adamdea
You are not a sound quality evaluation device
Joe
I don't want to bang on tiresomely, and I freely acknowledge no expertise, but I've scratched my head about this and I still can't really quite see the problem.I hope this is not too arsey, as I really would like to understand if there is some point I'm missing.
Apart from the links above- this study (and the summary in it) seems pertinent
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-019-01597-7?shared-article-renderer
"Our results replicated the finding that visual recognition memory performance is better than auditory recognition memory performance (e.g., Bigelow & Poremba, 2014; Cohen, Horowitz, & Wolfe, 2009) and that the differences in auditory and visual memory become less apparent over time (Gloede, Paulauskas, & Gregg, 2017). More critically, however, the present study demonstrates why the difference between auditory and visual memory is apparent at a same-day memory test but not at a delay: the fidelity of visual memory is better than the fidelity of auditory memory. Auditory memory representations are more coarse and gist-based, rather than richly detailed representations of an event."
On the audio memory: no one is saying that one has audio amnesia, only that one does not tend to retain a detailed facsimile of the sound in memory from which subtle comparisons can be made. The ability to consult one's mental notes, as it were, is different from consulting an accurate mental "image" from which subtle comparisons can be made accurately. So thinking (even correctly) that you have noticed something you have not noticed before does not contradict the hypothesis that sound quality comparisons of relatively subtle differences cannot reliably be made from memory.
The examples you give don't seem to me to take matters further than the undoubted fact that people can remember tunes, in some cases lots and lots of them; and some people can identify lots of different types of bird song. And no doubt sound can have Proustian effect. But none of this touches on the real issue for present purposes which is whether people could reliably remember and compare from memory not a type of bird song, or a tune, or even a tune on a particular piano, but a particular recording of a tune on a particular piano played back by two different amplifiers/dacs/whatever.
I don't want to bang on tiresomely, and I freely acknowledge no expertise, but I've scratched my head about this and I still can't really quite see the problem.I hope this is not too arsey, as I really would like to understand if there is some point I'm missing.
We are agreed on that. The more useful formulation is I think something along the lines of- sound quality comparisons of relatively subtle differences cannot reliably be made from memory after a few seconds. And it seems that this does indeed have some evidential foundation in the links I have shown, alhtough the propostion seems to go back much further. That said, it seems that although auditory memory degrades rapidly, it then remains contant, whereas visual memory starts out great and then seems to degrade after a few days. So in that sense audio memory it isn't short. It seems that what is short, really short, is precise detailed facsimile-of-the-original audio memory.
Apart from the links above- this study (and the summary in it) seems pertinent
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-019-01597-7?shared-article-renderer
"Our results replicated the finding that visual recognition memory performance is better than auditory recognition memory performance (e.g., Bigelow & Poremba, 2014; Cohen, Horowitz, & Wolfe, 2009) and that the differences in auditory and visual memory become less apparent over time (Gloede, Paulauskas, & Gregg, 2017). More critically, however, the present study demonstrates why the difference between auditory and visual memory is apparent at a same-day memory test but not at a delay: the fidelity of visual memory is better than the fidelity of auditory memory. Auditory memory representations are more coarse and gist-based, rather than richly detailed representations of an event."
As I said, I don't think that you are mistaken in thinking that you have noticed something you did not notice before. But is this as a result of a comparison of the present and remembered sounds themselves? There are many reasons why one might notice new details in familiar tracks; reasons not necessarily lying in in the sound waves themselves. This one has been done to death, and is a separate point from the audio memory question.
On the audio memory: no one is saying that one has audio amnesia, only that one does not tend to retain a detailed facsimile of the sound in memory from which subtle comparisons can be made. The ability to consult one's mental notes, as it were, is different from consulting an accurate mental "image" from which subtle comparisons can be made accurately. So thinking (even correctly) that you have noticed something you have not noticed before does not contradict the hypothesis that sound quality comparisons of relatively subtle differences cannot reliably be made from memory.
The examples you give don't seem to me to take matters further than the undoubted fact that people can remember tunes, in some cases lots and lots of them; and some people can identify lots of different types of bird song. And no doubt sound can have Proustian effect. But none of this touches on the real issue for present purposes which is whether people could reliably remember and compare from memory not a type of bird song, or a tune, or even a tune on a particular piano, but a particular recording of a tune on a particular piano played back by two different amplifiers/dacs/whatever.
