Golden Ears?

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What with Yanny and Lauren exploding all over social media right now, which is very similar to the Tritone paradox that many of us here should know about, it got me thinking about an old audio illusion i stumbled upon...

Sounds we can't unhear. I can't find the original example i heard, it was better but this one will do.
https://soundcloud.com/whyy-the-pulse/an-audio-illusion


Here's my theory. Mix engineers with the so called Golden Ears might be missing this trait normal people have. They always hear what they hear, not filling in any gaps. We all know how we expected to hear our sound and once we've heard it, we can never hear it for the first time, again. If you lacked this trait, you'd always hear it as is.

This also stems into my beliefs how different genres are completely bizarre to other listeners. They haven't journeyed the path that sound has followed to evolve to become as it is. The extreme is less if you heard the songs before them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... ar/373036/
Last edited by mitchiemasha on Fri May 18, 2018 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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My wife told me about this, I couldn't figure out how she was able to hear that word as "Lauren", it was obviously "Yanny" to me.
~stratum~

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Crazy stuff. I hear Laurel very clearly and no matter how I try, I can't hear Yanny.

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Look up Tritone paradox it's very similar. In the Tritone paradox, 1 note is followed by a higher note, whilst the other note is followed by a lower note, at the same time, but to each individual listener, you will either here the next note as higher or lower, deepending.

With this Yanny Lauren thing, it's really quite simple (especially if you'd already heard about the tritone thing). it all depends on what device you are listening too and which frequencies your brain automatically focuses on.

However, my reason for posting this thread is of something way more interesting than the Yanny Lauren hype. The sounds you can't unhear, it's really quite freaky. If we apply that to what we know about music production and mixing, it explains a lot.

Have a read.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... ar/373036/
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The brain is a learning machine, trying to correlate stuff and make sense of whatever we observe. Simple as that :shrug:


About a year or so someone asked here how to create such a full sound, with an example track (Within Temptation?) inserted. I could easily make out it was a wall of distorted guitars, drums and vocals drenched in reverb, padded with choir and various orchestra sounds. But to someone not able to pinch through what the components are and recognise them, it's just a full-spectrum blur. Maybe even muddy, but in a pleasant way.

Comes to think of it, this here is the same phenomena: I sat with a friend recently, and a pregnant woman walked by. He said: "she had sex." Three seconds pause, and I replied: "But with who..."
A running gag you cannot undo. I HAVE to think about that gag whenever I saw a pregnant woman since.
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My GF just did this on me, she hears Laurel, I hear Yanni.

Wierd as I can distinctly hear the Y sound at the beginning and the ee sound at the end, she hears neither, I cant even slightly hear how it might sound like Laurel.

She made some comment about those with better high freuqency sense will hear Yanni.
I find this wierd as my hearing rolls off around 13kHz and she played it to me on her phone.

We even moved the phone to different distances to see if it made any difference.
Amazon: why not use an alternative

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First heard the "Laurel / Yanni" thing in the living room with very decent speakers: I heard Laurel.
Next I heard it on the bedroom TV with crappy sound: I heard Yanni.
Next day I heard it on a MacBookPro, and I could hear them both!

Now back on the GoldenEars subject....
We are the KVR collective. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. Image
My MusicCalc is served over https!!

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VariKusBrainZ wrote:My GF just did this on me, she hears Laurel, I hear Yanni.

Wierd as I can distinctly hear the Y sound at the beginning and the ee sound at the end, she hears neither, I cant even slightly hear how it might sound like Laurel.

She made some comment about those with better high freuqency sense will hear Yanni.
I find this wierd as my hearing rolls off around 13kHz and she played it to me on her phone.

We even moved the phone to different distances to see if it made any difference.
Now just tried on my tablets speakers and with multimedia speakers and hear Laurel
Amazon: why not use an alternative

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Did anyone try the sounds we can't unhear?
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mitchiemasha wrote:Did anyone try the sounds we can't unhear?
Yes. It does make you wonder just how much work we continue to do based on how a mix started out. Are we still hearing sounds that are actually masked? Who knows.

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There is a few comments where people have said it doesn't work for them. A normal person, not professional. So i wonder if there's a very small percentage who lack this trait. If this is true and that person just happened to want to be a mix or mastering engineer, it would surely give them an edge. Could this be the legendary Golden Ears? Mixed with dedication and experience.

Our mix to us sounds perfect, we've listened to it hundreds of times, but it's our brains that are mixing it, not our ears. We fill in the gaps, we use preaquired information, as the test proves. To a new listener our sound is strange and peculiar, quite different to what we hear.

Actually. It's probably best the likes of iZotope don't get hold of this info. As it turns out... We can't trust our ears!!! I can see the marketing campaigns. It totally flips all those arguments that have been lost to the, "mix with your ears not your eyes", crew!

I'd love to read about some mastering engineers doing the 'sound you can't unhear test'.
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I don't see how a computer made to turn a sentence in language into "gibberish" and then given what was distorted means anything about audio mixing.

Did you say this proves subsequent mixes are hopelessly tied to a first effort mixing something? I don't see how that follows. 'As it turns out... We can't trust our ears!!!" This wasn't about mixing, it was a very distorted, but not wholly garbled file that, with *priming* can now resemble more closely the intelligible words.

Rather a reach IMO. You have not demonstrated that the ear performs better, only that the mind does with very strong priming. Which comes as no surprise to me at all.

So it seems to me that you are arguing circularly to a premise you like.

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(premise being, 'there is no ear, there is only the mind'. Which manifests in your belief that mixing with your ears is not mixing with your ears.)
mitchiemasha wrote: Our mix to us sounds perfect, we've listened to it hundreds of times, but it's our brains that are mixing it, not our ears.
Hmmm. Is this the royal 'we' or are you speaking for everyone?

The more I live with the thing the more I hear that I don't like. I am not married to anything like I thought it was perfect. This is why there is an adage among mixing people, 'There is no finished mix, there are only abandoned mixes.'

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jancivil wrote:I don't see how a computer made to turn a sentence in language into "gibberish" and then given what was distorted means anything about audio mixing.
You can't hear the sound like you first heard it, once you've heard it. We use acquired information and fill in the gaps. The point is simple, if you lacked this natural human ability to fill in the gaps, or the distortion (in the example) changes back into distortion quicker for you, you'd have a natural advantage as a mix engineer, given you had all the other requirements too.

For me this is more to do with, have i found the Goldern Ears. It's not what they hear, it's what they don't hear, as in our brains creating illusions.
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mitchiemasha wrote:
jancivil wrote:I don't see how a computer made to turn a sentence in language into "gibberish" and then given what was distorted means anything about audio mixing.
You can't hear the sound like you first heard it, once you've heard it. We use acquired information and fill in the gaps. The point is simple, if you lacked this natural human ability to fill in the gaps, or the distortion (in the example) changes back into distortion quicker for you, you'd have a natural advantage as a mix engineer, given you had all the other requirements too.

For me this is more to do with, have i found the Goldern Ears. It's not what they hear, it's what they don't hear, as in our brains creating illusions.
That perception is mediated by the intellect is undeniable. But how it actually works is not at all well understood. Accounts of perception are at best provisional. Some of the problems with many of them are discussed by Raymond Tallis in this critique. They are discussed in much more detail in his book: "Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity". And Tallis isn't the only one writing about this. Matthew Crawford is another. As are others whose names I don't have the time to look up.

Anyway, it's interesting stuff, but not really conducive to expansive generalizations.

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