advertisement


Never say never....a $10,000/1 meter power cable?!*

Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Well, its simply a defence of my post. I'm not claiming short term audio memory, I'm relying on your side's claims for that. You seem determined to use it against me. So is it one of those things that's true, so long as it suits your argument, or what? Crack on, but don't expect me to co-operate if all you're trying to do is get me to dig a hole for myself. That's not why I'm here.
Click to expand...

You're here to troll then? I'll guess you haven't read up on how power supplies work in order to understand the folly in believing a mains cable could make a difference, as I suggested.
 
Joe P said:
On audio forums I’ve often read that audio memory is notoriously short lived, but I’ve never seen any evidence that shows this to be an unassailable truth or a conclusion backed by reams of evidence. For all I know it could be an urban legend like the one that claims we use only 10% of our brains. (Really? As a student of evolutionary biology it’s hard to believe natural selection would be so wasteful and sloppy to evolve a structure that large and energy hungry when a smaller one better constructed would do the same job.)

I had a call from a friend I hadn’t talked to in ages and yet over the low-fi phone I immediately knew it was him. The sound of his voice was unmistakable.

Or try this: Play a record you loved as a teenager but haven’t listened to in decades. Is it as new or a familiar piece? If you’re like me it all comes back and you know just when a particular part of the song is about to happen before it happens. I can clearly remember musical passages decades after I’ve heard them as I suspect most can.

Some aspects of audio memory clearly are not short lived.

What exactly is so shitty about audio memory?

Joe
Click to expand...

There are different types of audio memory I guess. I can listen to a record I was once very familiar with for the first time in 40 years and know precisely on which word it jumps where that scratch is! Remembering the exact tonality of a speaker is I think rather different.
 
Jez,

Arkless Electronics said:
There are different types of audio memory I guess. I can listen to a record I was once very familiar with for the first time in 40 years and know precisely on which word it jumps where that scratch is! Remembering the exact tonality of a speaker is I think rather different.
Click to expand...

That's what I was getting at. When someone says audio memory is notoriously short, poor or inaccurate, what aspect of audio memory is so shitty and what's the evidence that it is? I've also experienced what you've described — knowing exactly where in a song a tick or a pop is about to happen — so that aspect of audio memory appears to be rather reliable.

Joe
 
Arkless Electronics said:
You're here to troll then? I'll guess you haven't read up on how power supplies work in order to understand the folly in believing a mains cable could make a difference, as I suggested.
Click to expand...
Jez, behave! I'm on record as saying I don't have the technical knowledge. I've tried; read a bit about power supplies, but it's always written for people with relevant technical education (look at John Curl's stuff, as a good example), so while I get the gist, I don't necessarily have a good grip on the detail. So no, I've tried to educate myself on how power supplies work, and I've asked questions (including on this thread) and, frankly, I'm barely any the wiser.

So no, I'm not a troll, but neither am I inclined to allow people to lead me on, just so they can parade their superior knowledge and give me a bit of a poke in the eye for shits and giggles.
 
Gross changes are easy to hear, and easy to remember, a tick or pop on a record, a trumpet mute that now sounds like a kazoo, thats the gross stuff that you can easily file away in your bonce.

But the smaller stuff, is much harder to process and harder to store away, and thus harder to recall.

Its like remembering an exact shade of a colour. We all know what blue, looks like vs red, but can you remember the exact shade of something you saw only fleetingly, many moons ago. Its not that these are hard to remember, its hard to be precise.
 
sq225917 said:
Gross changes are easy to hear, and easy to remember, a tick or pop on a record, a trumpet mute that now sounds like a kazoo, thats the gross stuff that you can easily file away in your bonce.

But the smaller stuff, is much harder to process and harder to store away, and thus harder to recall.

Its like remembering an exact shade of a colour. We all know what blue, looks like vs red, but can you remember the exact shade of something you saw only fleetingly, many moons ago. Its not that these are hard to remember, its hard to be precise.
Click to expand...
Yes, and this is my understanding of what is meant by short-term audio memory. Hell, it's why some people advocate switched real-time A/B comparisons, so you more easily hear a discontinuity at the switchover. (I think that technique tends to miss the point, because it only highlights tonal or pitch changes, not that great for timing or dynamics, but that's another story).

It's also the sort of stuff that is harder to quantify, but equally, the sort of stuff that so often matters to long-term musical satisfaction.
 
The visual cortex and auditory cortex are entirely different parts of the brain and they have evolved under different selective pressure regimes. There's no a priori reason to believe that they process and recall sensory stimuli the same way.

If you want a vivid example of this, spend some time with a person who has Alzheimer's. At an advanced stage, a person with Alzheimer's may not even recognize family members known for decades, yet they can recognize and be moved by music they heard from their childhood.


Jump to ~2:00

Also see https://musicandmemory.org

Obviously, this is quite far removed from discussion about expensive wire, but if we're making claims about how the brain processes and recalls sensory stimuli — particularly that audio memory is unreliable and short — I'd like to see the evidence. If anything, the example in the video suggests that audio memory is surprisingly robust and still functions in people at an advanced stage of a neurodegenerative disease.

Joe
 
Jez,

The preferred way is to tell him his mother was a small, crepuscular rodent that primarily eats seeds, fruits and plants, and that his father just reeks of a particular genus of flowering plants in the family Adoxaceae.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Jez,

The preferred way is to tell him his mother was a small, crepuscular rodent that primarily eats seeds, fruits and plants, and that his father just reeks of a particular genus of flowering plants in the family Adoxaceae.

Joe
Click to expand...
You utter, utter ****ard, how very dare you! (And how did you know?)
 
Joe P said:
Jez,

The preferred way is to tell him his mother was a small, crepuscular rodent that primarily eats seeds, fruits and plants, and that his father just reeks of a particular genus of flowering plants in the family Adoxaceae.

Joe
Click to expand...

I'm not French though:D
 
Jez,

Well, if you ever move to France your business could be renamed Harkless Helectronique.

Zee H is silent so it vould be pronounced much zee same — 'arkless 'electronique.

Joe
 
A fishie who happened to be hiking in a Canadian forest was surprised, to say the least, by our Joe just this morning and luckily caught it on film.... Some sort of Star Trek based frippery? Oh no... much more disturbing than that.....










 
Joe P said:
On audio forums I’ve often read that audio memory is notoriously short lived, but I’ve never seen any evidence that shows this to be an unassailable truth or a conclusion backed by reams of evidence. For all I know it could be an urban legend like the one that claims we use only 10% of our brains. (Really? As a student of evolutionary biology it’s hard to believe natural selection would be so wasteful and sloppy to evolve a structure that large and energy hungry when a smaller one better constructed would do the same job.)

Joe
Click to expand...
Oh really? With regard to sloppy evolution, I give you human teeth. 2 observations: if natural selection is any use at all then the frankly crap design of human teeth is a failure. Secondly, if there was a divine creator then when he drew up hu man teeth he was either having an off day or he's really, really stupid.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top