Jud

Beyond the bone conduction information you cited with regard to frequency, there is also the matter of perception of timing. The majority of experiments find we can perceive timing differences as brief as 10 microseconds, which would correspond to a frequency of 100kHz. (Kunchur’s paper gave a result of 4 microseconds, but since this is controversial with many people, let’s stay with the majority.)

Yes, I like it because it’s not only by one of the foremost scientists doing recent work in this field, it’s entertaining and readable as well.

Rather than going back and forth here, it would be better if you read the book I recommended and developed your own understanding. As I said before in the thread, it’s a complex and nuanced subject, and you’re asking generalized questions. I’ve read literally dozens of peer reviewed scientific journal papers on this and related subjects. (Of course that doesn’t make me anything like an expert.) That was a while ago. But if after reading the book you’d like to go further, I can see whether I can dig up links, and whether those links are still good.

Please do pay attention to the science. ”Most people find the pitch memory judgment much easier when spoken numbers rather than tones are played during the interval between the test tones.” https://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pages.php?i=209

You keep saying this, yet when you’re told what audio scientists have said about it you say you claim what experiments have shown to be incorrect. I’ve already recommended an entire book by one of the leading scientists in this area. If you want to know more, read it. I’ve done about all I can do here, so be well.

It’s odd then that documentaries of major orchestra conductors show them frequently asking the orchestra members to play certain passages in a particular fashion. I’m not sure how it would work if the individual orchestra members and, for example, a featured soloist like Yo-Yo Ma (since you used him as an example) were to play a piece completely differently and unexpectedly at each rehearsal and then at the performance.

Let’s say this is beyond the elementary stage of getting notes wrong and we’re talking about subtleties of intonation, dynamics, or tempo. What is “correct” in the mind of the teacher? Clearly that’s based on an idea of how a piece is supposed to be played. Where does that idea come from? If the teacher is any good, from long practice and familiarity - in other words, building a pattern to which the student’s playing is compared.

It’s a broad and fascinating subject with a lot of nuances. What’s the beverage you drink most often? Would you recognize if something was off about the taste? Failure to match the pattern laid down by repetition. Patterns are so powerful they can cause us to sense things that aren’t there - illusions. Is the following illusion due to a pattern laid down in memory, something innate, or partly both? https://www.pbs.org/video/brain-david-eagleman-episode-1-clip-1/

OTOH, I’ve seen Springsteen any number of times call out some obscure oldie and the band hits all the lyrics and music together, no memory aids. If you read interviews with the band, you’ll see he often doesn’t have these songs lined up in advance (in fact he does audience requests of other people’s songs occasionally). So they’ve all got quite a memory store. Of course several of them have been together 50+ years.

I’ve sat 15 feet from two Van Cliburn Gold Medal winners and another pianist with an international reputation as they played concerts consisting of about 5 pieces each, with each concert lasting at least a couple of hours. None of the three had music in front of them. They played all the pieces from memory. So how much practice does it take to commit that many pieces of that length and complexity to memory?

Maybe I don't understand the meaning of "twist" here, but to me it's more like a separate (though dependent) issue. One thing is: "can you detect a difference" and another: "if you can, which one do you prefer" Both depend on pattern matching. In this case, listening to the same characteristic sound from my speakers for over 3 decades has given me both the ability to recognize when that characteristic sound is present or absent, as well as a preference for a sound that in one respect is not technically correct. (Note the reverse is also true: Speakers with crossovers that produce a flatter frequency response cannot properly reproduce the phase/timing across frequencies that is in the recording.)

So here’s another twist: I’ve had the same brand of speakers since 1988 or thereabouts. These speakers have linear phase crossovers. That helps to keep phase/timing linear across the frequency spectrum, which helps with imaging/soundstage. The problem with this is that with such crossovers there’s a small but unavoidable bump in response where the drivers overlap. Over thousands upon thousands of hours of listening through 3 1/2 decades, I’ve had a pattern imprinted on me where strictly flat frequency response is not as important as imaging and soundstage. So now that’s what sounds correct to me, even though strictly speaking it isn’t. And of course there’s the flip side, where the reaction to something that sounds new and different is that it’s better, though that isn’t necessarily so. The summary I guess is there’s enough uncertainty that we should probably just leave it at what sounds good to us is fine, and what sounds good to others is fine for them.

Or let’s say they play back the same passage. Make it a short one, 10 seconds. What was the absolute worst situation for memory of tones in Deutsch’s experiment? When there is intervening music. So in our example, by the time you get to the identical part of the short passage for the second time, you’ve got 10 seconds of intervening music sitting in your echoic memory store, the very worst conditions to try to recall what it sounded like the first time.

Deleted - duplicate.

Turn in your audiophile card immediately! 😊