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In discussions of intonation, when we really start splitting hairs, it comes down to assigning a pitch to a slightly inharmonic collection of partials. For example: If my open A string is producing the following partials: 110, 221, 332, 442, 551, 663; is it perfectly tuned, or slightly sharp? Does it matter how loud each of these partials are? Does it matter whether I'm accompanying a violin or a flute? Is it influenced by my age and high-end hearing loss? Could the same listener hear that note as both sharp and perfectly tuned?

The "Laurel v Yanni" clip that has been dividing the internet recently illustrates what can happen to a sound depending on which frequencies your brain recognizes or focusses on. The New York Times did a nice feature on it with a built in eq slider. You can move the slider back and forth to hear either "Laurel" or "Yanni". What's fascinating is that once the sound flips from one to the other, you can back up, and the sound will stay "flipped"--the exact same sound and eq setting that was "Laurel" a few seconds ago, now sounds like "Yanni". With practice, you can get the sound to flip back and forth without touching the settings just by focussing your mind on different parts of the spectrum. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html

That's insane.

I listened to this and ... did and an experiment!
seriously.. if you mouth one or the other... that’s what you hear. It’s what you’re expecting I think .


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Here's another one, just to muddy the waters further...



You hear what you see!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I listened to a program on hearing on NPR. What you hear is only a percentage of the actual sound. Your brain fills in a lot of holes with what it expects should happen.

Everyone's "holy grail" is different.

Jim Olson nailed it when I showed him one of my early guitars around 2004. I asked him how it sounded. He said "good, they all sound good--to someone."

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

It's no wonder why then that so many people say a guitar has a 'woody' tone

That is freaky weird. No matter how hard I tried, I always heard what the video showed.

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Julie Moriarty
http://JulimorCreations.com

I played with the NY Times tool. I can get it to go from Laurel to Larry, but it never went to Yanni.