How Science Got Sound Wrong

I proved the article wrong in my first few posts. The article is based on a gross technical inaccuracy.

It’s not the CD, it’s the CD player. The CD data is fantastic by and large. The problems are all in the CD player. Even “digitally remastered” cassettes are more “musical” than CDs, generally speaking. It’s not really an industry problem, though, it’s more like a CD player design problem. At the same time the digital vs analog debate suffers the problem of too many variables. Final answer.

One thing you can’t hide is when you’re broken inside. 🎶

If you could hear what I’ve heard with my ears.

My point is precisely that this main technical inaccuracy dont kill the main thesis of the author...The main thesis is that a lived brain-body event is not reducible to actual reconstruction of the sound because we lived the experience not only with ears detached from the body but with all the body-brain immersed in the lived events...But the author does not repell the possibility of future better reconstruction,that is explained at the end of his article...


If you reduce this main thesis to a superficial analog/ digital controversy you lost the point...Even if your technical inaccuracy is right, and you seems to me technically competent( I cannot judge it is my impression) and I think that there is a strong possibility that you are right, this is beside the main thesis of the author that cannot be a universal genius and knowing it all...But his main thesis is an open thinking problem about how we process the sound in a "lived" experience versus a reconstruction that is truncated reality at best...

I apologize for insisting about what I understand of this article, for the technical aspects I am mid-point in history between Australopithecus and Shannon...Perhaps nearer Shannon tough... :)

In one word you proved perhaps, probably a technical inaccuracy, but that does not invalidate the general thesis of this writer... The water is dirty, if you are right, and you probably are, but beware to care for the baby please....

Perhaps you will understand with a drawing...

The main thesis implicate that the reconstruction of sound experience is possible if you implicate the body not only the ears, and not only mathematical simulation of sound out of his acoustical ecosystem but the gesture of the body in the acoustical sphere of the ecosystem with his acoustical response... I forget how to draw here...:)


Here some important extract of this article for you to read and for understanding his main thesis ( beside the alleged fact of his incompetence in digital engineering or not):

« A more brain-centered, human-centered approach to sound recognizes that the main task of a brain is to manage the vibrations of a physical, three-dimensional body. Part of that task involves making sense of vibrations outside the body, both in recognizing what thing made a sound and, more especially, inferring where the sound came from.

Here’s why: Imagine you’re alone and frightened in the woods, in the dark, with threats nearby. Suddenly, crack! A twig snaps close by. At that moment, which would matter more to you: where the sound came from or what type of wood the twig was made of?

The best way to locate sounds is to use the whole body — ears, skull, skin, even guts — since the entire body contains vibration sensors. The brain’s main job is making sense of vibrations throughout the body, eyeballs to toes to eardrums, all consistent, all at once. One single vibratory image unified from skin and ears.

Headphones and earbuds fracture that unified sensory experience. Normally, your skin still absorbs vibrations from the outside, consistent with what you see. But with headphones covering them, your ears process entirely different signals injected directly into the perceptual space inside the head. That new sound image bypasses skin and eyes, while still being superimposed in front of you in space, on top of real sound sources. That physical impossibility sounds interesting, but it is the deepest kind of hack a brain can suffer, short of drugs. Consuming separate, inconsistent sensory streams that create competing maps of space violates a brain’s design.»

I repeat that one alleged or real inaccuracy does not annihilate this whole thesis because the reconstruction of the sound experience is not only a "timing" mathematical problem concerning the ears- brain system, it is a more complex problem implicating the body sensors in an environment that is active and absolutely never passive for the gesturing- hearing- sensing- body and this is the thesis of this interesting writer. And by the way this is not reducible to "Head Related Transfer Functions." necessary for constructing math simulation of some aspect of the hearing experience, because simply put in words for example, a balancing sensing body in an environment or a walking sensing body implicate the head but is not reducible to the head movement...

The analog/digital technical problem is only an aspect of this problem and thesis and a technical error does not invalidate the main point...This writer merit more than bashing argument around " a technical error"...

Ok now I am done and retreat in my abyss... I apologize for my rant but my excuse is i dont like injustice and I learn to read and this is one of my few skills... My best to you and to all...

Our eyes can see to 324 megapixels. The best digital photography can have 20 megapixel resolution. It wouldn't be a far guess that we not only hear with our ears but with our brains and bodies as well. Just because someone can't hear it doesn't mean the other person can't. The human hearing system may be more sensitive that science can measure