Why EQ a sound doesn't change timbre?

[himalaya]

Do you feel/experience the same when you are listening to the same piece of music on flat system, hifi or headphones? I don't believe so.

I may feel the same or I may not. It all depends. And it doesn't matter, since we, as music creators/engineers/producers can not control how our listeners feel, or what they experience.

We know that the same song played across various speakers and headphones will sound different, that is, the song's frequency spectrum will sound different. Does this fact change the song into something else, some other entity, on each speaker used? Do you seriously believe so? I don't. It's still the same song.

I have a particular liking for the main music theme from the Gladiator movie. It somehow affects me deeply and every time I hear it, I pause and listen to it intently, usually experiencing goosebumps (yes, I'm that easily satisfied ). And I get the same feeling listening to this theme on all speakers I have had a chance to hear it on. One day a friend played it live for me using a fake flute sound. Still, the music theme was the same (even without the full orchestration) and had the same effect on me. So, I can safely say, that the playback medium does not change how I perceive a song/music piece. Yes, I will be aware of a different frequency spectrum on each playback system, but this does not alter the song itself. The melody, harmony, arrangement ( although the arrangement can be affected since if the playback medium can not reproduce the bass registers, then I won't experience the bass lines, maybe, but that's ok, it's still the same song/music piece since there are other 'signposts' that tell me so - ie: harmony, melody, lyrics, etc).

I suppose I'm writing the same stuff I wrote a few pages ago. Funny how this topic just keeps going round.


However, like I mentioned before, the playback system is the least of your worries. Take the Gladiator theme as an example, I love it and the music affects me deeply. But the next person will laugh or sneer at and criticise the same music piece. How is this? Why can't we both feel the same emotion here? We could be listening to the theme on the same speakers and yet both of us will experience the same music completely differently. One will love it, the other hate it.

This is a much deeper 'issue' since if you are really worried about the lack of 'repeatability' of the message in the music/song, worried whether the emotional content you have imbued in your music piece will be perceived by all in the way you have intended...if you are worried about it then you will have a hellish life as a composer/music creator since we all perceive music differently, regardless of the playback medium. Your best hope is that you will find enough people who will understand the emotion/message you tried to convey with your music and hope that they remain your music fans. And here is the thing, once you do find such a group of people who do feel the same emotion while listening to your music track, they will feel it while listening on very different speakers! This is how it's always been. Do you get the picture?

[ghettosynth]

However with respect to that study she's as ignorant as you.

How arrogant are you man? My gosh...

No, you're both ignorant of the study, that's a fact. You demonstrate your own ignorance again below.

The participants were asked to make a prediction based on their own experience, that prediction is where they failed. You cannot say "I prefer old violins" and then when put to the test you choose a new one and still claim "I prefer old violins."

Again: NO! The test wasn't to choose an old violin instead of new one! It was to "choose" the favourite one.

Read the paper, you are wrong. They were essentially asked to "predict" the age of their favorite. That is their failure and demonstrates their bias. That is EXACTLY what I just told you above.

Quoted directly from the PNAS paper:
(emphasis mine)

Asked about the making-school of their take-home instruments, 17 subjects responded: 7 said they had no idea, 7 guessed wrongly (i.e., that a new violin was old or vice-versa), and just 3 guessed correctly (SI Text). In light of this result, Langhoff’s assertion (13) becomes difficult to sustain, as does the case for special playing qualities unique to old Italian violins.

In the follow on study which addressed many (if not all) of the musician's concerns in the first study, they were given generous scores as follows, again, quoted from the paper

Each soloist was presented with a series of violins and, after playing each of them for 30 seconds, was asked to guess what kind of instrument it was. If the instrument was new, a correct guess was “modern,” “new,” or some similarly unambivalent attribution. If old, a
correct answer was any that suggested the instrument was an Old Italian, regardless of whether it was attributed to the right maker (thus “Guarneri del Gesu” was considered correct for a Stradivari. Five answers (e.g. “19th Century French”) were considered indeterminate.

The answers were indistinguishable from guessing. The paper is in google scholar so you have no excuse for not looking it up yourself.

The preponderance of wrong guesses can be attributed to chance, or there may be an easily understandable tendency to believe one‟s favorite violin is old. Indeed, out of the seven wrong guesses about top-choice violins, five were due to guessing that three new violins (N5, N9 and N10) were old.

[Nowhk]

I may feel the same or I may not. It all depends. And it doesn't matter, since we, as music creators/engineers/producers can not control how our listeners feel, or what they experience.

But, it CAN matter "May" or "may not" imply that sometimes it "may not", so you are working on a product that "sometimes" it will vary. In those "sometimes" times, the product change some aspects. So place everythings in a unique "class" I think could be not proper.

We know that the same song played across various speakers and headphones will sound different, that is, the song's frequency spectrum will sound different. Does this fact change the song into something else, some other entity, on each speaker used? Do you seriously believe so? I don't. It's still the same song.

Using your words: it may or it may not. If I listen a bass (that on a flat system I perceive as heavy bass), with some speakers dumped on low/mid range, I could perceive a different heaviness. Can you assert this is an ignorable change? I'm seriously not sure. The same when you start talking about different transient and ringing, or the same reverb applied to the whole sound.

I have a particular liking for the main music theme from the Gladiator movie.

This is really a lucky example you have put it out. I LOVE gladiator theme (and generally all Hans Zimmer works). But if I listen to "The Battle" in my headphones, I can't really enjoy it in some aspect. Because it lacks the reverb added to the track listening to my loudspekaers, or within the car, giving harsh to the trumpet!
But so, it lacks percussion, because reverb mask them a lot. So if I want to get it power, I place my headphones. And I got different vibes. It become "kicking". Mediums have changed the way I perceive the product. So, I would say they alter the product.

The melody, harmony, arrangement ( although the arrangement can be affected since if the playback medium can not reproduce the bass registers, then I won't experience the bass lines, maybe, but that's ok, it's still the same song/music piece since there are other 'signposts' that tell me so - ie: harmony, melody, lyrics, etc).

Again, its a matter of which class you will use for identify them. If I listen "The Battle" Live within the medley executed at Orange, I got different things. Sometimes I prefer that live instead of the album track, its so wicked (even the harsh recordings give different feeling). As I said, "The melody, harmony, arrangement" are common elements that keep constant between setups. I don't get them differents. But when reasoning about timbre (or other aspect), well... it become hard to say this. And I place much attention to timbre.

But the next person will laugh or sneer at and criticise the same music piece. How is this? Why can't we both feel the same emotion here? We could be listening to the theme on the same speakers and yet both of us will experience the same music completely differently. One will love it, the other hate it.

"I suppose I'm writing the same stuff I wrote a few pages ago" (yes, I did): I don't give a fXXk about others feeling I'm talking about me and what music is for me (as every individual do for your own).

Read the paper, you are wrong. They were essentially asked to "predict" the age of their favorite. That is their failure and demonstrates their bias. That is EXACTLY what I just told you above.

Quoted directly from the PNAS paper

I didn't read the PNAS one. The others I've read say totally different things.
I'm going to read it in the next hours, and let you know. Thank to post it.

p.s. still you don't want to reply to my question directly wrote to you. May I ask why?

[ghettosynth]

Read the paper, you are wrong. They were essentially asked to "predict" the age of their favorite. That is their failure and demonstrates their bias. That is EXACTLY what I just told you above.

Quoted directly from the PNAS paper

I didn't read the PNAS one. The others I've read say totally different things.
I'm going to read it in the next hours, and let you know. Thank to post it.

AFAIK, the PNAS paper IS the original paper. The second quote was from the follow on study that addressed player concerns. These are the only two Fritz studies that had this form so I don't know what papers you're reading. Quoting news sites that have their own biases doesn't count.

There's nothing else to read though. You have a simple question, and those are the answers. There's no way that you can spin that into a statistically relevant affirmative result that players can predict the age of violins based on sound. These are top players, so how do you think that this will change with lesser players?

[Nowhk]

There's no way that you can spin that into a statistically relevant affirmative result that players can predict the age of violins based on sound.

Thus, considering (also) this test, you are sustaining that "musical elements" (thus, timbre as well) are preserved/perceived the same across major/quality mediums for a fixed individual?
Definitively: you perceive every time the SAME kick (or pad, or bass) on whatever setup/environment you are listening to it?

Please note: I'm not irritating you: I'm really just asking your opinion.

[Gamma-UT]

Mediums have changed the way I perceive the product. So, I would say they alter the product.

...

If I listen "The Battle" Live within the medley executed at Orange, I got different things. Sometimes I prefer that live instead of the album track, its so wicked (even the harsh recordings give different feeling).

When you feel that the live is better than the album recording, is this through a change of listening conditions? Or do you change your mind from time to time even though the listening conditions haven't changed?

[Nowhk]

Mediums have changed the way I perceive the product. So, I would say they alter the product.

...

If I listen "The Battle" Live within the medley executed at Orange, I got different things. Sometimes I prefer that live instead of the album track, its so wicked (even the harsh recordings give different feeling).

When you feel that the live is better than the album recording, is this through a change of listening conditions? Or do you change your mind from time to time even though the listening conditions haven't changed?

Don't confuse the phrase. The first was relative to the same recordings on different mediums (which I feel different, bias or not bias). Thus, if it really change (I'm discussing again this, with ghettosynth), the "class" of the song is wide, not unique.

The second is again how wider the class is: live/recordings on the same "class"? Or different? For me are two different classes, but that's again subjective, and doesn't matter here.

Anyway, it doesn't matter if its by medium or by my mind: it is changed
Nothing I can do for make it "equal", neither realizing its a bias I think
If you perceive different... well... you perceive different! The same applied to listen on different speakers. Can't fool the fool

[ghettosynth]

BTW: For those who want to see the researcher's perspective on this sort of thing and the detail and expense that went into this, here' a video from Claudia Fritz' homepage that documents the second set of experiments.

[Gamma-UT]

Anyway, it doesn't matter if its by medium or by my mind: it is changed
Nothing I can do for make it "equal", neither realizing its a bias I think
If you perceive different... well... you perceive different!

So, your perception of the same material changes whether or not it is induced by a change in listening conditions but could be simply based on mood? That's not out of the ordinary but I want to confirm that it's the case from your PoV.

[Nowhk]

Anyway, it doesn't matter if its by medium or by my mind: it is changed
Nothing I can do for make it "equal", neither realizing its a bias I think
If you perceive different... well... you perceive different!

So, your perception of the same material changes whether or not it is induced by a change in listening conditions but could be simply based on mood? That's not out of the ordinary but I want to confirm that it's the case from your PoV.

Not sure what you were asking there, but I ask you the same question I've place for ghettosynth (which for unknown reasons he seems doesn't want to reply): viewtopic.php?f=99&t=485328&p=6865365#p6865335

What's your opinion about this? I think to get different musical elements (just some of them, timbre is one of this) due to different setup/environments: I call them variations. They are similar, but still different. I'm not arguing right now if those differences matters or not . Just if you catch them (as I do, but could be BIAS) on different mediums. Do you?

Let start with basics... should I open a poll?

[himalaya]

I would venture a wide guess that all people involved in music production notice that there is a difference between, say, a pro studio speaker and a laptop speaker, as an example. We do "catch" these differences. And so, now what? What do you propose we should do about this?

[Gamma-UT]

Not sure what you were asking there, but I ask you the same question I've place for ghettosynth (which for unknown reasons he seems doesn't want to reply): viewtopic.php?f=99&t=485328&p=6865365#p6865335

Is your perception of any element of a piece of music the same across time if the listening conditions are the same, or do you notice different elements or atttributes becoming more or less noticeable at different times? It seems perfectly simple to me and I'm intrigued that you want to avoid answering it clearly given your stance on perception where the listening conditions affect the frequency balance and thus apparent timbre.

Definitively: you perceive every time the SAME kick (or pad, or bass) on whatever setup/environment you are listening to it?

This is the question, yes? Are you asking whether I perceive it comes from the same source or that the sound is perceptually identical?

If it's the latter, the answer is that the perceived sound is constantly varying depending on how hard I focus on it and a variety of factors that lie outside the vibrations themselves. Even then, simply moving my head or around the room will change a number of factors such as arrival time and the comb filtering effects of walls and other objects.

If it's the former, then it seems likely that it is the same unless I come to the belief elves crept into the audio player and performed a bit of impromptu drum replacement.

[Gamma-UT]

I would venture a wide guess that all people involved in music production notice that there is a difference between, say, a pro studio speaker and a laptop speaker, as an example. We do "catch" these differences. And so, now what? What do you propose we should do about this?

Generally, I'd argue the first thought is "crap, I can't hear the bass, better do something about that to give it more presence above 150Hz" followed by "jeez, that's harsh, need a cut around 6kHz at the very least". I doubt anyone would ask themselves: "Is this the same programme material?"

[himalaya]

I doubt anyone would ask themselves: "Is this the same programme material?"

But this is exactly what the OP is asking, and has been asserting.

[Nowhk]

I would venture a wide guess that all people involved in music production notice that there is a difference between, say, a pro studio speaker and a laptop speaker, as an example. We do "catch" these differences. And so, now what? What do you propose we should do about this?

First: I'm talking about "quality" different speakers. Choose a speaker that are not able to reproduce some range of frequencies is useless;

Second: I'm not really sure we do "catch" these differences. Which it was also my first motivation on opening such a topic: knowing it. I would bet some money I can catch, but if you follow ghettosynth or whyterabbyt suggestions, it seems (but I'm not sure) that what you perceive will be absolutely THE same (and here I'm talking about stuff like timbre, but not only it);

Third: "now what?" once understand this, it will circumscribe some conditions where I can define a song for what in fact it is. Concrete thing or a class of possible variations? Due to this, I (we) can argue about the impact of mediums about epistemology of "song" for example, or the fact that the listener "shape" (with its setup, in minor ways) what the song is;

Fourth: I'm not propose somethings Its not a "manifesto", just a reflection. Theres nothing to "propose". Things stay the same even without Nowhk, but I like to understand them (you call it overthinking).

Is your perception of any element of a piece of music the same across time if the listening conditions are the same, or do you notice different elements or atttributes becoming more or less noticeable at different times?

Nice question, already proposed by himalaya time ago. I think that what I perceive between the same mediums at different times is not exactly the same; so every time a bit of variations is added (by setup and by my brain). Notice that this (imo) reinforce my "hypothesis" that perception is constantly changing regards time and environments.

This is the question, yes? Are you asking whether I perceive it comes from the same source or that the sound is perceptually identical?

If it's the latter, the answer is that the perceived sound is constantly varying depending on how hard I focus on it and a variety of factors that lie outside the vibrations themselves. Even then, simply moving my head or around the room will change a number of factors such as arrival time and the comb filtering effects of walls and other objects.

If it's the former, then it seems likely that it is the same unless I come to the belief elves crept into the audio player and performed a bit of impromptu drum replacement.

Yeah, I ask the latter, I don't care about the former. And I totally agree with you: "is constantly varying" (depending on the focus). Its what I "sustain" since the beginning, I've used the same words many times.

But it seems that (i) I'm biased (so you are as well) and (ii) it doesn't matter (and I'm not really able to understand how this can doesn't matter).

For me it matters in both "definition" of things (so concreteness) and "perception" (you are listening different things, in the end).