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RE: How many audiophile experiences can be verified by empirical (not anecdotal) observation?

"Once you hear a thing you can't really "unhear" it."

I think that's a separate problem, but an interesting one. When I was comparing compression settings to see if I could find something acceptable that would still fit on the HD space I had available, I found that I had to be careful because once I had listened to a better version then the poorer one also sounded better. It's as though the clearest image was getting buffered mentally then anything close would just trigger it. Particular details were still audible, they just didn't seem to matter. The effect fades with time and seems to completely reset overnight.

What I was referring to however was the nature of audible differences and how detectable they are vs. how much they affect our enjoyment. For instance I believe that broad frequency response variations are easy to hear, but not very important as we adapt to them naturally. A similar thing happens in photography, if we stay outside we don't usually notice how warm the color balance becomes near sunset. However our camera captures it accurately unless it has auto-color balance and we are amazed when we see the picture. Temporal and resonance problems, for instance, can be much harder to put your finger on off-the-bat, yet can ultimately drive you nuts.

From my experience two listening time frames are the most telling: First blush and long-term. Of course to work on stuff, those aren't practical, but I regard them as the final tests.

Rick

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