[Al Skierkiewicz]

As to the background noise issue raised by Amanda, this is actually a known phenom. When you investigate the possibility of any auditory or visual oddity you must consider that we are animals afterall, and only a few milliseconds away from the wild in which we developed. (evolutionary time) Our brains are still intent on listening for things in the forest that can kill us. As such background noise is a sound that we know won't kill us and it leaves our brains to concentrate on other things. Now on to the next issue, intelligibility. Our understanding of the spoken (or sung) word is dependent on a few things. One, a specific signal to noise ratio and two, knowing the words that are being said. We require at least a 45 dB S/N to understand any conversation but if we know that the speaker is confined to a very limited vocabulary, then we can stand about 25 dB S/N. That being said, you can only listen to Cream's "At the Crossroads" at an elevated level, just because it is the only way.

I will leave "feeling the music" for another discussion.