Shoeless: I’m the only person in my circle of friends and family who CAN do those 3-D Magic Eye™ things, it comes so easily to me it’s frightening. When I first started showing them to friends they all swore I was lying about the imbedded images. Even after “cheating” by showing them the images in the back of the book, so they’d have some frame of reference, they still couldn’t identify them. I’m going to ask my optometrist about them when I get my next eye exam. I wonder if the images can be made obvious using colored filters or special clear lenses? Lately I’ve been having an orgy of the stereograms on YouTube, several of the videos include dozens of images. Keep trying.
panache45:My bathroom floor is a geometric pattern of unglazed black and white(predominately) marble squares. I can use my amazing 3-D vision to see “past” them, as if I’m looking down into a recessed opening with the tiles situated above it, almost as if they’re floating. If I move my head slowly side to side, they shift slightly, but still remained suspended, and in focus, above the recess.
I can’t hear all the differences between stereo systems. I can tell the difference between a really good stereo and a really bad one, but everything in between is nothing to me.
This aggravates my husband, who is a major, major audiophile. He’s the type who is perpetually switching wires and cables around, trying different speaker combinations, etc., etc. It always sounded exactly alike to me.
I should say, however, that this took place in the past. Nowadays he likes his iPod and headphones just fine and occupies himself with rearranging and labeling his iTunes collection instead of constantly re-adjusting a stereo system.
While there are definitely differences in sound quality between systems, it may not be you that is lacking something. Audiophiles are above even wine experts when it comes to imagining differences where there are none and there are whole industries that prey on that vulnerability. A telltale sign of an audiophile is when they buy overpriced cables and fiddle with them excessively and that goes doubly so if they are digital cables. Cables, especially digital ones, either work or they don’t and you don’t get anything by replacing working ones with more expensive versions. There is a saying that audiophiles like playing with sound equipment rather than actually enjoying the music.
I can do that without even trying as well, that is pretty much my default state of vision for objects close to me. Some times I need to concentrate to not see an object doubled. But I have never been able to see those hidden pictures. Just now, I tried to see the ones on this page: 3D Vision Is More Important than You Think - Optometrists.org and was unable. I can make the image go crossed until they overlap by 50%, but I don’t see any hidden image.
UK politicians have learned not to use election banners containing the word ‘country’, because if you stand in front of them, some smart-ass photographer will get the best angle, and…
At least some of those are analog cables. Some people were selling $1000+ digital cables and the internet was not kind. Thankfully most audiophiles I’ve known are the spend 4-figures in total types, not 4 for each part.
It takes me a few seconds, but I can see all those. And it’s still one of those things that I can’t really explain how to do. I remember having trouble following the “official” directions, until one day it just snapped into place, and now I can’t unsee them. Some people diverge their eyes instead, which IIRC means that they see them backwards (background pops up instead of foreground), which is fine if not ideal.
My father was an old-school audiophile who had a subscription to Stereo Review and had some pretty good equipment. He would talk about his Nakamichi tape decks that used double-capstan drive for ideal speed control, with no side-guides to cause irregular drag on the tapes. He had a roof antenna aligned to the local PBS station, off which he would record classical music. I played one of his tapes (there was a rolodex) for a friend and ended up picking up her jaw off the floor after I told her he recorded off the radio. Thousand-dollar cables, though, no, he had his limits.
I once sync-played the Criterion edition of The Wall opposite English vinyl and found that the vinyl had a more pleasing richness to it. In headphones. It was a “huh” moment, but no more than that. I can eq the highs and midranges into balance and get good sound with CDs or those other things. In the end, music is nice, but so is silenciness. To me, getting great audio is just too much effort.
I can readily diverge my eyes to parallel. So rather than overlapping the G & H key, I can easily overlap the S & H key. I can slightly diverge past that to get the A over the H, but that’s not stable.
It’s fun in places like bathrooms with checkerboard tile patterns. With a little effort I can create a shimmering floating translucent *tiles in space *effect. Once I diverge enough to align the same colors I can relax and the automatic vergence system will hold the image stably for many seconds.
Oddly, doing extra convergence is impossible. I know what I’m trying to do but signaling the eye muscles to pull that way is just not happening. Humans be weird.
The first “magic eye 3D” image I ever saw was on the back of an omni magazine in the early 80s. I tried it for a while and eventually got the hang of it. I ran to my dad to show him the ‘amazing 3D image’ he stared at it for a while, then looked at me with a sad look on his face and shook his head, then walked away. I can laugh about it now, but he was always disappointed in me. lol.
It’s true that there is a lot of snake oil with things like cables and amplifiers, but the difference between speakers, and headphones are clearly audible and easily measurable. Speakers, followed by room acoustics make the biggest differences in sound quality. A lot of people have no idea how good speakers can sound. Most people would be astonished by the sound you can get from a good $500 pair of bookshelf speakers, or a pair of towers for a few thousand dollars if you want similar sound quality plus deep bass and higher output.
Those Ultimate Ears aren’t “earbuds”, they’re in-ear monitors (IEMs) which is a different category with much better sound quality, and more isolation than the zero isolation of open earbuds. IEMs were originally developed for musicians to monitor themselves onstage. The Ultimate Ears Reference Monitor is their top model and I assume the “Personal Reference” is the same plus added cosmetic features. Part of the cost is that they make a custom housing based on molds of your ears taken by an audiologist. If you want a reasonably priced pair of IEMs, I like the Apple In-Ear Headphones (not the EarPods that come with iPhones) for $80.
I always found the magic eye thing pretty easy, once I didn’t try to follow the directions, and crossed my eyes (even though they say you should go parallel.)
But now it’s a bit harder, as my.right eye likes to go off at an angle. Astigmatism was the eventual explanation.
