Buddha
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Is Hi Fi schizophonic?
JSBach
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Quote:
"Schizophonia" describes a state where what you hear and what you see are unrelated.

The word was coined by the great Canadian audiologist Murray Schafer and was intended to communicate unhealthiness. Schafer explains: "I coined the term schizophonia intending it to be a nervous word. Related to schizophrenia, I wanted it to convey the same sense of aberration and drama."

His assertion is that continual (habitual) schizophonia is unhealthy.

So, for audiophilia....Is sitting in a room full of inaminate objects and expecting to be fooled into thinking one is listening to a jazz ensemble somehow "wrong?"

Is this a validation of the low-light no-light listening paradigm?

Could it mean (gasp!) that those damn videos of musical perfformances are "healthier" than listening without video?

Man, I really don't enjoy video - it seems less real to me than the sound of my Hi Fi, even with its associated visual-sonic disconnect.

Maybe video is too fake looking, and audio on it's own is a better approximation of an event, for some.

Time for Pete Townsend to write a rock opera about Scizophoinia.

CNN piece about sound...referencing Robert Harley!

I totally agree about compression being sonically fatiguing.


One hopes Mr Schafer's understanding of neuro-audiology has improved since he first made such simplistic assertions. "Nervous word"? "Aberration and drama"? What was the man trying to say?
If he was asserting that we can all be fooled by appearances, he's right though. One of my favorite audiophool party tricks is to put a CD in my player, press play and then sneakily start the same CD recorded onto my Nakamichi 'Dragon'. Interesting how many 'golden eared audiophools' don't recognise the substitution while those numbers are ticking over on the CD display.
Compression fatiguing? To my ears not always but it does always bore the pants off me.
As to not enjoying video when listening to a performance I've yet to find a screen, placed between the speakers, that doesn't stuff up the imaging on two channel stereo . If there's a centre channel operating though it's OK.
And is "sitting in a room full of inaminate objects and expecting to be fooled into thinking one is listening to a jazz ensemble somehow "wrong?" - No, but you can still get a huge amount of musical enjoyment without having to delude yourself you're at a concert and isn't that the whole point?

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