatic way to 
investigate such speculations. By definition, if an artificial environment is 
detectable as such, then it is imperfectly executed and the hypothetical 
position has not been matched. On the other hand, if the artificial environment 
were perfectly rendered, there would be no way to prove its artificiality." [ 
my thesis, some years ago]

So, maybe the whole point of making artificial environments is not that we can 
perfect them, but that, in doing so, we come to understand more about the 
perceptually relevant constituents of real environments. So it's the journey, 
not the destination..?
Peter Lennox

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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Malham]

Just come across this, which is interesting in context

 http://www8.informatik.umu.se/~jwworth/4_01RIVA.pdf

--
 These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
/*/
/* Dave Malham   http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Malham]

As I understand itt the researchers were saying was that this was not really the case, however, as 
I'm not a psychologist, I may well be wrong. For me, the point was that nobody (except perhaps those 
with some pre-existing mental problem) would have had this problem when playing Dungeon via a 
teleprinter on a PDP-11 (second computer game I ever played, first being noughts and crosses:-)), 
but with modern systems  with near photo-realistic graphics, good sound, good physics, AI parsing 
and response engines,  inertial feedback and all the rest  it is becoming difficult to distinguish, 
especially if you are playing most of your waking life, as some are. Personally, I'd rather it was 
known as "Thirteenth Floor Syndrome" in honour of a way more sophisticated and intelligent cinematic 
exploration of the theme than those dreadful May-Tricks films, even though they did have far better 
CGI :-)


Dave

On 31/05/2012 10:38, Richard Dobson wrote:

On 31/05/2012 10:03, Dave Malham wrote:
..

Here, to any extent, I depart from Gibson. With sufficiently advanced
technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend
disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a
paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real
world" as actually being real when they come out of the games.


But surely that is more appropriately regarded as a pathological/delusional mental state (and very 
possibly a dangerous one), not a natural one representing some sort of technological nirvana. 
There is a world of difference between entertaining and even immersing in a fantasy as such (as in 
attending any Shakespeare play), and a delusion leading to possibly dysfunctional behaviour in 
"the real world". Shall we call this the "Matrix Syndrome"?


Richard Dobson

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--
 These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
/*/
/* Dave Malham   http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
/* Music Research Centre */
/* Department of Music"http://music.york.ac.uk/";   */
/* The University of York  Phone 01904 322448*/
/* Heslington  Fax   01904 322450*/
/* York YO10 5DD */
/* UK   'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'   */
/*"http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/"; */
/*/

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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Richard Dobson]

On 31/05/2012 10:03, Dave Malham wrote:
..

Here, to any extent, I depart from Gibson. With sufficiently advanced
technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend
disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a
paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real
world" as actually being real when they come out of the games.


But surely that is more appropriately regarded as a 
pathological/delusional mental state (and very possibly a dangerous 
one), not a natural one representing some sort of technological nirvana. 
There is a world of difference between entertaining and even immersing 
in a fantasy as such (as in attending any Shakespeare play), and a 
delusion leading to possibly dysfunctional behaviour in "the real 
world". Shall we call this the "Matrix Syndrome"?


Richard Dobson

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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Malham]

On 30/05/2012 21:49, Eric Carmichel wrote:

So how good is Ambisonics in reproducing the original auditory 'scene'? If the 
reconstructed wavefield is close to the original, then what happens when you 
record the Ambisonics system itself? Will the playback of this recording yield 
the same spatial information as the first recording did through an appropriate 
first- or n-order system? Or will the recording of the playback capture the 
so-called 'trickery,' thus making the recording-of-a-recording useless. Anybody 
tried this? I think I’ll give it a go using a four speaker arrangement 
(horizontal only) while playing a live recording of persons talking at eight 
equally-spaced locations around a Soundfield mic. Upon playback, I’ll place the 
Soundfield mic in the four-speaker arrangement, record this, and then listen to 
the recording of the recording. How much localization info do you believe will 
be lost? Could be fun, plus I’m a firm believer in learning by doing.


Hi Eric,
I have actually done this in the dim and distant past and I wasn't terribly happy with the 
result, iirc. Thinking about it now, I realise that the main problem was probably caused by the fact 
that it was a 'psychoacoustic compensated' decoder, with the shelf filters to move the decode from 
velocity to energy decode at a few hundred hertz, where the mkI Human Head approaches half a 
wavelength in size. It was also horizontal only.


So, the system would only reproduce correctly over two dimensions and below a few hundred hertz. 
Above that it is not reproduced with exactitude - I think it was Jerome who showed this was 
equivalent to changing the speed of sound - someone correct me if I'm wrong - which I think would 
mean the correction in the Soundfield for capsule non-coincidence would be wrong. However, if a 
simple velocity only 3-d decode is used together with a sufficient number speakers, the 
reconstruction at the exact centre should be 'correct' with reducing degree of correctness as you 
move away from the exact centre in a way that is frequency dependent. So, at the exact centre, it 
should be picked up by the Soundfield as if it was the original sound field - at least up to the 
point where the physical extent of the Soundfield mic array means the capsule sampling points are 
outside the region of good reproduction.


Dave

--
 These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
/*/
/* Dave Malham   http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
/* Music Research Centre */
/* Department of Music"http://music.york.ac.uk/";   */
/* The University of York  Phone 01904 322448*/
/* Heslington  Fax   01904 322450*/
/* York YO10 5DD */
/* UK   'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'   */
/*"http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/"; */
/*/


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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Dave Malham]

On 31/05/2012 01:27, etienne deleflie wrote:

Although I don’t ascribe to a single 'school' of psychology, I do buy into
James Gibson's idea that man (and animals) and their environments are
inseparable (this is at the heart of Ecological Psychology).


I think (or at least hope) that James Gibson's ideas are slowly making
their way into the field of audio engineering. What I like about Gibson's
ideas is that they remove the emphasis on physical modelling.
So long as they are applied carefully and taking due notice that he concentrated on the visual 
system, which is significantly different from the auditory one - to use their terminology, it exists 
within a connected but different ecology.




An other aspect of Gibson's ideas that are interesting concerns the
difference between mediated environments and non-mediated environments.
Gibson argues that it is impossible for a mediated environment to ever be
confused with a non-mediated environment... no matter how good the
technology. The reasons are environmental again. Ofcourse, that doesn't
mean that there cant be a 'suspension of disbelief' ... but some argue that
the suspension of disbelief is the domain of art, not science. It is the
expression (of the art) that fools the perception (not the stimuli).

Here, to any extent,  I depart from Gibson.  With sufficiently advanced technology there comes a 
point at which the effort required to suspend disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was 
reading a report on a paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were 
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real world" as actually being 
real when they come out of the games. This suggests that even with the relatively poor systems we 
have at present (compared with what we know will be possible in future since it only needs 
evolution, not revolution, in the technology), the barrier to suspension has already become low. Now 
I am not suggesting that we would be able to recreate exactly a particular person's experience of 
going to a particular concert - at least, without Total Recall type technology (and, despite the 
advances with fMRI technology we are a lng way off that) - but I do think we will be able to 
have a pretty good shot at giving someone the experience of going to that concert themselves



. Personally, I am starting to
question that the centrality of 'direction', not just evident in audio
synthesis interfaces but also evident in the underlying theory of
ambisonics (and in Gerzon's ideas), is not actually just a direct result of
the limitations of a laboratory based scientific understanding of sound
perception. I wonder if perhaps direction is *not* that important to
spatial audio. Ofcourse, it is a part, but is it central? This view leads
to the questioning of the value of higher order ambisonics.


But if you get the position of all the sound sources right, everything else falls into place - note 
I said position, note just direction, though that is necessarily essential.



Dave

--
 These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
/*/
/* Dave Malham   http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
/* Music Research Centre */
/* Department of Music"http://music.york.ac.uk/";   */
/* The University of York  Phone 01904 322448*/
/* Heslington  Fax   01904 322450*/
/* York YO10 5DD */
/* UK   'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'   */
/*"http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/"; */
/*/

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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Richard Dobson]

On 31/05/2012 01:27, etienne deleflie wrote:
..

perception. I wonder if perhaps direction is *not* that important to
spatial audio. Ofcourse, it is a part, but is it central? This view leads
to the questioning of the value of higher order ambisonics.




I don't think people are actually allowed to do that on this list - you 
are definitely living dangerously! I sense the wagons circling already.



Richard Dbson
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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Bo-Erik Sandholm]

 
If lacking a anechoic chamber, substitute it with:

1 - A large field covered with about half a meter of newfallen snow.
2 - On the top ridge of a gabled barn standing in a field.
3 - In the top of a large free standing tree.

Some effort and dedication is needed to replace the cash expenditure to build a 
anechoic room :-)

- Bo-Erik

-Original Message-
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu] On 
Behalf Of etienne deleflie
Sent: den 31 maj 2012 02:28
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

-- Removed text
Very similar concept to Alvin Lucier's composition "I am sitting in a room"
... except Lucier is amplifying the effect of the room .. and it is 
significant... and this suggests that the experiment should be done in an 
anechoic chamber ... because you will be capturing not just the effect of the 
microphone, and the limitations in the decoding, as well as the character of 
the speakers, but also the character of the room.

Etienne


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Re: [Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[etienne deleflie]

>
> Although I don’t ascribe to a single 'school' of psychology, I do buy into
> James Gibson's idea that man (and animals) and their environments are
> inseparable (this is at the heart of Ecological Psychology).


I think (or at least hope) that James Gibson's ideas are slowly making
their way into the field of audio engineering. What I like about Gibson's
ideas is that they remove the emphasis on physical modelling.

For example, the perception of how far away a fly is significantly
determined by what _other_ sounds exist at the same time. For example, a
fly always has low loudness. If one can hear a fly very clearly and the
environmental sound levels are high ... then something rings wrong. But it
is not just the relative loudness ... it is also the entire acoustic
ecology ... ecological consistency etc.

An other aspect of Gibson's ideas that are interesting concerns the
difference between mediated environments and non-mediated environments.
Gibson argues that it is impossible for a mediated environment to ever be
confused with a non-mediated environment... no matter how good the
technology. The reasons are environmental again. Ofcourse, that doesn't
mean that there cant be a 'suspension of disbelief' ... but some argue that
the suspension of disbelief is the domain of art, not science. It is the
expression (of the art) that fools the perception (not the stimuli).


> Here is where I find 'fault' or room for improvement with a lot of
> controlled laboratory experiments:


this has been argued by a few researchers. Personally, I am starting to
question that the centrality of 'direction', not just evident in audio
synthesis interfaces but also evident in the underlying theory of
ambisonics (and in Gerzon's ideas), is not actually just a direct result of
the limitations of a laboratory based scientific understanding of sound
perception. I wonder if perhaps direction is *not* that important to
spatial audio. Ofcourse, it is a part, but is it central? This view leads
to the questioning of the value of higher order ambisonics.


> Anybody tried this? I think I’ll give it a go using a four speaker
> arrangement (horizontal only) while playing a live recording of persons
> talking at eight equally-spaced locations around a Soundfield mic. Upon
> playback, I’ll place the Soundfield mic in the four-speaker arrangement,
> record this, and then listen to the recording of the recording. How much
> localization info do you believe will be lost? Could be fun, plus I’m a
> firm believer in learning by doing.
>

would be interesting to do it over and over again .. effectively doing
calculus on the effect (or bias) of the microphone.

Very similar concept to Alvin Lucier's composition "I am sitting in a room"
... except Lucier is amplifying the effect of the room .. and it is
significant... and this suggests that the experiment should be done in an
anechoic chamber ... because you will be capturing not just the effect of
the microphone, and the limitations in the decoding, as well as the
character of the speakers, but also the character of the room.

Etienne



> Thanks for reading,
> Eric
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[Sursound] Catching the same fly twice (and a curious question)

[Eric Carmichel]

Greetings All,
I was intrigued by the post titled 'catching flies' because distance-to 
information is an area of interest to me. As a few folks out there know, my 
interest in Ambisonics (aside from music) is its application to hearing 
research. It is important for safety reasons that a hearing aid (HA) or 
cochlear implant (CI) user be able to a determine source's distance.

Side note: It's interesting that a mic would be compared to the ear. No one 
should expect a microphone alone to do what the ear or auditory system does. A 
quality mic can accurately convert pressure variations to analogous voltage or 
current variations. That's about it. A laboratory grade mic and audio-analysis 
hardware or software can readily measure changes in relative phase, intensity, 
and frequency, and do this over a very wide dynamic range. But converting 
pressure variations (or particle velocity) to voltages is just the beginning of 
a chain of events that ultimately results in a listener’s perception of pitch, 
location, loudness, etc. If the goal is to reproduce a real-world sound field 
around the listener's head, then we need to add the following to the chain: 
Loudspeakers, signal processors, room acoustics, etc. Of course the mic is 
hugely important, and is at the heart of Ambisonics.

Now back to distance approximation:
I’m not sure how many readers are familiar with the book Ecological 
Psychoacoustics (edited by John Neuhoff). For those of you who are interested 
in loudness constancy, loudness of dynamically changing sounds, etc. this book 
addresses aspects of psychoacoustics that aren’t found in the best books on 
psychoacoustics (e.g. An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing by Brian C. 
J. Moore). One of my mentors and an all-around great guy, William (Bill) Yost, 
wrote, 'The chapters in Ecological Psychoacoustics suggest many reasons why 
combining the rigor of psychoacoustics with the relevance of ecological 
perception could improve significantly the understanding of auditory perception 
in the world of real sound sources. Ecological Psychoacoustics provides many 
examples of how understanding and using information about the constraints of 
real-world sound sources may aid in discovering how the nervous system parses 
an auditory scene.'

Although I don’t ascribe to a single 'school' of psychology, I do buy into 
James Gibson's idea that man (and animals) and their environments are 
inseparable (this is at the heart of Ecological Psychology). Here is where I 
find 'fault' or room for improvement with a lot of controlled laboratory 
experiments: The person (subject) is isolated from his/her environment, thus 
limiting the external validity of many experiments. As an example, there are 
ways of judging a sound source's distance that could be difficult to replicate 
using convention playback systems in the laboratory. It has been hypothesized 
that we are sensitive to the curvature (or flatness) of a wavefront, and that 
this shape provides cues as to distance. But when performing controlled tests 
of this hypothesis, free-field (anechoic) environments are limited in physical 
dimensions, so near-field / curved-wavefront conditions are difficult to avoid. 
Outside of the laboratory, reflections from
 surfaces are probable cues to distance. In a cafeteria (for example), the 
signal-to-reverb ratio grows as a talker approaches us, thus giving a viable 
cue as to the talker's distance. Naturally, intensity increases as well, but 
intensity alone isn't a great cue without a reference. A distant noise source 
could be equally loud but at the same time reverberant, thus compelling the 
listener to believe the noise source is at a distance. How well HA and CI 
recipients judge distance (and therefore safely avoiding disaster) is one of 
many questions I'm interested in. Again, I'm building a playback system 
designed to answer some of these questions. But if Ambisonics involves too much 
psychoacoustic 'trickery' (as some on the sursound list like to say), then it 
would not be the best recording/playback method for performing the 
aforementioned experiments. But to date, re-creating the sound field as it 
originally existed at the listener' s head via Ambisonics
 (while letting the ear and brain do the rest) seems to be one of the best 
research tools at my disposal. (Note: HRTF via headphones isn't a solution 
because headphones physically interfere with behind-the-ear HAs and CIs).

So how good is Ambisonics in reproducing the original auditory 'scene'? If the 
reconstructed wavefield is close to the original, then what happens when you 
record the Ambisonics system itself? Will the playback of this recording yield 
the same spatial information as the first recording did through an appropriate 
first- or n-order system? Or will the recording of the playback capture the 
so-called 'trickery,' thus making the recording-of-a-recording useless. Anybody 
tried this? I think I’ll give it a go using a four spea