Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews

@markwd  “Well, fair enough, but you have not demonstrated that human hearing exceeds those measurements for music listening purposes!”

• I’ve not needed to demonstrate anything, markwd, it was already demonstrated in the test I’ve been trying to bring your attention to the past three days ; )

@markwd “If we had just one great ABX test that showed me wrong, I would be thrilled because that would pave the way to something new.”

• do have another read of it -https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html - and I’d say you either haven’t read the article or are being hypocritical about your claim of being thrilled, because it would clearly puts all audio measurements into rightful context.

@markwd “All those dynamics would dance again and the mad scientists who brought the systems to life would be celebrated for rightly finding a path towards a new audio Xanadu”

• those ‘mad’ scientists have been doing it for years already; giving us such an amazing variety of analogue and digital playback equipment, the mind boggles. We do already have an audio Xanadu! If only you’d set your rational side of measurement and signal fidelity aside for a moment to take all the wonders of high fidelity into your amazing empirical and non-linear ears!

@markwd  “I'm certainly indoctrinated in the epistemic humility to be as careful as possible in assessing ideas, my own and those of others who hope but have not fully honed those hopes with the calm clarity of rationality.”

• oh, that’s more than clear to me and everyone else here; and I’m glad you referred to it as epistemic, and not scientific, humility.  Perhaps you could extend that humility to the other half of science you’ve so neglected - empirical humility is just as, if not more important than epistemic, or rational humility.

@markwd  “I’ll note also that I think you may be misinterpreting the Fourier uncertainty principle in this particular context as I and Amir have mentioned to @mahgisterin several contexts. The authors are showing that if you used Fourier analysis as a model for human hearing there are limits to its applicability because there is likely nonlinear bucketing that allows for discrimination of time/frequency in excess of what a linear system is capable of.”

• in fact, markwd, i would wager you have not understood the Fourier uncertainty principle in totality. The Fourier uncertainty principle cannotapply as a model for human hearing for the simple reason it is merely there to explain the limitation of signal measurements, not the limitations of human hearing - ie - measuring equipment, being linear, cannot exceed the limits of the uncertainty principle; human hearing, being non-linear, constantly does.

@markwd  “The speculation is that the fine acuity is derived from evolutionary pressures and the mechanics of it are due to the shape of the cochlea”

• yes, the very shape which is believed to be the reason why human hearing surpasses the Fourier uncertainty principle; you’re preaching to the choir but to promote falsehood, not the truth - that is, measurements cannot match the human ability to hear the nuance of both frequency and timing simultaneously, at the levels of resolution music is about.

@markwd  “…but I can change "edge" to "newly found" to remove any stigma the term invokes!”

• while you’re at it, you will want to remove the ‘little’ as well, there is nothing little about something that puts the measurement vs hearing issue to rest than this. Markwd, clarity of communication is everything 😔

Markwd, for more, please refer to my coming reply to amir’s question to me. 

In friendship - kevin

@nonoise - thanks for that : ) - clean up hasn’t ended just yet.

@kevn

Weird misunderstanding going deep!

(1) There is no ABX test that shows that a measurably transparent audio system is distinguishable from another based on additional properties related to nonlinear perception capabilities.

(2) I still think you are misunderstanding the thrust of the paper: they are arguing that a way of modeling human hearing in the past has been to isomorphically map it to a linear frequency breakdown of the signal that is spatially spread within the cochlea (see Kunchur, etc. for additional details). The difficulties of this are that tapering of the cochlea (at least) leads to nonlinear phenomena. The FUP is a mathematical idealization that limits the simultaneous resolution of time and frequency for a linear system and they use it to explain how nonlinear systems can overcome this resolution in this case.

(3) Per my previous points about simulation as the gold standard, here’s the skeleton of your argument:

(a) Human hearing surpasses the ability of linear Fourier systems to resolve micro-phenonema in timing/frequency.

(b) Since FFT measurements use linear Fourier systems they may present measurements of audio systems that do not include this micro-phenomena.

(c) Therefore, using human hearing to design audio systems may achieve improved results over the FFT results shown by measurements.

(d) And, in conclusion, show me any such realizations via ABX tests that demonstrate that a designer was successfully able to tune a system to, in fact, achieve (c).

(e) But, per my previous posts, there is the opportunity to also improve the measurement apparatus to account for the discrepancy or to develop an impactful theory about how nonlinear cochlear phenomena might add to the music listening experience. These do not exist and therefore there is no path yet.

Well, I think I’ve repeated myself 3-4 times!

@amir_asr “Please point out in the link where it says audio measurements are not able to keep up with the human ear:”

• nice to hear from you once again, amir. Here we go, highlighted in bold below -

“For the first time, physicists have found that humans can discriminate a sound’s frequency (related to a note’s pitch) and timing (whether a note comes before or after another note) more than 10 times better than the limit imposed by the Fourier uncertainty principle. Not surprisingly, some of the subjects with the best listening precision were musicians, but even non-musicians could exceed the uncertainty limit. The results rule out the majority of auditory processing brain algorithms that have been proposed, since only a few models can match this impressive human performance.

The researchers, Jacob Oppenheim and Marcelo Magnasco at Rockefeller University in New York, have published their study on the first direct test of the Fourier uncertainty principle in human hearing in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

The Fourier uncertainty principle states that a time-frequency tradeoff exists for sound signals, so that the shorter the duration of a sound, the larger the spread of different types of frequencies is required to represent the sound. Conversely, sounds with tight clusters of frequencies must have longer durations. The uncertainty principle limits the precision of the simultaneous measurement of the duration and frequency of a sound.”

• ive put as much of it into context as possible. The first highlight determines that human hearing can outperform up to ten times, the limit set by the uncertainty principle. The second highlight in bold simply describes that the accuracy of simultaneous measurement of both frequency and timing is limited by the Fourier uncertainty principle. If you study the context of the first statement in relation to the second, it is clear that measurements currently cannot explain what is heard by the human ear. As with the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty at the subatomic scale, the smaller, or more nuanced particles or sound information gets, there is a limit to what we can currently measure, because all our current measuring instruments are linear, meaning they operate sequentially, or in discrete packets.
• At the subatomic scale, and its equivalent in relation to music in its every nuance, it’s impossible to tie down the location of any particle (or specific frequency) in relation to its speed (or timing) because of the absolutely continuous nature of movement. We can do so in relation to a car, or even a golf ball, because there are so many points in the huge space of a car or that golfball to tie a location to at any one moment in time. But, the moment we get into scales of that single unrelenting point, there is no possible way to rationally address its location with its movement, because even before the instant of the instant we have identified its location, it will have moved. There would be range of points, a range of uncertainty, as to where that point could be, hence the limit. It is only when we get to broader strokes, bigger items, grander scales, that the limit doesn’t apply, obviously, since the measurement of precise location can be sloppy, it will still be somewhere in the space of the object. Now, it could be said that Fourier uncovered the principle of uncertainty before Heisenberg, who then formulated it in relation to quantum mechanics and popularised it. But the vital matter is that any kind of measurement currently known to us is still limited by the uncertainty principle.
• The uncertainty principle applies in acoustics and music, and not merely audio signals, in the deepest complexity and greatest nuance that music is. As such, when someone says they hear something that measurements do not indicate, they may not be blindly led by confirmation bias - because human hearing is non-linear, meaning we hear in continuum and not by way of sequential little jumps, we are able to detect nuance that no instrument can, being limited by linearity. At the scales of what we are discussing, of the tiniest moments of transition in relation to singular frequencies, the human ear still understands frequency simultaneously with timing in ways no instrument can measure or record.

In friendship - kevin.

@amir_asr 

Now amir, I trust there still is enough of the rationalist in you to back down in the face of a freshly discovered truth. From previous exchanges, I know well how cleverly you hunker down to prevaricate, conflate and, as nonoise puts it so well, use sophistry of language, graphs, readings, and…well, measurements, to deflect, twist and palter your way out of critical discourse, so I now put it to you plainly: belief forms such a vital part of our inner system of existence, its collapse can sometimes create such drastic change which a mind may not be able to accept. In the face of an unacceptable new truth, one of three things can happen - the first results in such a blow to the original belief, the individual in question in unable to reconcile the fresh truth with a way forward, and decides to end it all in suicide. In the second outcome, the individual succumbs to denial, hunkers down in aggressive statement after restatement of his/her belief and the false processes that validate that belief. But there is a third.

Now, it is beyond argument that linear testing equipment cannot accurately measure frequency simultaneously with time past a certain limit. 

It is also beyond argument that human hearing can exceed the Fourier limit of uncertainty, at times by a factor of ten.

This puts everything you have arrogantly stood for since you started asr into the bin of falsehood. 

Your measurements will always have their place, to inform and educate, but every imperious and contemptuous statement you ever made of those who have depended on their basic hearing, never mind developed listening skills; everything you did with your measurements to support your beliefs; every single listening test you have ever done; everything statement you ever made in conclusion of your tests; everything….has been false.

I hope I know you well enough that you will not succumb to the first outcome of collapsed belief, given the immensity of this new truth. 

And you may well, all history considered, hunker down and irrelevantly once again refer to linear measurements to argue against logical concepts of uncertainty that involve non linearity. 

Or you could chose the third outcome, which is one of acceptance - to graciously admit there are some things you may not have considered, in your religious fervour to be always proven right; that you are human, just like the rest of us, and might have made a rare but egregious mistake; and that you ask to take some time out to consider the weight of true science and the logic you are fighting against. This third outcome will be welcomed, even if there will be many aggrieved audiophiles who bore the weight of your contempt or indoctrination all these years. The third outcome will be welcomed for the simple fact you are intelligent, and you do fight for your beliefs (even if too arrogantly), but mostly for the fact that you do make good contribution to all audiophiles with your measurements as a good, if not brilliant technician. And my deeper hope is that you could actually grow to serve science, in all its amazing duality of rationalism and empiricism. 

I, for one, would love to read one day about your having invented a measuring machine that exceeds the Fourier uncertainty principle.

In friendship - kevin