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| The Saga of Golden Ear and Meter Reader--Psychological distortions in the human as measuring device, by Rod Rees and Ron Shaffer. IN THE PAST FEW YEARS the audio "hobby'' has reached unanticipated levels of sophistication in both the technological and the perceptual realms. Coinciding with the barrage of astonishingly good audio equipment has been a ''perceptual revolution'' fully as exciting and important as the rapid technological advances. As exemplars of this revolution we would cite: A. the richly detailed attempts to describe the perceptual qualities of various audio systems fostered by J. Gordon Holt of Stereophile and expanded by the editors of The Absolute Sound, The Audio Critic, and other audiophile publications; B. the vanguard concern in the British audiophile press (Gramophone; Hi-Fi News and Record Review) for correct auditory imagery and spatial relations; C. the fascinating series of articles by Richard Heyser in Audio that helped tune us in to the physical time domain, while hinting at other yet-to-be-defined perceptual domains; D. the ongoing debate between the golden-ears and the meter-readers, which reached perhaps its clearest expression in the Lipshitz/Vanderkooy/ Young controversy in TAA 2, 3/79; and last but not least, E. the thousands of hours of listening and debate that occur daily by professionals and amateurs in audiophile showrooms and living rooms around the world. The time seems ripe to attempt an integration of the various perceptual issues hidden, and half-hidden, in these convolutions of the audiophile world. This task may be rather dif ficult because the integration will range over several different fields of knowledge. We will cover points from the philosophy of science, from experimental methodology in psychology, from perceptual theory, and from epistemological philosophy, while emphasizing that the bottom line is always one's own personal experience as an audiophile. (A good beginning would be to read our article in 744 3/79 from paragraph six onward wherein we introduce the perceptual concepts of the ''irreducible person/environment'' and the ''auditory view point,"' and describe the ''hearing through' technique.) Our plan is first to endeavor to correct a fundamental misunderstanding that colors all discussions we have read of the golden-ear vs. meter-reader controversy, including the otherwise excellent statements of Jung, White, Curl, and Moncrieff in TAA 3/79; second, to present an epistemology out of which a theory of perceptual experience can flow (a coherent and useful understanding of auditory perception is not possible without a coherent point of view on the nature of knowledge); and third, to expand upon our view of perceptual experience and how it will be useful for a full flowering of the current revolution in high quality audio reproduction. We deal with the first of these goals in this issue. Golden-Ear vs. Meter-Reader. Consider the following scenario: Golden-ear claims to be able to hear differences in audio gear that do not correlate with known physical measurements, but Meter-reader argues that such claims are due to poorly controlled experimental conditions. Golden-ear responds that properly controlled conditions will interfere with his subtle sensitivity to these otherwise obvious perceptual differences. Meter-reader, being well trained in scientific method, counters that without controlled conditions there can be no public confirmation of Golden-ear's observations and since the validity of a claim requires such confirmation, Golden-ear's claim is not valid. Golden-ear terminates the argument by saying, ''Well, that may be true, but I know what I hear."' This scenario, which is acted out countless times by audiophiles, reaches to the core of the philosophy of science and is the subject of great debate in all branches of inquiry, not least in the psychology of perception. The Traditional Scientist sees anarchy in the claim that private experience is a valid road to truth: where is the truth if everyone's private version is equally acceptable? But the Adept Believer sees oppression and narrowness in the claim that controlled experimental conditions is the road to truth: deafness is deafness, even when in the service of science. These extreme positions are amply demonstrated in the dogmatic statements of Lipshitz/Vanderkooy/ Young (e.g., ''...be aware that, unless you go to the trouble of controlling all the variables..., your conclusion will be open to question," TAA 2/79) and the egocentric replies of Jung, White, and Moncrieff (e.g., "Not only do I hear nonlinearities, but I have about 20 rough sonic parameters to describe the various audible qualities," TAA 3/79). So where is truth? Whom do you trust? As a further complication Moncrieff has attempted to bolster Golden-ear's position by calling on the principle of agnosticism: ''Wherever you observe no difference, you may not infer that there is no difference." While true, this principle does not necessarily benefit Golden-ear because Meter reader can make an equally true parallel statement: '"Whenever you observe a difference, you may not infer that there is a difference." Thus, we return to square one. False Alarms and Misses. Clearly, the argument can continue ad infinitum so long as each camp holds to its own version of truth; and neither can produce a telling argument to logically convince the other. The dilemma lies, of course, in the elusive (illusive?) nature of truth, a concept as unattainable to the audiophile as to the ancient Greeks. But another way of conceptualizing this issue by-passes the argument entirely. John Curl's reply (744 3/79) came closest to the mark when he suggested that there may be personal reasons for an individual to fail to hear a difference, under certain circumstances, when one exists, and that there may be equally compelling personal reasons for an individual to claim to hear a difference when one does not exist. Personal factors always affect any perceptual experience, and there is no possible way of telling which perceptual experiences are ''true'' and which are ''false."' This principle of observer-bias is the core of what is called signal detection theory! (or statistical decision theory), such that failing to detect a difference when one exists (a Miss) and claiming to detect a difference when one does not exist (a False Alarm) are given exactly equal importance. In fact, they are merely two ways of saying precisely the same thing: what is the biased viewpoint of the observer? If False Alarms are frequent then Misses must be infrequent, and the relative frequency of the two errors depends exclusively on the personal reasons (bias) of the observer for perceiving, or reporting a perception of, a difference, or no difference. Air Freshener Midrange. An observer can be trained to be unbiased (i.e., to produce equal proportions of False Alarms and Misses) but the procedure is long and very tedious; moreover, the effects tend to be highly specific to the exact conditions of training. Observer bias is a volatile phenomenon, being easily pushed one way or another by the conditions under which the observations are made, by momentary changes in the attitudes and beliefs of the observer as to what is ''true," and by the payoffs that are provided for the various responses that one might make. The Traditional Scientist, for example, operates on a payoff scheme that provides a strong penalty (loss of credibility) for claiming to perceive something that does not exist, whereas the Adept Believer suffers a similar loss of guru-ness for appearing insensitive to the wondrously subtle phenomena in the universe. When the typical audiophile is experiencing one of those overwhelmingly passionate desires for a new set of purple capacitors in his power supply, he really wants to hear a difference and tends toward the golden-ear type of bias. But when his friendly audiophile-rival claims to have cleaned up his midrange by spraying the room with air-freshener, that same typical audiophile turns into the most strait-laced of meter-readers. All perceptions are influenced by a host of subtle, and not-so-subtle, conditions, attitudes, and payoffs. And to make matters worse, the individual observer is usually not aware of the existence of many of these biasing factors, feeling instead a sense of certainty about the truth of his perceptions. It is this egocentric belief in one's own perceptions that fires the belligerent stand-off between Golden ear and Meter reader, the former believing a difference to be real if he perceives a difference and the latter believing a lack of difference to be real if he perceives no difference. Choosing your side. It should now be clear that it is not possible for the audiophile to really know when Julian Hirsch, for example, has failed to hear a difference that exists or when J. Gordon Holt has claimed to hear one that does not exist. Neither Julian nor J. Gordon know for sure; both are merely reporting their honest perceptions and are equally susceptible to observer bias. Whether you believe one or the other depends on the payoff to you personally (in terms of dollar costs vs. musical pleasures, for example) and on what you can hear (or think you can hear). Similarly, you cannot know for sure the truth of your own claims as to what are and are not real differences, partly because you do not know the full nature of the conditions, attitudes, and payoffs that are biasing your observations. All you know for sure is that you are biased (one way or another), and that changing your bias (one way or another) will not produce truth but merely different proportions of False Alarms and Misses. The best you can do is to become more tuned-in to your own pattern of perceptual bias, and to speak and write with a humble sense of skepticism about your own perceptions. As for our position, we lean toward the golden-ear type of bias because we believe it is advantageous to suffer more False Alarms (as long as we are reticent in our public claims) in order to Miss fewer potentially important facets of auditory perception. We believe the more daring approach of Golden-ear is amply justified because False Alarms in the audio hobby, while misleading and potentially expensive, create no real danger to humans, whereas the improvements in audio quality resulting from golden-ear design and critique are being perceived and appreciated by more and more audiophiles. An ear, is an ear, is an ear. As an example of the latter, R. R. recently conducted a two-week workshop (three hours a day) entitled ''Auditory Perception and High - Fidelity."' Participants who could barely tell the difference between midrange and treble when the workshop began were making judgments about three dimensionality, imaging, resolution of inner detail, graininess (slew-rate induced, we suppose), and a myriad of other golden-ear perceptual terms by the end of the workshop. While we don't claim that they ''really'' heard these auditory dimensions, they, at least, were personally convinced that they had heard what they heard. We hope now that the Saga of Golden-ear and Meter-reader is ended. Neither is correct, and yet neither is wholly wrong. Each merely errs commensurate with his own built-in observer bias. And as for the audiophile trying to make a little sense of it all, he should listen to both points of view and listen to his own perceptions. After all, none of us can do anything but hear what we hear. Drs. Rees and Shaeffer teach at Western Washington University, Bellingham, Wa. NOTES: 1. Green, D.M. and Swets, J.A. Signal detection theory and psychophysics. New York: Wiley, 1966 ---- Also see: The Williamson 40/40, Power Amplifier--Return of an improved favorite after a decade A Power Meter---LEDs give better peak power clues than a needle in motion |
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