All very interesting indeed and there is room to start a new chat about what a square wave or frequency response shows, versus what it feels like as a perception. In my experience there is no correlation.
It’s not just “
room to start a new chat”, it would need to be pretty huge room because what you’re actually talking about is effectively not only an entire branch of science (“Psychoacoustics”) but several sub-branches, for example the field of “Cognitive Neuroscience of Music”. Your experience is incorrect, or rather massively incomplete/naive. There is in fact a correlation although it’s not linear and requires research to identify exactly what the correlation is, actually it required/requires a great deal of research because the correlation varies depending on which aspect of physical sound properties and what category of perception you‘re talking about, for example; frequency vs pitch perception, amplitude vs loudness perception, ILD vs the perception of soundstage/localisation and numerous others. You’re not going to pick up and understand all this from “your experience” because the history of Psychoacoustics goes back to Pythagoras, includes Da Vinci, Galileo, numerous other great minds and many tens of thousands of researchers going back over a century. Helmholtz did a lot of pioneering work in the mid 1800’s and can arguably be called the inventor of modern Psychoacoustics although in the late 1800’s it was Lord Rayleigh who discovered most of the fundamental basics in the field. AT&T/Bell Labs also deserve a mention, they had an entire department dedicated to acoustic/psychoacoustic research from around 1910 and Harvey Fletcher, the director of this department for over 30 years, arguably contributed more to the field than any other. You need to realise that Psychoacoustics isn’t just some obscure scientific field dependent on a few contributing scientists, it’s a big field which has had (and continues to have) a great deal of resources throw at it because it’s not solely concerned with explaining to audiophiles what they think they’re hearing, it’s literally a matter of life and death, it has national security implications, health and safety applications, military applications, telecoms and other huge international commercial applications. Currently, multi-billion dollar companies such as Apple, Google, Dolby and others are funding a great deal of psychoacoustic research (due to applications in VR, etc.), in addition to the ongoing psychoacoustic research by the ITU, AES, EBU and other national and international bodies.
Same graphs - identical ends at the smallest fractions of db/- and different listening. (Imo, of course).
That’s because you don’t understand either graphs or Psychoacoustics! A graph typically tells us the measurement of a single physical attribute, say an analogue or acoustic property. Sound does not have a single acoustic attribute and we do not perceive/hear a single acoustic attribute, therefore a graph of a single attribute is obviously never going to tell us everything and two identical graphs of the same attribute from two different pieces of kit does not indicate they sound the same. Maybe I’ve just been in the business for so long that I can’t see how all this isn’t obviously self evident? We see exactly the same thing in other product types, for example; if a car has a 0-100kph of say 7 seconds and another make of car has a near identical 0-100kph acceleration time (or even a near identical acceleration graph), do you really expect to feel no difference between the two cars? Obviously a car’s performance is dictated by many attributes; handling, braking, gears, aerodynamics etc., not just the 0-100kph acceleration time/graph. And, what you feel about the performance is dictated by even more attributes, say the seating position, seat comfort, suspension, instrumentation, control ergonomics, steering feedback, etc. Isn’t that self-evident to anyone with driving experience? If a graph or measurement indicates no difference but you feel a difference, either you’re imagining a difference where there isn’t one or you’re looking at a measurement/graph of the wrong thing.
And so, we return to the starting point on the value of subjective perception. I stop here.
No one is doubting the value of subjective perception, me least of all, because the audio content you’re reproducing is almost entirely based on subjective perception, the subjective perception of the musicians, engineers and producer who created it. However, cables, amps, DACs etc., do not have any subjective perception and should obviously not attempt to apply any. Personally, I want to hear the subjective perception/choices of the musicians and engineers, not those applied by say an Amp.
But, I repeat, I am confident that the Christmas test will propose the same conclusions as the original test. The young daughter (to whom nothing should be said other than that she is playing with her father) will feel the same things. 10 times out of 10 or even 20 times out of twenty. And this while respecting all possible test procedures.
That’s possible but unlikely. It would be possible if the new test is as flawed as the original test for example. Even if she does “feel the same things“ and is able to identify that, acceptable test procedures would not have been respected if the conclusion is the same, that it‘s due to silver plate vs copper.
G
