Those tests won't tell you why individuals have different preferences, if not perceptions.
While there are variations in the auditory system, generalizations across the population can be made, just the same as is the case for the visual system. Indeed, much of the early neural processing of sound exciting the auditory cilia has already been simulated by simple analog circuits.
Preferences are irrelevant; only preceptability of differences matters, and this is why ABC/hidden reference is a standard in the world of blind testing. Any euphonic distortion that one likes should be added explicitly by DSP or analog filters, not coincidentally by the source, amplifier, or headphone/speakers, whose job is to produce an amplified sound indistinguishable from what reached the recording microphone (mastering of recordings notwithstanding).
So, now we're interacting in threads on here, diyhifi, and diyaudio. What next, you'll post at prodigypro? ;P
I didn't notice this article in the thread. It was fairly interesting.
Wow, someone didn't know how to use OCR when scanning, and the whole PDF text is as an image, making for a huge download...
Another interesting thing is that phase intermodulation seems to be audible in far smaller amounts than THD. That could explain why amps such as the Pass Labs ones sound so good even though their THD can be as much as 0.1%.
It's been a while since this thread was active, but I thought I'd attach a link to an interesting blog by Peter Aczel (aka The Audio Critic). He discusses some new software (Audio DiffMaker, sort of like the Unix Diff command, but for audio components), which could potentially make subjective listening tests easier to perform and detect differences b/w components.
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There are 10 kind of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't. ShinyMetal Site| RSS |Forum
d(-_-)b | [:] :)
As an engineer I was always in the measurement crowd, until I saw that blind kid on a talk show who could "see" by making clicking noises like a bat. If he can tell the difference between a banana and an orange by listening to his voice echo of them, I sure people can tell the difference between opamps.
If that kid doesn't exemplify that modern science is a long way from understaning psychoacoustics I don't know what would.
Then I built a tube amp and now know that not all watts are the same.
If he can tell the difference between a banana and an orange by listening to his voice echo of them,
Are you sure he didn't just smell the difference? If you put a banana and orange in front of my face, I could tell the difference blindfolded without making bat like sounds .
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There are 10 kind of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't. ShinyMetal Site| RSS |Forum
d(-_-)b | [:] :)
He was doing other things too, like the difference between a phone and a TV. It was amazing, is amazing what the brain can do.
It is amazing the self-congratulatory patting on their backs humans do in calling themselves amazing. I guess unabashed pride has no limits.
As someone who has studied cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I see the brain as something, like all the products of evolution, that is far from optimized and in fact a barely 'will make do in most circumstances' solution. Any familiarity with the suboptimal heuristic algorithms the brain uses for most cognitive processing, and not to mention the extreme inefficiency from an energy point of view (it consumes an inordinate fraction of your calories), and I won't even get into all the mental problems and diseases that are far from uncommon...
Humans like to see themselves as the peak of evolution. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. By any evolutionarily meaningful measure of success, be it total numbers, total biomass, adaptability, resilience, being widespread throughout the biosphere in all different environments, it is bacteria that win outright, with no multicellular organism coming close. Why did they win? Simple (pun intended): they're just complex enough, and no more. Chances of a mutation being detrimental are much lower because there is less complexity that could be ****ed up, and the short life cycle and horizontal gene sharing makes them readjust to pretty much any change in environment in no time.
It is amazing the self-congratulatory patting on their backs humans do in calling themselves amazing. I guess unabashed pride has no limits.
As someone who has studied cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I see the brain as something, like all the products of evolution, that is far from optimized and in fact a barely 'will make do in most circumstances' solution. .
I guess you're an expert in Humanity, what you do read a couple books? Give this poster the Nobel prize, he thinks we're inferior to bacteria, brilliant.
Consciousness, yes the brain is the final frontier of modern science and philosophy.
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