Hello to all
First off, a note to Carl and Rich... If this belongs on the Audio Syndrome NY board, please move it and chalk it up to a Newbie mistake!
In the immortal words of John Lennon, "... we're playin' those Mind games, together..."This will be more relevant to those who attended the most recent Syndrome meeting at Charles Rollo's house last week, but I thought it would be worthwhile to share it with everyone on AN. The original copy below (keep scrolling) was from one of those "if you can blah, blah, blah - forward this to this many people" e-mails; which is kind of dumb and a waste of time (and yes I know I'm very guilty of forwarding more than my fair share of those stupid e-mails) but... it made me think of something else.
Our club Pres. Paul had an audio engineer friend attend the meeting at Charles' house. (My apologies; especially to the gentleman being discussed, but his name escapes me right now... maybe it was John?) Anyway, we had a discussion about hearing changes in a system (speaker cables were being swapped in/out that night for those who weren't there) and the engineer brought up what are real vs. perceived changes etc... Charles had a Crosby, Stills & Nash album on and everyone was commenting on how compressed the LP recording was and how crummy it sounded as we continued to listen. (I assure you that Charles' system wasn't the problem because we listened to a lot of other LP's that were just fine.) By the time we were up to song 4 or 5 on that side of the LP, the "engineer dude" asked whether we all thought the album still sounded as bad now on cut#5 vs. the first cut. Most said they thought the further "in" we were into the record, the better it sounded. How could that be? Some reasoned that the quality/accuracy of the mastering was always better on the songs closer towards the center spindal, who said tracking issues could be a contributing factor, others said "hogwash" to all of it and the rest said "who knows?"
At that point, the engineer said that the reason why the LP sounded better as we continued to listen was because our brains were compensating for the crappy recording! (Our brains being the world's greatest computers.) He claimed that the more we listened, the more our brain "re-mixed" the sound into something more pleasant sounding.
Hmmmnnn... I wasn't 100% convinced, but thought that maybe (?) there was some validity there. Now I see this silly "Can you read this" e-mail and it makes me realize just how powerful that "computer in our skulls" can really be.
Are the changes we make to our systems a direct result of the change itself or is it our brain shifting into Audio Nervosa "overdrive" and transforming what we hear towards what we WANT to hear?!?Comments?
Bill (StereoNut)
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Can you read the copy below?
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fi
yuo can
raed tihs, yuo hvae a
twisetd mnid too
Can yuo
raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe
out
of 100 can.
i cuold not
blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatrnd
waht
I was rdanieg.
The
phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to
rscheearch
at Cmabrigde
Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr waht oerdr the
ltteres in a wrod
are, the
olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat
ltteer be in the rghit
pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed
it whotuit a pboerlm.
Tihs is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by
istlef, but the
wrod as a
wlohe.
Azanmig huh?
Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot
slpeling was ipmorantt!