Even impressions/experiences that are _not_ an "illusion" (whatever that means) are 100% constructed by our brain. There is no such thing as colors in the world, it's just a constructed representation of different reflectivity values for surfaces. And "sound" is just a constructed representation of wavefronts caused by shock and resonance. And so on.
So you can never distinguish between "illusion" and "reality" unless you use another, external (to the brain) measure to define what "reality" means. What's especially tricky here is that the brain makes up a part of the experience all the time and under certain conditions - if it focuses it's attention to it - can amplify or filter parts of the overall impression. Good examples are that you can identify voices out of a noise level that is much louder than the voice itself just based on the specific (and learned!) characteristic of language; you can't ignore children's wining without getting a higher attention level (unless you are trained to it) and so on. So it's part of the everyday experience that the audible experience is biased and modified by the situation. Which includes the fact that sound produced by "better" audio equipment will sound better to you. You can call that an "illusion" but it's no more of an illusion than all the rest of your music experience. Just that it's not caused by the equipment itself but by the fact that you know that the equipment is better. It's no less real for you, though. -- pippin --- see iPeng, the Squeezebox iPhone remote and *New: iPeng for iPad*, at penguinlovesmusic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pippin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13777 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=93105 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
