I was trying to glance over this thread, but realized it was too technical and over my head at the moment.
So, apologies if this was already covered, but I have a question:
Do inaudible frequencies affect the way we perceive/hear audible frequencies?
I read about masking, but that was comparing two audible sounds.
While typing this I came across this article on Wikipedia about the Hypersonic effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_effect
Why does everything in the audio world have to be so damn controversial? But I digress; I find this topic extremely interesting and intriguing.
I've always been fascinated by technical measurements vs subjective experiences.
For example, I'm a PC gamer and have been for a long time. For the longest time in the PC gaming world, people have noticed a difference between single GPU's and multiple GPU's running together (SLI or Crossfire). Some people have noticed a smoother gaming experience on a single GPU vs. multiple GPU's, if both systems were keeping frame-rates at or above their monitor's refresh rate. Until just recently (recently, as in like this past year), we have only had one real way of measuring frames per second (FPS), the FRAPS method. People with multiple GPU's, specifically rigs using Crossfire, noticed laggy gameplay with very high frames. For years people have been stumped by this, and it has been a source of division/contention amongst gamers. People would say Crossfire sucks, then other people would tell them they were stupid based upon technically phenominal statistics/measurements.
Well, now there's a new method for measuring the performance of GPU's called "frame rating", which tells you both the FRAPS FPS, but also the observable FPS, and other details that were never present before, like frame time variance, ghosts, runts, etc. All the people that vehemently defended AMD and Crossfire now look fairly dumb. The thing is, they used the best/most sound testing experiments available to back up their claims, yet, in the end, they turned out to be wrong.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, graphs just do not tell the whole story, despite how scientific and mathematically sound they might be. There's always something that we can't measure that does affect the way we perceive the world around us. We shouldn't just dismiss people's claims as placebo, crazy, ignorant, or downright idiotic or whatever just because the scientific facts seem contrary to their beliefs. One day those "dummies" might actually turn out to be right, and history has shown, time and time again, that some people dismissed as lunatics based upon their own beliefs that go against the status quo have, in time, been proven correct.
Sorry if this post was all over the place. I'm not really sure what I'm still doing awake...