Laurel or Yanny? If you’ve got a life, you’ll have missed yesterday’s kerfuffle aka this year’s blue or white dress nonsense in the media. Apparently a computer generated voice can sound either like Yanny or Laurel. For me it was quite clearly Laurel, and obviously anyone who hears Yanny is wrong… including my better half, who heard Yanny, and now believes me to be quite mad.
Such is the wide split working its way across the internet. I am intrigued by the media’s need to prime people with a “Laurel of Yanny” choice. A better approach would be to simply ask “what word do you hear?”. Obviously, that wouldn’t be even remotely clickbaity interesting. Human nature can’t be fought — people like to take sides and will do so at any and every possible opportunity.
SO WHICH IS IT?
As it turns out, it’s both words, but at different pitches. Laurel is low, and Yanny is high. This video from The Independent explains it perfectly. So before you come to blows, neither is right or wrong. There are different variables at play here, not least your ears.
But one thing is irrefutably clear — sound is incredibly subjective.
Two people can sit in the same chair, look at the same laptop screen, and hear entirely different words. Just let that sink in for a moment… and then think about what that means for the whole argument about sound quality.
Yes yes I know — this Laurel and Yanny sound file is a scientifically generated and controlled experiment specifically tailored to elicit one name or another. The frequencies are probably optimised so that one cancels out the other as well.
But substitute Laurel and Yanny for different vocals. Theoretically, this test would indicate that in particular circumstances, a harmonising duo could sound like just one singer. And now start including complex musical arrangements, different voices and instruments, a variety of listening environments, and of course the biggest variable of all — you. Now you can understand that sound is not a black or white issue — it’s a listening recipe of many different ingredients that never comes out of the audio oven quite the same for everyone.
When people start getting into it in comments and forums, I generally roll my eyes when someone will angrily rebuffs another equally passionate DJ about sound quality. If this test shows us anything, it’s that we all hear things differently, and is dependent on a great many variables.
But when an armchair expert opines about the particular audio characteristics of a setup, product, or pressing, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that what they hear is what we’ll hear. Equally there’s a chance that their hearing is less than satisfactory, but they don’t even know it. Yay — more variables.
It’s possible to perform controlled scientific tests on hearing to determine frequency range, but put the same people in an uncontrolled environment with a heap of variables happening at the same time, and arguments about sound quality go out the window. You only have to walk across a dance floor to understand how music can sound quite different just a few metres apart.
PERSONAL PREFERENCE
That’s what it comes down to. I could contract a highly specialised audio company to create a perfect listening environment for my non-existent hot stamper collection of rare Blue Note Jazz vinyl, knowing full well that someone else could relax in the clichéd Eames lounge chair that I aspire to and need something entirely different to achieve aural perfection. We can probably agree on a baseline setup that sounds good, but beyond that it comes down to tuning the environment for the personal characteristics and preferences of the listener. Your perfect sound is not mine.
So before you get into rucks with people about how a club standard mixer sounds “true fucking awful” (it really doesn’t), just remember that we’re all different. We hear things with subtle or maybe even large discrepancies to each other, and even then we have personal preferences beyond what producers and mastering engineers have decided what is “the best” sound.
Bottom line — humans aren’t churned out sausage factory style to tight specs. They’re all unique, and as such hear things in a particular way. Nobody is right or wrong. Unless you hear Yanny of course.
We can talk about sound quality because it can be objectively ascertained with machines.
That can provide numbers to determine a benchmark. But what about when people stand and listen? Those numbers simply provide evidence of gear being made to a particular standard, but in no way does that guarantee that it will sound good in a particular environment to a particular person.
Case in point — my better half and her boss listened to the Laurel/Yanny audio file on the same laptop in the same environment, and both came back with a different response. That’s a level playing field yielding a different result.
It all comes back to one of the few things I’ve realised over the years. People are the biggest variable in any technology equation. I don’t care what the numbers say — what matters to me (hence the whole point of subjectivity) is what my hands feel, my eyes see, and my ears hear.
I don’t think anyone’s going to argue with you that perceived sound quality, and just about anything else to do with humans, is subjective. It absolutely is.
But the author is saying we shouldn’t talk about the sound quality of various gear because it’s subjective, whereas I say quality can be objectively ascertained.
We can sample reality to a verifiable degree of precision and we can test equipment that attempts to reproduce it to a verifiable degree of precision. Whether it sounds “good” or not is a pointless debate but we can absolutely evaluate precision.
It’s the same thing with photography – everyone has their own ideas of what makes a great photo but we can objectively measure the accuracy of given equipment’s ability to reproduce an image.
Now we’re getting deep into it. This is fun. :)
So we can agree that equipment can be made to specifications that produce sound of a required standard, and the output measured to ascertain if it falls within this specifications. This definitely verifies the quality of the equipment.
But does this mean that the equipment is producing good sound? Is “good” an objective measurable thing, or just a personal subjective statement? Objectively, equipment can create sound to a required and verifiable quality. But subjectively, it’s for me to pass an opinion on quality too, and that trumps the objective numbers every time.
If we dig into this semantically, would it be more accurate to state that because sound output can be objectively measured, when people say something sounds bad, they’d be more accurate in saying that they just don’t like it? Some people consider liver to be awful. But I love it.
Also, when someone passes a subjective opinion about sound quality based on what they’ve listened to, would it be more helpful if they said “to me personally, it sounds good/bad”?
I still stand by my opinion that the Laurel/Yanny experiment clearly shows that the opinion of good or bad audio is entirely subjective and personal. Also no amount of numbers can make what I consider to be bad suddenly sound good.
So should statements about sound quality be left to the realm of specifications and measurements? Or should a human opinion be the final word on sound quality? For me, it’s my ears that count — not the numbers or anybody else’s opinion. ;)
IMO it’s great that sound quality is being discussed. I’d like to see more people care about sound quality as too many of the venues I play at get away with installing pretty crappy sounding sound systems. That people have different preferences when it comes to the characteristics of sound shouldn’t be confused as sound quality just being something completely subjective. A lot of it CAN be measured, it’s usually the final tweeks we can disagree on, more bass? Less treble?
Measuring acoustic response accurately is actually quite challenging. Unfortunately, the number of companies building speakers is larger than the number of companies that know how to properly measure speakers, so there are a lot of bad units out there. Even with quality speakers, there are many other links in the signal chain, with each one introducing at least one more opportunity for intrusion of noise, distortion, or other quality degradations.
Fundamentally, the problem is that in order to have high-quality sound reproduction in a room, you need to hire people who understand all the factors in play to select components, design the room acoustics, and (most importantly) operate the final system in a reasonable manner night after night. Even then, you will still run into the subjectivity problem: everyone’s ear canal and pinna are shaped slightly differently and our experiences cause varying hearing loss patterns as we age, so you will never be able to produce an environment that sounds pleasant to everyone.
Fundamentally, as long as venue owners aren’t seeing reduced bar sales as a result of their inadequate approach to sound, there’s no incentive to change said approach.
If the output of the system has been measured and verified to be producing an accurate representation of the source material then it is producing quality sound. Whether this is considered “good” by anyone in particular is irrelevant because that is a statement of preference, not quality.
If people want to compare their perceptions of the sound then more power to them, but you can’t effectively do that until you’re listening to quality sound. Otherwise there’s no baseline for your perception. If you hear something “bad” is that you or the sound? You don’t know without an objective analysis.
When we discuss art there is no objective answer, but for sound there is. I defer to the objective when possible.
When you mix a (live) band and one of the musicians or other people involved get annoying with requests after a while you can just do a phantom-twist of a knob or a phantom-slide of a fader and I´d guess 7 or 8 times out of 10 they´ll be like “yeah, that´s better”. Have seen it countless times…
Do you tell them with something like “I’ve upped the bottom end” so that they’ve been primed to believe that they can hear more bass? Primers are incredibly powerful. ;)
You don´t even have to be that specific (it depends on the request though). Usually you can just look down at your desk, do your phantom-thingy and look up again and ask “how about now?” and you´ll get the thumbs up :) Works especially well with volume in general.
True story. I used to work as live sound engineer. This worked 9 out of 10 times :)
I learned this from my mother, who is also a sound engineer :D
I had a drummer (almost deaf) and I was doing the sound return.
The guys was always requesting in his “side mic” things like :
“I can’t ear the bassist”
“Can I have more drums ?”
and blablabla…
Every 2 songs…
My technique is simple in this case, when the guy asked me something, I just gave him more volume briefly, then go down to the original position.
He was really satisfied of my reactivity, and wanted me as their sound return guy for the nexts shows they had in my area :D :D
Placebo effect.
Love this article. People can’t distinguish 2 words in a youtube video but they will hear “a warm punchy sound” of a CDJ or feel like a 2000 USD Pioneer Mixer sounds absolutely utter terrible. They will hear the crystal clear sound of one soundcard vs. the distorted and digital sounding of the other (which essentially are made from the exact same components in china).
In the end the number one reason for the quality of the sound is the person behind the mixer and the person on the dancefloor. You can make entry level small speakers with an iPad, split cable and djay2 sound (relatively) good and you can make a 50k function one rig with a analog rotary mixer and turntables sound like shit.
+1 !
So true.
Sound is subjective because we are not feeling the same for everything.
sounds are not subjective, try compare a $10 2 wats plastic mp3 speaker to a $1000 hifi speaker.
taste is subjective too right?
try eating a sandwich with dog poo and compare it too a 3 course 5star hotel meal. what do you think taste better?
buttom line its the quality of the equipment first, then comes the so called DJ tweaking eqs etc. some mixers just dont have a good quality sound hence never to be found in clubs.
When different people listen to the same thing on the same equipment and have different opinions, that is the very definition of subjective.
This contrasts with an objective decision that is made on information, data, and specifications alone, and doesn’t allow for personal opinions to influence the result. Objectively, a system can be described as good because it reaches specifications that are generally agreed by experts to be a required standard.
But when you play music through it to people with personal preferences, those numbers largely go out the window, because people are variable, both physically and mentally. Thus sound is subjective, because our ears hear it, and our preferences and feelings decide if we like it or not.
Case in point — you only have to trawl through some audiophile forums to understand how subjective sound is. They will argue about the finest audio equipment on the planet and happily describe a high end system costing as much as a car as sounding terrible. Objectively, the gear is as good as it gets but anyone’s standards. Subjectively, listeners can love or hate it.
I feel it’s important to focus on the point of the piece. We’re not talking about the gear, which objectively can be made to agreed high standards. What we’re talking about is sound, and how our ears process it and how that impacts on our tastes and preferences.
Get the audio into your DJ software, or an audio editor, where you can adjust the pitch.
Pitch it up or down far enough and you’ll hear the other word. You can even carefully adjust so that you can hear both at once – but the pitch % at which that happens will be different for each listener.