Quote:
Originally Posted by masteringhouse 
I don't know of any studies offhand, but it seems that people are more stimulated visually that aurally. Why does high definition video seem to be a big seller while SACD and DVD-A have little impact? |
I believe that is because hearing is (unless trained) handled mostly by the subconscious. We all know that hearing provides a hell of a lot of information, but average Joe's brain handles it all mostly in the background, whereas with vision, one is always aware of the focal point in the field of vision.
Those who have experience with live sound, especially with performances that are equally visual as well as auditorial, will be aware of the phenomenon that the audience will notice and praise good lighting or projection, whereas often, the best reaction you will get regarding sound is that noone noticed anything bad. They might say "the music was great". But hardly anyone, only those interested in the matter, will focus on sound itself.
The same is true for sound to picture. Visual effects are noticed much more often than sound effects. Perfect sound in that regards usually means that "everything sounds like it should". "I didn't notice anything unusual" may mean that the sound designers did a fantastic job.
Maybe this is because humans haven't relied on hearing as much as vision for survival for a long time. I suspect that our ancestors hunting in the woods had better training in homing in on single sounds, in focusing on specific auditorial information.
Or it may be because hearing is, in a sense, more developed, better integrated with our mind. We get only relevant information and we get it already translated to a meaningful message (instead of "there's a single note sound, coming from behind me with fast rising amplitude" we think "CAR HORN - JUMP TO THE LEFT!!!).
Or maybe hearing is such a simple, basic function which just doesn't need as much attention and is handled in the background, simply because it can be, whereas vision is too complex for that.
Another reason why it's easier to sell HDTV than HDAudio may be that picture delivery mechanisms are, in my opinion, a lot more rudimentary, thus there are bigger improvements to be made. After all, we still watch our moving pictures in a little square box, we're not even trying to create an illusion of reality here.
Either way, all this is of course shockingly unscientific, just some thoughts that come to mind. The bottom line is it's much easier to make average Joe aware of the "crisp picture quality" than the "lack of artifacts in the playback of a recording" because he never noticed those artifacts before. His brain did notice them and filtered them out quite successfully, but that is not something Joe is aware of.