Disclaimer, the hereunder post of mine is not an answer to Ivy's post, but counter-arguments to the content of the research that has been posted by Ivy. My post is for all the people who had not followed the discussion 5 months ago.
1. Voice recognition software is not as reliable as DNA or finger print analysis but it's improving "sophisticated mathematical modeling techniques, and the ability of acoustic engineers to decompose the human voice into a host of different components have led to enormous improvement in voice recognition technology".
Let's bear in mind that this technology although improved and improving will actually never equal the DNA test simply because a voice is subject to change (young voice, old voice, cold voice, hangover voice, "broken" voice after shouting, etc.) and although there is a personal timbre for each individual, there is no such thing as a voice DNA nor any kind of voice print as suggested by some in earlier posts in this thread or in some studies.
--- So like I said in the last post it's not perfect but it's improving. And it can be said that it's better than human ability.
The improvement will be extremely small steps due to many anatomy related factors. I don't believe it will ever be reliable, so the technology is condemned to be imprefect, as much as for example automatic face recognition software.
2. Some people are better at identifying voices then others. Nobody knows why but musical ability and memory seems to be a factor.
---- So musicians will generally be better at identification. so musicians that worked with Michael would have a better accuracy.
Musicians are generally better at composing and decomposing musical sounds and when they learn music theory it is much easier for them to transcribe the music into notes and vice versa. However they are unable for example to read a book and listen to the music at the same time, as music would distract them. When watching a movie for example, the musicians would pay attention more to the music effects than dialogues (if they happen at the same time).
However, there is no relationship between having a musical ear and recognizing someone's voice. Imitators and soundalikes are a very good example. They might be very good at hearing and imitating a voice/sounds but it does not necessarily mean that they are musicians at all.
Let's also not forget that some people simply are good at recognizing sounds (without being musicians) while others are better at producing the sounds (being musicians).
The bolded part is your assumption and not based on any research.
3. Familiarity with the voice is important. Research shows people can identify their family members with 89% accuracy but they can only identify their friends / co workers / people they have occasional contact by only 66% accuracy.
Just to make it clear, it is not a question of being a close or distant relative. It is a question of ferequency you hear people. If you for example heard your coworkers more often than your family, then the percentage of teh accuracy would be reversed. By the way it goes without saying that all depends on the regular vs occasional contact with people.
In our case, we have a daily contact with MJ's voice. It is to such an extent that we could consider his voice on the same level as someone's from our family, hence the accuracy would also reach around 89%, if not more than that. The reason why the accuracy of MJ's voice would be higher in our case is because unlike our family member's voice, we have been paying carefully attention to every single bit of breath Michael had produced in all of his songs. I know no one who does that with the voice of their family members.
4. Number of times a person is exposed to the voice is more important then the length of the time they are exposed to the voice. Research shows that hearing a voice for 20 seconds for 3 times is far better than hearing a voice for once for 60 seconds.
If you combine both, length + frequency, then you can get a better accuracy than 89%.
---- So both of the above shows that more exposure to the voice is the most important thing. so not necessarily the long term fans will be better judges, the people who listen/ exposed to the voice the most times will be better.
---- Although being family strengthens Jacksons family claims, how often they were exposed to Michael's voice also becomes important. For example in her book Latoya says between 1992 - 2009 she didn't talk to Michael for 14 years and she only talked to him 6 or so times. So in this reality most of the fans would be better in identifying Michael's voice than Latoya.
The same goes for people who worked with Michael. They have been exposed to Michael's voice less than the fans who not only have been exposed during a long period, but who also frequenlty have been listening to him -- daily.
5. The ability to identify a voice also deteriorates sharply over time if the person is no longer exposed to the voice frequently. Research shows that when asked to pick up a voice among 5 voices , people has 83% accuracy the next day, 51% accuracy 3 weeks later and 13% accuracy after 5 months.
---- this with the above points shows that not only familiarity in Michael's voice but familiarity in Jason's voice is needed. If you aren't exposed to Jason's voice before and frequently or if you didn't listen to him for some time then your ability to distinguish his voice is going down sharply.
Common sense. However, as I pointed out earlier, the question is not do we hear Malachi or not, but do we hear the one that we have been exposed to for a very long period and on the daily basis.
6. Now sound- alikes. Bumper is right. They are tricky. Research shows that voices of brothers are confusing. In a research done in Sweden when asked to pick Carl Bildt voice (prime minister) but actually played an impersonator voice people almost always wrongly identified the impersonator as Carl Bildt.
Yes, but the problem with this Carl Bildt voice example is that people haven't been as familiar with his voice as MJ's fans are familiar with MJ's voice.
---- This is a two way street in our argument. It shows that Malachi can be mistaken for Michael and Micheal can be mistaken for Malachi so any one of us can be wrong in what we think we hear. It shows us that we are actually trying for the hardest differentiation in this instance.
I tend rather to think that we'd be more easily fooled by Malachi and tend to think that we hear Michael, than being fooled by Michael and think it's Malachi. For example when you hear a MJ songs for the first time such as Blue Gansta, Slave To The Rhythm, 12 o' clock, etc, I don't think that anyone had thought "oh it sounds like Malachi". However, when we heard for the first time Mamacita or Let me let go, many people acknowledged that it sounded like Michael.
In other words, Michael is and will always be the reference. Malachi will never become a reference, unless it sounds Malachi. And strangely enough many parts disturbingly sound like Malachi's voice on the Cascio songs, which is not the case with the voice on other Michael Jackson's songs.
I can't name a single Michael Jackson's song and say "this sounds like Malachi". So I can't share the same view on that argument as being a two way street.
7. Disguise of a voice (in our case processing) is also problematic. They ask people to simply whisper and recognition accuracy goes down a lot. Distortion makes it even worse in regards to accuracy.
We don't know if all Cascio songs have been processed, but they do sound the same. Whispering is not equal to processing. Whispering is the complete absence of voice, it's just breath, teeth, tongue, lips, no voice.
---- so any type of processing present on Cascio and Malachi songs is making our determinations even less accurate. Raw acapella vocals are needed to reduce this disguise / distortion effect.
We however do have: alien snorts, timbre, accent/pronunciation, extremely unusual copy-pastes (in the middle of a sentence) where you can clearly hear two different voice timbres, exaggerated yelps/gulps, extremely unusual vibrato (
why processing it to be so shaky? how come Malachi does exactly the same one on his own songs?) on every single Cascio song,...
8. Also multiple case histories show that being confident in a voice identification doesn't necessarily mean that the person is correct. Several cases are cited where people were convicted based on mainly a very confident witness voice identification but later proven innocent with DNA evidence and such. In short there's no correlation between a person's confidence in what he heard and the accuracy of his identification.
We are having an unprecedent case here. There is no such case as this one, when people have been thoroughly listening every day for decades to the same voice cannot be compared to the "case stories". The factors are simply not the same, hence uncomparable. It is even less comparable with doubters' opinions, because we do not claim with confidence to hear Michael Jackson at all on those tracks, compared to the case stories where people were claiming with confidence to recognize the voice of the main concerned one.
If anything, your example of case stories would rather be comparable to believers' opinions of "recognizing" the voice of the main concerned one --Michael.
Finally let's discuss the comparisons from a legal perspective
Why? Do we need to discuss from the legal perspective if we hear a difference between a diesel engine or a normal petrol/gas engine of a car for example?
"it is no longer permissible for police officers to invite the victim of a crime to the police station, bring her within earshot of a defendant who is asked to say a few words, and then ask the victim if the defendant was the perpetrator of the crime"
What is legal in one country is illegal in other countries and vice-versa. This is a dead-end discussion because we are dealing here with an international community on the one hand, and on the other, we are simply talking about what we hear or don't hear, so why is it necessary to bring in legal aspects of the matter? There is none.
Why?
Because it's leading and proven to cause false identification.
Anything and everything can be leading. The simple fact that the songs are on an official Michael Jackson's album, it is... leading.
Similarly any comparison video or any person you asked to compare Jason Malachi vocals to Michael's wouldn't hold in court.
But we the fans are not in court. Why is it relevant to talk about the court? We, the fans, are in our living rooms, cars, streets, bars, restaurants, on holiday, etc. and we hear the voice that isn't the one that is supposed to be when listening to those tracks. Not any court in the world would change a thing about what we hear or don't hear.
As I said earlier, I've seen people thinking that a Malachi's song is a Michael Jackson's song, but I've never heard anyone thinking that a Michael Jackson's song is a Malachi's song. This is the first time. No court regulations will ever change what we hear or not hear.
