Tonewood Differences Measured: Interesting Study

[-Asdfgh-]

I get the joke I think, but as far as science is concerned i could see the psychologic problem with telling people they expect to hear a difference and it creating a difference in 3 identical tracks. It would be fun, but would not really prove anything.

No, not three identical tracks, three non-identical tracks from one bass, mislabelled as from three basses. It probes whether people can distinguish basses from each other, or just audio differences which can be from the same bass. It's a valid experiment.

 

[James Collins]

Having enough listeners is the only way to partly control for that, and the possibility that 1 in a million people can hear a difference will never be eliminated. It's just like a drug trial...people's immune systems differ, and the 2 tails of the bell curve will differ in the extreme.

Or if the results are resoundingly one sided.

Sorry that the links no longer work. You had to hear it for yourself to really be the judge but a lot of people though they were remarkably similar and for many, so much that one couldn't be sure.
I was a recording engineer in big studios for many years.
No one (with the possible exception of the player), could have ever told the difference in a mix.



I don't view it that way.
I say who cares what color white it is. Can you prefer the same one consistently?

And to sampling rate:
What difference does it make? It's a comparative test and all are tested equally.
Since you can't hear it, you have no idea of the fidelity from 2011.

BTW, Dan Atkins was a really good luthier and helped a lot of people out with set up and repairs.
He also sold high quality basses on this site at really fair prices.

That's fair, but your test was not designed to test what you wanted. It was exactly what I'm referring to as the white colors. No context, just ask people to correctly identify a color by its name. You didn't ask if you could hear a difference. If that was the case your poll should have been:

1) i hear a difference between samples
2) i don't hear a difference between samples.

Notwithstanding the different biases of the study. Selection bias stands out because I wouldn't have responded because I'm not interested in this sort of "experiment".

The fidelity would matter because as it becomes lower fidelity through compression, speakers/headphones, etc you wash out ability to tell a difference. Sort of like adding pure white to all the color samples. Even if you add the same amount of white, you are washing out the differences.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Due to the fact that hearing in humans is variable for many reasons, it's axiomatic that some people will be able to hear diffenences and some people won't. Removing the randomness of that variable would be daunting. Also whether the people that can't hear differeneces is due to the lack of a differences or the listeners hearing issues could easily skew the results.

A big difference is how high your hearing goes. These days if the difference was above 16kHz I'd never know. I do really well on the over 16kHz elements of the frequency spectrum training tools as if I can't hear it, it's above 16kHz.

 

[Jim C]

I applaud any and all attempts at learning more about building better bass guitars.

Look, all I can tell you is that some guy on TB made a really serious effort with his original idea of making audio tests of wood, and recording the tone it imparts on the sound of an electric bass. I always thought the biggest issue was the body was so much smaller but I don't recall that being something anyone complained about.

I don't think there ever could be an accurate test done that would satisfy all.
But if I'm wrong, one of you critical thinkers should write a test plan, acquire the materials, build a prototype, record the results and present them here. This could be done over a weekend.
I've got a spare piece of 2x6 you can have. Question is, pressure treated and kiln dried SPF?

 

[mongo2]

A big difference is how high your hearing goes. These days if the difference was above 16kHz I'd never know. I do really well on the over 16kHz elements of the frequency spectrum training tools as if I can't hear it, it's above 16kHz.

Yep, many have similar hearing issues as well as age related issues. I'm nearing 70 and I have some high end loss in my right ear but my audiologist says there is no loss in my left ear. I've been wearing some sort of ear protection since the early '70s but my right ear was damaged before I started wearing the protection.

 

[Doug4321]

yes in the seventies and eighties for fender copies made in Japan. It sounded good … really … but heavy.

I used to have one of those, MIJ JB Player Jazz copy. Yes very heavy, thick paint, pretty sure a plywood body, meaning not just any laminate but like the hardware store stuff and heavy. It wasn’t resonant at all, not so bad, but more a bright loud sound like you’re just hearing the strings by themselves. In contrast my alder Fender Jazz is more resonant and that imparts some tonal quality it seems like.

 

[Tokalo]

I got a G&L Tribute SB-2 yesterday and I don’t know what the body is made of: the G&L site says poplar; the retailer (and their competitors in UK and Germany) say mahogany.
I don’t care - I got it for the MFD pickups, the jazz neck and because there’s no battery (and at £400 / $540 it’s quite simply a cracking bass for the money!)

 

[Grinderman]

This recent "tonewood" video is quite good.

I see some questionable technical aspects--essentially lack of more complete range and methodology of comparisons--to that demonstration but I don't have the time or inclination to go down a potential rathole about it.

Woods are tone filters. How they're combined changes that filter. How the guitar is played (hands, fingers, picks, orientation, etc) are tone factors.

 

[kodiakblair]

I see some questionable technical aspects to that demonstration but I don't have the time or inclination to go down a potential rathole about it.

Coming just 3 1/2 weeks after this on point post.

Oh, one of these...




Never mind.

 

[Turnaround]

The authors concede that the effect of the wood is a smaller consideration on an electric guitar compared to an acoustic guitar and they limit their sample woods to sapele, rosewood, plywood, and pine, however do conclude that "[m]ost listeners, despite the lack of a professional listening environment, could distinguish between the recordings made with different woods regardless of the played pitch and the pickup used." My ear is not so attuned so I would bet that (to me) they would all pretty much sound the same, but it was interesting to read the results of an actual controlled study.

I think it is significant that, as they point out:
"People that declared no musical education correctly recognized the sounds at an average rate of 86.5%, which is noticeably lower than those with musical expe- rience. This is well above the percentage level of correct responses commonly taken as an estimate of discrimi- nation thresholds in 2AFC tasks, which allows to con- clude that most listeners should notice the difference in timbre caused by a change in tonewood."

I think that where the discussion most often gets derailed is when the argument comes to identifying species by sound. Where one might be able to hear a difference between two different tonewoods, that does not mean they can tell which is which just by listening. It's further complicated, of course, if the listener is not informed of what species are being compared. And then there is the disconnect between what we hear and the words we use to describe it.

Tester: Do you hear a difference between these two samples?
Listener: Yes
Tester: Which one is mahogany?
Listener: Huh?
Tester: How would you describe the first sample?
Listener: Sharp and a bit compressed
Tester: In what way?
Listener: In the way it sounds. Like a bit lemony, and siomewhat squased, like lemonade
Tester: Huh?

 

[Grinderman]

Coming just 3 1/2 weeks after this on point post.

I'm further commenting on thought now as this has come to mind again. There's no statute of limitations on new comments as long as the thread remains live on the server.

Take or leave it.

 

[Grinderman]

I see some questionable technical aspects--essentially lack of more complete range and methodology of comparisons--to that demonstration but I don't have the time or inclination to go down a potential rathole about it.

Woods are tone filters. How they're combined changes that filter. How the guitar is played (hands, fingers, picks, orientation, etc) are tone factors.

Since I can't edit or add to my above/earlier comment: I think what I said earlier comes across overly critical. I do think it's a very good demonstration of how overwhelming most important the pickup is to tone, I never doubted that much.