What we measure is what we hear Options

[Yahzi]

I've heard audiophiles claim time and time again that what we measure does not reflect what we hear in a listening evaluation. I think Floyd Tool is the pioneer in conducting the studies for this, but who else as in a position of authority has led research into this field? It can't be mere opinion. I feel measurements largely do correlate with subjective sound quality but I don't think *all* measurements do. Some are more relevant than others.

What is your position?

[Porcus]

Two totally different points:

(1) Those annoying spectrogram-comparisons of a lossy version against the original. Easy to quantify huge differences which are not heard, or at least not heard anywhere near what the measurements indicate. On the other hand, could hide audible artifacts.

What you measure is not what you hear – unless you find a much smarter algorithm. And such one has already been applied:

(2) Training a psy model. Correlating to actual listening tests. Predicting what actual humans hear. Actually implement it in a lossy codec. It measures what we actually hear; we hear something which sounds quite a bit like [lossy version].

The “problem” about the latter one, is that it does not directly return to you any “difference is this big” measure. That is not what it is designed for; it is designed to return the lossy signal.