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How do you measure connoiseurship?

Posted by e-stat on February 19, 2001 at 19:05:16

In Reply to: Subjective reviews and differences in hearing - any research been done? posted by John C. - Aussie on February 19, 2001 at 17:03:40:

While marked hearing losses would no doubt limit the ability of a listener to differentiate sonic differences beyond their comprehension, I believe that the factors you mentioned are not the prevalent ones. The ongoing debate really centers around the ability to adequately measure anything relevant to the reproduction of music with today's "science". There is an excellent article by Robert Harley in the latest TAS concerning "objective" measurements vs "observational" differences. He correctly notes that audio is the only field that measures its products in ways that bear no relation to the way the products are used. Does anyone listen to and enjoy steady state test tones possessing zero dynamic range?

For countless years, many have struggled to mimic the valuable and "secret" formula that earns the Coca Cola Company many billions of dollars per year in sales. Why don't you just measure what's in it and duplicate the recipe? Many have tried and failed. Why don't you just take apart a Stradivarius violin, "measure" the parameters, duplicate the "specifications" and make a veritable pile of money selling them? Again, many have tried and failed.

I strongly believe that there is substantially more at work in the perception of music as with the other examples I cited. Similarly, I believe that anyone, short of a former artillery specialist, is capable of perceiving subtle differences found in the music reproduction by audio componensts that continue to elude the white coats "listening" to their single tone distortion graphs - if they regularly listen to music and have developed a long term memory of what live music sounds like.

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Kimber Kable

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