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?

[Woodinville]

Many people have worked on measuring what you hear. No perceptual coder (MP3, AAC, AC3, etc) would work if many people had not only done that, but also done a good job of it.

Floyd has done some very good work on preference, which is a different (but good) thing. Work on this goes all the way back to the 1920's, articulation, critical bands, etc, of course.

Look at www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm for the "heyser lecture" slide deck for some discussion on that subject.

[jkauff]

Many people have worked on measuring what you hear. No perceptual coder (MP3, AAC, AC3, etc) would work if many people had not only done that, but also done a good job of it.

My own experience makes me wonder how well human hearing has been measured. I'm sure average human hearing has been well-studied, but how many outliers are there in the world population? My daughter, for example, can hear the high frequency tones used by cat-repelling devices. She's demonstrated this many times, but my wife and I can't hear them at all (nor can most people). I wonder if the hearing range of various human populations has been well-studied (such as African tribes with certain members who can hear low frequency tones emitted by elephants).

Is it fair to say that this good work has been done primarily based on averages of 1st World populations?

This post has been edited by jkauff: Dec 29 2012, 15:21