John Galt

I can play a 10th with little strain, which is nice, because blocked 10th minor chords just make me melt.

I picked it up during my time in the pit. It's not especially difficult if you get the grip right, because you can exert a lot of control over the mallets. If you don't have it right, they flop all over the place.

On this subject, two people have shown to be able to contribute large amounts to the discussion and another has shown the basic understanding of the subject. Yet another person has contributed large amounts of unintelligible text based largely on tangents that have little bearing on the topic. Guess which one you are. Stop right there. If you have any doubt that your explanation may only work for yourself you're failing miserably. Red as a mental? Who says there exists a "feeling" of red when you look at it? I don't "feel" anything when I see red, I only see a color. There doesn't necessarily exist an emotional counterpart to a physical sensation. We know a good deal about the brain now and have a pretty good idea of what consciousness is. I saw a lecture given about this at a conference not too long ago wherein a researcher was discussing the possible cause of consciousness being a synergy between the oscillations of some particles across the brain. When you disrupt those with anesthesia, consciousness goes bye-bye. As the amount of knowledge about the brain grows, the ability to maintain a dualistic stance diminishes. Leave philosophy aside, this is purely about the science. Sometimes a reductive explanation is actually a good one, and this is one place where I see it being beneficial. Eh, if you knew where my name came from, you'd know that's impossible. :D

Not necessarily. Synesthesia is the act of mixing up sensory input. Taste colors? Hear sound? See smells? All the same basic disorder.

You mean synesthesia? That's been around for a while. :P

Yes, yes. Sure you do. So does the hobo on the street who claims to be an estranged physicist the government blacklisted when he uncovered the truth of UFOs. Logically fallacy of equivocation. You're misusing the definition of feel. You're taking highly subjective properties of the word and using them too loosely. Stop it, no one can understand you and it seriously hinders your argument. Step one: spell supervenient correctly. You're grasping at wild straws here. Conscious experience? That's such a broad term as to necessitate further explanation. You can't even tell us what you mean by "feel red." You claim to know what you're talking about, but no one here would believe you. Except we do. A lot. I don't think you're using the concept of dualism properly. Nothing you've said is necessarily dualistic in nature. You can't explain why "feeling red" is necessarily independent of the physical mechanics of thought and sensation. You claim they're separate, but you can't even form a coherent sentence explaining yourself. SSC was entirely correct, threads like this open the doors to armchair (pseudo)intellectuals who think they know what they're talking about, but in reality they haven't got a damn clue.

It can go either way, really.

I think it's pretty obvious that you either don't know what you're talking about or are sufficiently inebriated as to obscure your mental faculties. Dissection time. Quite the contrary. It's necessary for the understanding of the mechanics involved. No. Bad. Do not hide behind the guise of "many scientists." Find them and cite them, or forget about speaking about them at all. If you're saying the "feel" of colors differs between people, try again. They're uniform because of evolution, not unique in spite of it. Things like "blue sky" don't "feel" any way. You're mistaking sensation, perception, and emotional qualities. They are all separate and rooted in different faculties. You're committing the logical fallacy of equivocation by assigning the word "feel" all the vague properties of the word at once. Should is a mental crutch. Nothing should do anything or be anything. No. Consciousness is much simpler than autonomous entities. To evolve a consciousness is to take care of a ridiculous amount of necessary reactions to stimuli all at once. Consciousness is a one-off solution to a never ending problem, while autonomous entities must continuously be tweaked to adapt to situations. Technically, there is. Both are rooted in concrete physical mechanics of wavelengths governed by either energy or vibration rate. The signals are decoded according to specific mechanical instructions in their respective sensory organs and the brain. The emotional attachment may vary, but not as widely as people like to think. Again, you're taking far too many liberties with the word "feel."

Not quite, mate. This isn't a question of the subjective properties of music. This is a question of the history of the evolution of music. Quite different. And for the questions you asked. they're pretty much the same between anyone who has the faculties required. Red, the light between 625 and 740 nanometers, is the same among everyone who has rhodopsin sensitive to light between 625 and 740 nm. Same with the trumpet note, it's a specific set of wavelengths with a specific set of overtones. Same with touch, the pressure sensitive cells within your body react the same way as anyone else. This is all irrelevant to the topic at hand, but what I'm saying is don't go quoting these retarded sophisms.

Yay. Glad I could help.

Manufacturer's website. Both your sound card and your laptop maker's websites should have the drivers freely available.

When I say update your drivers, I mean reinstall them if no updates are available.

Like I said, reinstall the driver. The majority of problems like this arise from drivers or hardware malfunction. I've personally dealt with this before. If you're lucky, a quick download and install fixes everything. It's not until after you've tried that method that real troubleshooting is necessary.

Technically, it makes me infinitely more useful than Microsoft, because TheMeaningofLife mentioned sound-related problems with GPO and Finale in another thread. Thread here. Ta-da. I knew what I was talking about. See, my particular brand of situational awareness involves being aware of things outside the immediate realm of this post.