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?

[Martel]

It's nearly impossible to measure subjective feelings of an individual (even sticking electrodes into one's brain doesn't help much). They need to describe/tell you what they hear/feel (until we finally invent the telepathy). Unfortunately, words do not carry nearly as much information as is contained within the feelings they're trying to describe. Hence all those audiophile metaphors (which translate very poorly between individuals and carry almost no useful information as a result).

When I was younger (teen-age) I used to bask in the placebo effect coming from comparing MP3 encoders through a spectrogram. Cut-off at 18kHz was "not good enough for me and sounded like crap", even though the headphone I was using at that time (HD 490 live) had a significant treble roll-off (roughly comparable to Porta Pro) - I just put them on again recently and the treble was virtually non-existent. I ended up using some weird SW called SCMPX, which went all the way to 22kHz on 192kbit MP3 (and likely made worse MP3s overall).
Yet, the associated feeling of superiority (due to extended frequency range that I saw) was really there, it made me enjoy my MP3s much more. While I try to spend as little money as possible to get my equipment, I understand the audiophiles spending fortune on their equipment - for them, just spending big money on equipment is enough to boost their satisfaction level. Due to the physical limits of the human auditory apparatus, this seems to be one of the few ways to improve the perceived sound beyond some objective supremum.

I know I enjoy some fast black/death metal much more when I'm drunk. Some of my friends told me they enjoy techno more when high on weed. Now measure that.
(I'm sorry if this is not appropriate - moderation remove this last sentence in case you find it too offensive)

This post has been edited by Martel: Jan 2 2013, 13:26